Late Show News
September 17, 1996

Issue 125: Rosie gets pranked

1-800-U-FAT-PIG

If the most awkward talk-show event of 1994 was David Letterman's interview of Madonna, and 1995's was the "lesbian kiss" appearance of Howard Stern on The Tonight Show with a peeved Jay Leno, then the most awkward talk-show event of 1996 -- with the possible exception of every broadcast of Caryl & Marilyn: Real Friends -- probably belongs to The Rosie O'Donnell Show broadcast that aired last Tuesday.

On Monday, Mayor Ed Rendell of Philadelphia was in the audience, part of an hourlong celebration of the show's upgrade to 11 a.m. on that city's WPVI-TV (where it had formerly been in the middle of the night). The next day, as O'Donnell opened the show, she was informed that she had a caller: Mayor Rendell phoning in from Philly, apparently with some subsequent good wishes. What happened next was heard only by affiliates with a live (10 a.m. Eastern) feed of the program; everyone else heard a hastily-done edited version, wherein the caller's comments were bleeped entirely and a small box at the bottom covered up the original chyron ("On the Phone: ED RENDELL") with the words "CRANK CALL." Here's what was said:

ROSIE: Okay, who's on the phone, hello phone person?
CALLER: (Mr. Suave voice) Hellooo. Rosie, this is Mayor Rendell.
ROSIE: Mayor Rendell from Philadelphia?
CALLER: Yes. (drops Suave) Howard Stern says you're a fat pig, you know that?
ROSIE: Who did what?
CALLER: Howard Stern says you're a fat pig.
ROSIE: Oh. (adopts fake-bubbly manner) Really interesting. Thanks for calling!
CALLER: You're welcome, you fat pig!

The prank caller, Tim Cipriano of Jersey City, N.J., is better known to regular listeners of Howard Stern's syndicated morning radio program as "Captain Janks, the King of Pranks." I'm not sure if Janks is the one who got through during CNN's live coverage of the 1994 L.A. earthquake, but we do know he's the guy who got onto Larry King's show and asked him, "Why can't you stay married?" (To which a momentarily stunned King replied, "I don't know.")

To say O'Donnell was wounded by Janks's call is putting it mildly. Audible gasps could be heard from the Rosie audience from the moment the prank began (possibly because it had not yet registered with some audience members that the person calling their beloved Rosie a fat pig was not the mayor of Philadelphia). And although O'Donnell gamely attempted a recovery, her jokes fell flat. The show was still reeling from Janks's punch when it went to a first commercial, although it did seem to have recovered after the break. An audience member called Stern's radio show the next morning to report that during the time out, O'Donnell had gone off on executive producer Daniel Kellison, who had ultimate responsibility for putting the call through. And apparently someone in the O'Donnell organization was upset enough to get the police to issue a non-traffic citation to Janks, which he read over the air to Stern the following day ("intent to cause public inconvenience" was one of the charges).

Though the incident raised questions inside the Rosie organization about who authorizes content to go over the air, it also raised questions about Howard Stern's less-than-glorious habit of encouraging his listeners to prank the media and, while they're at it, invoke his name during the prank.

I'm actually of two minds about this practice. I am no fan of TV's obsession with reporting "breaking news," and find the prank calls a welcome subversive commentary on the desperation of TV news departments to fill its airtime with something, anything remotely resembling substance. News competition, especially on the local level, has gotten so intense that when an event is unfolding, stations not only scramble to be the first on the air with the story, they then compete to see which will be the last station to resume its regular programming. A game of chicken ensues, as stations try to pad the minutes when absolutely nothing is happening, in the dim hope of being the first to report a breaking development -- even if that report is a rumor, a hint of things to come, or an impromptu interview with an authority on the scene who turns out to have nothing of importance to say.

On the night that TWA Flight 800 went down, all of the New York stations broke in with special reports, and coverage continued for several minutes before returning to prime-time programs. Later, NBC 4 broke in again, with what it thought was an exclusive: a telephone interview with a Coast Guard official claiming to have information on the downed airliner. Of course, it was a Stern listener, and while one could definitely feel Chuck Scarborough's pain as he realized, on camera, he'd been hoodwinked, it is still a valid question whether we would be better informed by an actual Coast Guard official on that phone line. You didn't have to be a news director to know that little solid information would be available from the wreck until much later -- even a passenger list takes time to compile. But all reason seems to go out the window at NBC 4 and other stations when an "exclusive" is on the line.

As Ted Koppel has noted, "live team coverage" creates an atmosphere that encourages speculation and rumor-mongering. It can even infect the supposedly more refined reporting process, as when Tom Brokaw foolishly disclosed to Bob Costas during NBC's Olympic broadcast that the FBI was certainly going to arrest Richard Jewell in connection with the Centennial Park bombing, and that they were delaying only because they wanted to collect enough evidence to make their case airtight. Former Labor Secretary Raymond Donovan had to resign his office after corruption charges were brought against him, charges amplified (but not invented) in the media. Later, when he was acquitted of all charges, Donovan famously asked where he should go to get his reputation back. Should Richard Jewell ever have a similar need, at least he knows where to start -- and if he has trouble getting through to Tom, perhaps Captain Janks could give him some pointers.

But it's another matter entirely when pranking turns personal. Stern keeps a small universe of feuds in orbit, with celebrities ranging from O'Donnell and Larry King to former pal Jerry Seinfeld. And he's not above allowing Janks to extend the troublemaking beyond the boundaries of his program, so long as the obligatory Howard Stern mention is made. But Larry isn't Johnny; he doesn't enjoy discussing his multiple marriages on the air, and it shows. And while Rosie certainly doesn't hide the fact that she's large, and makes the occasional amusing reference to stores that carry clothing in her size, the gratuitous insult rained down on her by Janks seemed unusually harsh and a little misogynistic. All with the approval of Howard, who carries on his worthless vendettas because, after all, he's got four hours a day to kill. (I notice that E! conspicuously excises nearly all references to Howard's feuds from its half-hour condensed version of his radio show.)

Unfortunately, I can't think of a cure for gooberheads like Janks that isn't worse than the irritations they cause. (Other than, of course, better call screening: the Rosie staff did have Janks's phone number, and one wonders why a red flag didn't go up when he gave it, since the area code was for New Jersey, not downtown Philadelphia.) The best that can be hoped for, perhaps, is a public outpouring of support and sympathy for Stern's victims, like the kind that enveloped Rosie immediately after taping on Tuesday's show ended. As she reported the next day on her broadcast, the waiter at the restaurant where she took her family that night informed her that dinner was on him, and a New York sanitation worker named Vinny stopped his truck and yelled at her, "Hey, Rosie! Yo' beautiful!" Not to mention the hundreds of calls and telegrams that flooded in during the day, according to Rosie publicist Marc Liepis. All of which established that, in the public's eye at least, Rosie O'Donnell is not a fat pig, just as Howard Stern is not fat.

Entire contents Copyright © 1996 by Aaron Barnhart. All rights reserved.