Thursday, December 10, 2009

Stossel Tonight and Tomorrow

Tonight, if you aren’t watching leftist Sander Hicks perform punk music at the Gershwin Hotel or seeing a press screening of risk-taking capitalist James Cameron’s Avatar, you’ll probably be watching the 8pm Eastern premiere of Stossel on Fox Business Network (which repeats tomorrow, Friday, at 10pm — opposite his old show, 20/20, so take that, ABC!).

Will I be on it, asking a question from the audience about Ayn Rand and flashing a Vulcan salute as a shout-out to my libertarian-Trekkie homies like Ali Kokmen? I’m not sure because they may air another Stossel episode about global warming first and save the Ayn Rand episode for another week. As I type this some seven hours before it posts, the Fox Business site doesn’t yet say — indeed, it doesn’t yet even indicate anywhere that I can find that they have any shows airing Thursday, which is pretty typical of the short-term focus of TV, from what I’ve seen. No future, no past.

(Roger on Family Guy knew what he was talking about when he insisted on receiving advance notice of a broadcast and a guaranteed VHS copy afterwards as part of his terrorist demands — even when you’re involved in the broadcast, that’s about what it takes to stay informed about what’s going on, so busy and last-minute is everything.)

I’m not complaining, though: During the run-through of the first two tapings, I not only got to go onto the set and do my Nick Gillespie impression (a pretty accurate prediction of his actual comments taped later, if I do say so myself, including a reference to the eroticism of having your feet nibbled by fish) but also got to pretend to be guest Stephen Dubner of the Freakonomics blog (not John Allison of BB&T as I’d anticipated).

Next week, if all goes as planned, I’ll return to the audience one more time, staying silent while my ACSH colleague Betsy McCaughey (New York’s most charismatic former lieutenant governor) tries to put in her two cents about Obamacare. After that, I will just watch like any other citizen as Stossel teaches a world in need about the basics of capitalism.

5 comments:

Todd Seavey said...

UDPATE: Given that it’s now 11:12am on the day of the broadcast, I think this blog entry by Stossel today gives you some idea how nerve-wracking working for TV people was back when I did that (1995-2001):

http://stossel.blogs.foxbusiness.com/2009/12/10/stossel-premieres-tonight-at-8pm-et-on-fox-business/

Todd Seavey said...

And finally: he went with climate. That must have been a fun final few hours before airtime for the staff.

Rand (like my question from the audience) remains to be seen, likely on a near-future Thur. at 8pm Eastern.

Tatyana said...

Todd, you mention we can get tickets to be in the audience on the show, but I didn’t find a link to reserving a ticket or even to a price page. Can you tell me how it is done in practice?

Todd Seavey said...

Explained in my 12/7 entry:

http://toddseavey.com/2009/12/07/stossel-and-steampunk-for-all/

Tatyana said...

Thank you, Todd; emailed for a ticket for 17th.