There are a handful of political commentators/radio show hosts who tried to host TV shows on cable NEWS and failed: Jessie Ventura, Alan Keyes, Michael Savage, even Phil Donahue’s host on MSNBC was something of a failure.
Pro wrestling promoter Vince McMahon(owner of WWF/WWE) tried to twice to launch a new football league (the XFL) and failed both times.
Also in the early 90s he tried to launch a bodybuilding organization The WBF (The World Bodybuilding Federation) and failed miserably there as well.
To be fair, the primary cause of death of the second iteration of the XFL, in early 2020, was the COVID-19 pandemic. Dwayne Johnson led a group which bought the rights to the XFL last year, and plans to re-launch it next year.
And the first time he tried to launch it happened to coincide with the collapse of the first Internet Boom and the Early 2000s recession. Not the best luck on his part.
Maybe not quite appropriate in this thread if the music was actually good, but “World’s Fastest Human” Carl Lewis did some music in the late 80’s that was popular overseas:
Then, Britney Spears tried acting (IMDB 3/5/10):
John McEnroe’s talk show back in 2004. I remember him talking about it and it didn’t seem like a good idea, he was a great and entertaining tennis player and a decent commentator but really didn’t seem to have the charisma and talking skills to host his own show. I saw a bit of it and it was predictably terrible and I was amused to read later that it earned a 0.0 rating at least once. To this day I am baffled that some TV executive, presumably with some knowledge and experience in the industry, thought it would be a good idea.
I actually like 2 out of 3 of these songs. I never thought of them as great songs, but they’re fun to listen to.
I suspect “Talk Show Host” is at the top of any list of “jobs that look a lot easier than they actually are”.
Well, whaddabout this one, then? The Great Star Trek LOTR collision!
At least William Shatner recorded a catchy tune.
The late Rush Limbaugh is another person who had a failed attempt at a TV show.
Yeah, I was scanning the thread to see if that was on there. It seems like the number of failed talk-show hosts far outnumbers those who succeed.
Aaron Rodgers as host of Jeopardy. Showed the world he had the personality of a dead fish.
Yeah, Keanu’s great in his lane, and it’s a one-lane street. Outside it he’s objectively terrible.
A friend of mine is a huge fan (and possibly the only one) of Bob Dylan’s recent “crooner” phase. The thing about crooning is that it needs to be done by someone with good vocal control, like Bing Crosby. No one’s ever accused Bob of that.
As part of it, Dylan even did a whole album of songs that Ol’ Blue Eyes had made his own. Painful…
Now, Elvis Costello almost got close to that with his album with Burt Bacharach… but that turned out well. Elvis stays on this side of the “painful” line, and the material is SO good!
Maybe. Just barely. He’s no Dionne Warwick.
Bacharach seems to attract non-singers. Consider Herb Alpert, trumpeter, bandleader, and quite successful record label owner. What he was not, was a singer.
No, that would be this version:
Starts off normally then switches to NCC-1701.
I don’t think I ever saw Chevy Chase’s LNTS, but it had such terrible ratings and reviews, it was simply cancelled one day. It was actually in the newspaper’s TV listings for several days afterwards.
Around this time, one of these shows had a skit titled “U2 Gets A Late Night Talk Show.”
Rick “Don’t Call Me ‘Ricky’” Nelson attempting to break into the country genre. Unlike Pat Boone’s flirtation with metal, Ricky essentially killed his career. He had no albums on the US charts until Garden Party in '72.