Recently, I’ve been staying up at nights playing guitar, and I leave the TV on for company, so I’ve caught several episodes of “Entertainment Tonight.” Why are genuine celebrities willing to appear on “ET,” but not on similar shows like “Extra” and the one with Deborah Norville (I forgot the name of the show), or in the past on shows like “A Current Affair” and “Hard Copy”? Both “ET” and the other shows have a tabloidy feel (although “ET” admittedly less so), but “ET” seems to be far more respected. Why is this so?
For what it’s worth it set the “standard” for shows of that ilk. Every half-hour entertainment news show since ET has basically been an imitation.
“Entertainment Tonight” is considered respectable?
White Lightning beat me to it.
I believe Entertainment Tonight is owned by Paramount, so if you are in a Paramount movie, you are probably required to plug it on that show.
It is not the reporting of ET that is respectable, but the fact that they often get trailers and previews of major movies first.
Entertainment Tonight does a lot more sappy puff pieces and a lot less trashy exposés in which many interviewees are former assistants or neighbours of celebs, with plenty of nasty stories about them (a la Hard Copy). ET hardly ever uses the images of celebs without their consent, so most of them humour those androids acting as hosts. But respectable? Get real. No more than, say, getting 50 thou to strut down a catwalk or 20 mil for one movie.
I wouldn’t call it respectable, but it is very fawning in its coverage of who is popular at the moment, more so than the other shows in the OP.
But it’s not as bad as the 30-minute ass-kissing session called Access Hollywood. Many of these shows are commericals pretending to “entertainment news” anyway, but AW should be considered an infomercial. The press junket interviews and hype overdoses on this show make Larry King look like a serious journalist by comparison.
Yeah, I never considered it respectable either, but I was amazed at how many celebrities appeared on the show–I think Drew Barrymore, Lucy Liu, Cameron Diaz, and Catherine Zeta-Jones were on last night. I like your explanations though.
On our local station, ET comes on at 7:30, right after the network news. Occasionally, when it comes on and no one is nearby, it gets left on. When that happens, I can feel brain cells dying…