Yesterday, I talked about how television loves a good natural disaster, but, really, it’s not all of television, just the news folks. There are other TV groups that are really not so fond of inclement weather.
For one thing, programs that film in the impacted areas—including one of my personal favorites, Person of Interest—get their film permits taken away from them. One would hope that they’d have sense enough not to be out and about on the streets in such conditions, anyway, but I guess the people in charge of such things figure there’s no need to take chances.
But then you’ve got shows like Late Show with David Letterman. Live programs that film five days a week in front of a studio audience. But what do you do when the studio audience can’t (safely) get to you? Well, if you’re Letterman, you do the show anyway. For the past two days, Dave has put on his show in front of an empty studio, produced with just a small fraction of the normal complement of crew. Sure, the monologues seemed a little flat, and the top ten list had to be done without any fancy graphic overlay, but he still managed to put on a few guests (Denzel Washington on Monday, Ken Burns and Jim Cantore Tuesday) and keep things rolling along.
Plus, Letterman is a likeable guy, almost always entertaining and worth watching. And most of all, I sort of liked the idea of seeing him out there, doing his small part to keep things normal, even in the midst of a once in a lifetime storm.
