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Have you ever seen a TV show taped? I’ve seen three: I was once a “lip-synching perfromer” (the only “performer” I’ll ever be) on an ABC Family show called The Great Pretenders back when I was still a teen, I saw a taping of Tyra back when it was still filmed in LA and before Tyra went fantastically crazy, and, this afternoon I was in the audience at It’s On With Alexa Chung. Maybe it was this summer’s late start in New York or maybe it is because I’m underemployed and when i’m not writing here I’m usually watching videos online in my underpants, trying to keep from having a stress-cry about not having a full-time job and watching the bills pile up, but about a month ago I decided I had nothing better to do than to sit in the audience at a television show. So, which show was I going to sit in on? Like every twenty-something writer-ish person living in New York I immediately tried to see if I could get tickets to The Daily Show or The Colbert Report but it turns out that free tickets for popular television shows are really difficult to get if you are a nobody blogger! Next, I tried to get tickets for The Martha Show because duh, but apparently all the tickets for this summer had been snatched up by tourist groups full of middle-aged women. So where was I going to get my clap-on-the-command-of-a-stage-manager-while-having-half-of-my-face-filmed fix? Enter MTV’s new-ish show, It’s On With Alexa Chung. Being someone who has been sporadically paid to write about celebrities and fashion, I know who Alexa Chung is. She’s cute! She’s British! She doesn’t seem annoying! The show is filmed live so I won’t be there all day! Sounds perfect to me!
I have to be honest, I thought there was going to be a lot more behind-the-scenes hilarity going on for me to write about but there wasn’t. I arrived at call time, 10:45 a.m., with my boyfriend who I only convinced to come with me after showing him a picture of Chung’s long legs. When we got there we found out that we were the last people in line so, for not being eager enough about the show to set up camp three hours in advance we had to be punished by getting baked in the hot sun for longer than the teenagers who were “firsties.” By the time we got in our phones were all taken away and we found out that we would not be given seats since we were among the last people to arrive. So, we had to stand behind a group of seated teenage boys, surrounded by young girls wearing thick masks of cheap make-up (for TVVVV!!!!), long straightened brown hair and age-inappropriate cocktail dresses. It is safe to say that my boyfriend and I, both in our early twenties, were the oldest people there. By at least five years. To quote the group of girls next to me: “Totes awks.” I got through it by telling myself that they would probably give us snacks after taping, or at least a bottle of water or something. Nothing.
Anyways, the show began quickly enough. Alexa came out and, I have to say, she is a real natural in front of a camera and a group of 75 people between the ages of 15 and 24. I know, blah, “she’s a real natural!” Who do I think I am, the middle-aged drama teacher with an over-inflated sense of importance at a high school in suburbia? I just took that stock phrase out of my Old Person book. All I am trying to say is that she was fun. A thousand five-second timed audience claps for Alexa!
I didn’t really know what to expect since I don’t have a (working) television and I haven’t had cable since I went to college. And, even if I did have cable, I would probably be wasting my time watching really horrible reality television shows rather than live chat shows on MTV. Sorry, but that is just the sort of thing that appeals to us olds. MTV knows it and that is why they regulate the reality shows for after we all come home from work and have gotten a few boxes of wine lined out to settle us into the night. This show was definitely not made to appeal to people over the age of 18. Even Alexa herself said she didn’t have a TV and she and Celebrity Guest Alexis Bledel had a special moment when they both (who, ironically, are famous for appearing on television!) admitted they don’t watch the teevee. Anyways, the show did move along a pretty normal schedule: celebrity, “news segment,” celebrity, band, end. When I heard they were going to do a “news” segment I turned to my boyfriend and grumpily wondered if they were going to discuss health care reform (I really wanted a sandwich). Instead a cute comedian came out and he and Alexa talked about Robert Pattinson telling some British newspaper that he can’t get a girlfriend. Oh well, this audience wasn’t going to go for political talk, I guess. They looked pretty confused when the comedian made a comment about the Dukes of Hazzard car being racist.
One high point of the show was when two British stylists came on to promote their new show on TLC, Making Over America. Everyone loves makeovers! They mostly discussed body types and one of the stylists (who I would guess are somewhere around the 40-year mark) bravely showed her metallic legging-covered ass to the audience. They also brought out two girls who had begged for makeovers from Alexa over Facebook. Maybe this is just a side effect of my aging, but I found the whole “plugged-in” social media hullabaloo kinda annoying. Twitter! Myspace! Facebook! Internet! And this isn’t just something that happens on this show: CNN, which is forever trying to hurtle itself towards irrelevancy, makes mentions of Twitter and Facebook at least 5 times a day. We get it: the internet it is a big deal and a lot of people use it. But something just feels forced about it. Yes, you post people’s tweets and Facebook pictures and stuff like that, but are you actually connecting with your audience more or are you just throwing them some crumbs to snack on? Does anyone watch a show and think,”I would really feel more connected to this show if they posted tweets more often?” I just feel like time could be better spent by improving content that works within one’s own medium rather than slapping a “follow us on Twitter” at the end of everything and hope that it magically earns you a committed following. I mentioned this to my boyfriend after we left the studio. He just sort of shrugged, looked at me and said, “I dunno, maybe teens like that sort of thing. You aren’t a 15-year-old girl, how would you know?”
And you know what? He’s right. I’m not a 15-year-old girl anymore. Thank god.
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I honestly can’t think of a show that I would genuinely want to be in the audience of…I mean, there’s Jeopardy or Wheel of Fortune, but I’d rather be ON the show and making buttloads of cash than sitting in the audience.
To be honest, I don’t really watch many shows that tape before a live audience. Do you think they’d let me just loiter around off-camera during a taping of What Not To Wear?
Hell, just watching that makes me feel old. Well, I guess that since I remember the good olden days when they used to show (mostly) videos all day, I actually qualify as ancestral. *sigh*
I remember when MTV first broadcast so I guess that makes me positively prehistoric!
Right? I remember Martha Quinn. I feel so old.
But at least I’m not as old as Martha Quinn!
I hope at least it was air conditioned!
Why don’t you get some Colbert or Stewart tickets far into the future — I’d love to see your blog/observations about those shows.
OMG i LOVED the great pretenders! haha awesome!