The Rat’s been watching the new season of its favorite entertainment news magazine shows… E.T., Extra, The Insider, and so on… and the boys in the Rat Pack bullpen have a bone to pick with “Access Hollywood.”
It seems the show’s “all new” approach to covering the stars – the so-called “AH Nation” – is nothing more than another re-tread of an idea invented earlier this year by a different television entity….
ESPN launched its “SportsNation” concept a full two months in advance of Access Hollywood’s “revolutionary” idea.
So what’s in a name, besides the name itself? Apparently, the entire concept.
The idea behind ESPN’s SportsNation is viewer interactivity, by way of Twitter tweets, Facebook comments, old-fashioned e-mail questions, and unscientific viewer polls.
Ditto the “AHNation.”
Like their ESPN counterparts Michelle Beadle & Colin Cowherd, Access’s poofy-haired prima donna Billy Bush and the show’s female cast of Botoxed Barbies take viewer questions and comments, and incorporate them into stories of the celebs.
Even the anchor desks and sets are similar. Although the Big Cheese has to say the Access desk looks more like a faux marble 1980s hotel bathroom vanity than a high-tech 21st Century TV set.
After a cursory examination of the “new” Access Hollywood, the Rat Pack has to wonder if executive producer Rob Silverstein’s fist name isn’t short for “Robber,” since he seems to have robbed a number of existing shows of their creative ideas and somehow claimed them for his own.
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