”Jonathon Brandmeier . . . the next breakout personality for the `90s . . . will captivate television viewers.”
-Michael H. Gerber, an executive of Viacom Enterprises, announcing the debut of ”Johnny B. . . . on the Loose,” which began June 24
”We respect and understand John`s decision to discontinue the show.”
-Viacom`s official statement announcing the cancellation of ”Johnny B. . . . on the Loose,” which folded July 26
”(I) take the blame for everything. Had it worked, we`d all be geniuses. It definitely didn`t work.”
-Jonathon Brandmeier, July 26
The timing probably wasn`t great for the birth of a new TV show. The night in January that Jonathon Brandmeier`s show got the green light, bombs starting dropping on Baghdad.
Six months later, when the show hit the air, a bomb dropped on Chicago and 113 other markets.
What happened?
Remember back in April 1989 when Brandon Tartikoff, then head of NBC Entertainment, and independent producer Fred Silverman, a former programming wizard at the three major networks, came to Chicago to lay a sweet deal on Brandmeier? He would be the next Letterman, only better.
Better, because he`d do some acting and host specials and have his own show.
That`s where the first of many, many, many problems came in. Brandmeier, one of the city`s most popular radio personalities, says all he ever wanted was a 13-week local TV show. That`s all his deal called for. At that point, he`d only been on TV a total of seven times. A local show would give him a chance to develop slowly.
But last January, after a Brandmeier pilot-a single show ostensibly representative of what he`d do with a series-drew a positive response at the National Association of Television Programming Executives convention in New Orleans, NBC, Silverman and Viacom Enterprises pressured him into doing a half-hour national show, five days a week, beginning in six months.
”I didn`t want to do it,” says Brandmeier. ”And my gut is always right. But they made the big pitch. They said I`d have plenty of time to grow. They said I`d have the summer to play with it. We were going to take August off, regroup, and then come back in the fall, ready to go.”
So he said yes.
Some highlights
Brandmeier says he always had the option of doing a standard talk show
(”You do a monologue. You sit at the desk. You interview three guests and you go home.”), but that never appealed to him.
”Why bother when you have people who are very, very good at it:
Letterman, Carson, Arsenio, Leno? Why go out in that mess? So if we were going to do a show, we wanted to fool around.”
Fooling around meant putting his WLUP radio show on TV. Brandmeier came up with a format that was part ”Gong Show,” part ”Candid Camera” and a lot of recycled radio bits. Lots of remotes, taped segments, mini-cams, microwave links, satellites.
” `To use and abuse technology`-that was Johnny`s favorite expression,” says Bruce McKay, the show`s producer, who was formerly with ”The Late Show Starring Joan Rivers.”
”I did a lot of stuff I wanted to see on TV: weird, stupid stuff,” says Brandmeier.
In case you didn`t catch it-and few people did-here`s some of what you missed:
Shots of people with fish hanging out of their mouths and cigarettes coming out of their noses. A man eating hot dogs by shoving them whole into his mouth. Brandmeier belching in a woman`s face. A song about a lesbian mother. People making noises. A lengthy discussion of a bird falling into a vat of toothpaste. An inaudible telephone interview with a priest. A woman dressed like a fairy singing about sausages. A terrified woman going through a car wash, strapped to a car. A man slithering across a street. Two men kneeing each other in the groin. Excrutiatingly unfunny comedians trying to do their act while dangling from cables above the audience. Men having their backs shaved. And Brandmeier trying to find an Oriental chef to cook a dog.
That`s right. Cook a dog.
As every TV critic in America who reviewed the show pointed out, none of this was funny.
”That show was Johnny`s vision,” says a show insider. ”If it failed, it was his fault. He wouldn`t take any direction.” Brandmeier and Mark Wilhelms, vice president of Brandmeier Productions and the show`s supervising producer, ”were going to do damn well what they wanted to do. There were times we`d be standing there cringing, and they`d think something was hysterical.”
Not enough time
Brandmeier says a lot of the show`s problems were caused by a lack of time. He says he didn`t begin working on it until June, after finishing a concert tour, and he was constantly under the gun to produce. There was no chance to get ahead. He could barely keep up, despite working 20-hour days.
”On the Joan Rivers show,” says McKay, ”we had three months of preproduction, and we all knew what the show would be. It was basically what Joan was doing when she guest-hosted the Carson show. Here, we had four weeks, and this was a very ambitous project from the beginning, and it just kept getting bigger and bigger and more ambitous. By the time we got on the air, everyone was close to being burned out.”
”(Comedian) Dennis Miller will have 2 1/2 months to get his show ready,” says Wilhelms. ”David Letterman did a morning show for a year. Arsenio Hall had a season at Fox doing the `Late Show,` filling in.”
Brandmeier says he had barely a month.
”The first week, I realized this is not fun,” says Brandmeier. ”As I look back, there was not one day when I said, `This is a good day.` In radio, no matter how tired I get, or what happens in my life, whatever stress I`m under, I always have a good time. We did 25 shows over five weeks, and I felt like I was getting beaten up from all sides.”
Brandmeier looked awkward on the air, and even the most basic things seemed beyond him. Just saying, ”Hello, my name is Jonathon Brandmeier” was a chore.
”He never really got totally comfortable, and it showed,” says McKay.
”There is a real unlikability to Johnny that comes across on television,” says the show insider. ”It became uncomfortable to watch. Once the audience doesn`t like you, they never forgive you for the little bloopers that happen on the set. And here, if a bit wasn`t going well, Johnny would become angry and you`d see it in his face. He couldn`t recover from the bumps.”
”I`m the worst at hiding my feelings,” says Brandmeier.
Another of the show`s built-in problems was the number of participants:
There was Silverman, NBC, Viacom and Brandmeier, the executive producer, who, although he had the least amount of TV experience, had final control.
Was that smart?
”In retrospect, probably not,” says McKay.
”There were way too many people involved,” says Brandmeier. ”And none of them knew me and what I can do on television. Not only was I trying to produce the show, but I was constantly defending myself against everyone. Everyone had their hands on it. It`s not the way I work. This was a constant battle.”
Coming on too strong
Yet, despite all the problems and the low ratings, Brandmeier believes the show could have survived if it had been given more time. ”All in the Family,” he points out, took 26 weeks to catch on. It was a year for ”The Dick Van Dyke Show.”
”When I came to WLUP, I lost half of their entire audience. It takes time. What they did here was just shove me down America`s throat. The public didn`t know who I was. How could the country be ready to see me send someone into a car wash or try to cook a dog in a Vietnamese restaurant, when they don`t know me?
”We came on too strong, way too strong. This show should be a once-a-week special on Saturday night. When they said they were going to put it on at 6:30, I thought, `They`re out of their minds.` I always believed this should be a late-night show. But they had it coming right in your face, 6:30, five days a week.” (After two weeks at 6:30 p.m., the show was moved to 12:30 a.m.)
After its disappointing first week, cancellation was inevitable, although Brandmeier was offered the option of moving the show to Los Angeles and doing a basic talk show.
”But that was never a real option to me. I have a radio job in Chicago. I said to them: `I feel tired and I never get tired. It`s not worth it.` ”
Instead, they just pulled the plug.
Brandmeier has no more options, contracts, promises or agreements with any of the parties. They`ve all packed their bags and headed west. They`re off to new projects and new deals. They`ve walked away from this one like an unpleasant odor.
Tartikoff is now head of Paramount Pictures and refuses to discuss the show, after having told a media writer he had nothing to do with it. The people at Viacom say they`ll stick with their official statement. Silverman is on vacation in Europe and, according to his office, he disassociated himself from the show ”a long time ago.”
Of course it`s a lot harder for Brandmeier to just walk away. No one knows yet what fallout there will be on his WLUP radio show. Rick Dees went from No. 1 disc jockey in Los Angeles to No. 6 while his low-rated, late-night talk and entertainment TV show ”Into the Night” limped along on ABC.
Brandmeier`s TV show was so short-lived, the damage to his radio show
”would be very, very minimal,” says Steve Butler, editor of the trade publication Inside Radio. ”But if I were a program director, I`d be concerned about my morning talent failing at anything so publicly.”
”Radio, like TV, is an image-driven business,” says Jeff Borden, who covers media for Crain`s Chicago Business, ”and John has had a very public flop. I think that opens the door for competitors to exploit. His audience was getting upset with him.”
”This is probably one of the wierdest experiences of my life,” says Brandmeier. ”The last six months are all a blur to me. But I`m so happy, so thrilled that I did this. Nobody will believe it now, I know, but I`ve learned a lot of things about what I want to do and don`t want to do.
”One night I was laying in bed and I looked at Lisa, my wife, and I said: `Is there something wrong with me? I`m amused at all this. Why is this making me laugh?` She said, `Because you`re a sick person.` But I know I`ll use it in my next excellent adventure.”
One of the more unpleasant parts of the show, according to Brandmeier, was the sheer viciousness of the media, especially in Chicago.
”Brandmeier-bashing,” he says, ”the new sport of the summer of `91.”
