The Awful Truth on Bravo

Mike's Letter

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May 31st, 2000 12:00 AM

Dear friends,

Just a quick reminder that "The Awful Truth" is on tonight. We expose what happened to all the seedy sex that used to be in Times Square -- it went to the Mayor's mansion! Whoa! Send the kids to bed early and don't wake the

censors at the network!!

Also, our good friend Karen Duffy is back as she takes a group of kung fu-fighting senior citizens to a nursing home that has been abusing its clients. They won't know what hit them after tonight!

Our "theme night" on the show this evening is based on an incident that happened in New York last summer when a man passed away while riding the subway -- and he rode the train for another 5 hours, dead, before anyone inquired about his well-being. So we thought, is it just us Americans who are insensitive to our neighbors, or is it like this in other countries? So, tonight on the show, we plant a "dead" guy on the streets of Toronto, London, and NYC to see which nation will stop to help the deceased first.

"The Awful Truth" is on Bravo TONIGHT (Wednesday) at:
10pm and 1am ET
9pm and Midnight CT
8pm and 11pm MT
7pm and 10pm PT

To those of you who can't get Bravo because your conglomerate cable company would rather carry the Game Show Network, or it wants to charge you extra for its "digital" service, let me tell you a little story.

Last year, Bravo asked me to shoot a number of promo spots for our show that would air on local cable channels. Each of them had me saying something like, "Watch 'The Awful Truth' here in Saginaw on Mid-Michigan Cable", or whatever the name was of the local cable service. I must have done 80 of these spots for cities around the country.

This year, Bravo asked me to do it again. I showed up to tape them and, to my surprise, there were less than a dozen cable system names on the list. I asked, "Where's the rest of them?"

"In the last year," they told me, "most of the cable business has been merged or bought-out, and now 4 main cable conglomerates own most of the country's cable systems."

This is always such good news to hear when one lives in a free society, to find out that the sources of information are in the hands of fewer and fewer people! In spite of this, Bravo has done well this past year. According to Variety, due to the ratings success of "The Awful Truth" and a couple of other shows on their network, 12 million more homes now have Bravo than had it last year.

But the majority of the country still can't see our show. Even though critics rave about it, and in spite of it being called the "funniest and smartest" show on TV, and regardless of our Emmy Awards and our International television awards and the fact that my parents love the show, I end up getting hundreds of letters each week from angry Americans who simply can't see the show.

But get this: 100% of the homes in Great Britain can see "The Awful Truth" because it is on FREE broadcast television. 100% of the people in Australia can watch it on their free SBS network and 100% of New Zealanders are now catching every episode, free of charge, on their TV3. Last Monday, all of Denmark was able to begin picking up "The Awful Truth", right there in prime time, on Denmark's Channel 2 -- and all they needed was a coat hanger or a piece of aluminum foil!!

I'd say call your local cable company, but this public utility -- Cable TV -- which is still supposed to be regulated by your local city councils, is just a joke now. I'm sorry to sound so disillusioned. Maybe it's because those who have seen the show this season now know our dirty little secret, the one that makes us look bad if we brag about it, but we just don't want to keep quiet any longer: this is, we feel, the best season we've ever done on TV. And it kills us that so many of you can't see it.

That's it. I'm done whining. You think you've got it bad, look at the Canadians! They can't get us at all up there!! And they're the reason why we do this in the first place!!!

Well, nevermind. People of the Cable Ruling Elite -- tune in tonight!!! All the rest of you -- STORM THE BARRICADES OF TCI CABLE!!!

Michael Moore
mmflint@aol.com
www.theawfultruth.com

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