The Awful Truth vs. Sabrina the Teenage Witch

Mike's Letter

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October 6th, 2000 12:00 AM

The Awful Truth vs. Sabrina the Teenage Witch

Dear friends,

Beginning tonight, if you missed any of the uncensored episodes of this season's "The Awful Truth," here's your chance to catch them again.

Deemed by critics as "the smartest, meanest, and funniest show on television" [L.A. Times], our award-winning season starts again this evening (Friday, Oct. 6) for an encore run at 8pm and 11pm ET, 7pm and 10pm CT, 6pm and 9pm MT, and 5pm and 8pm PT on the cable channel we like to call Bravo.

I know there is a lot of TV to watch these days, what with the new fall shows and such. Not to mention all the time you're devoting trying to figure out who should run the country after November. And, hey, it's Friday night for cryin' out loud!

All I'm asking is that you not miss a single episode of this groundbreaking show. Seriously, not only is there nothing like "The Awful Truth" on TV, there's nothing like it anywhere, period (a sad but awfully true statement).

For all intents and purposes, this series shouldn't even exist. How we got a pimp to literally walk the halls of Congress interviewing the "ho's" we call Senators, or a cheerleading squad into a George Bush-approved Texas death row execution, or a ficus plant running for Congress in over 40 Congressional districts still freaks me out a bit. Someone should have called a halt to our antics by now. Maybe they already have! The network is not returning my calls!! This could be the end of us! WHY ELSE WOULD WE BE RELEGATED TO THE SAME NIGHT AS SABRINA,THE TEENAGE WITCH!!!

Folks, don't let this stop you. Call a friend, harass an enemy, tell your mother you are not going out tonight to some stupid bar full of desperate account executives - stay home and check out this little piece of subversion we have been able to get on a national cable network in the hopes of rocking the boat in a big, bad way.

Think about it. What other show this year was the subject of scorn on the nationally-televised Republican Presidential Debate in New Hampshire, wherein candidates Bush, Forbes, and Keyes railed against the Awful Truth Mosh Pit that Keyes threw himself into? (See THAT on tonight's show!)

What other television program had the courage to take a big, 7-foot, walking-talking handgun into the national headquarters of the Nation Rifle Association?

What other show organized a group of plaintiffs to file suit against Harvard and Yale for their discriminatory affirmative actions of admitting George W. Bush instead of more qualified students?

Who else had the idea to distribute Day-Glo orange wallets in Harlem after the police shot a man 41 times for holding a black wallet (in a Black hand)?

And what other series on TV would risk being kicked off the air by running a salute to "that bastard Jack Welch" - the chairman of GE, the company which just happens to own 25% of the network we are on!

Only "The Awful Truth."

OK, so we obviously think highly of our show. Since our first days as "TV Nation" on NBC back in the mid-90s, we have not had this much fun, created this much controversy, and felt this good about the work we have done.

That's why we don't want you to miss what could be our final run of "The Awful Truth."

By the 9th week this season, we had over one million visitors to our web sites. We received no fewer than 40,000 letters a record, we're sure, for any series on television. Thank you all of you for this incredible response.

If you want the show to continue, I would suggest that today would not be a bad day to send an e-mail to the good people at Bravo programming@bravotv.com and let them know how you feel. If you live in the British Isles, well, we want to go back to the BBC, the great network which launched this show in the first place. Write them at BBC, P.O. Box 1116, Belfast BT2 7AJ, or call 08 700 100 222. Tell them you miss that Moore chap on the Beeb. Canadians, Australians, Danes, Kiwis, Jordanians, Israelis, Paraguayans and Uruguayans - sit tight. Let the superpowers decide our fate!

So fire up the popcorn popper (or the VCR if you insist on going out and having a life), and enjoy episode one of the second season of "The Awful Truth" tonight on Bravo, 8pm and 11pm ET (all other time zones, do the fuzzy math).

Yours,

Michael Moore
http://www.theawfultruth.com/
http://www.michaelmoore.com/
mmflint@aol.com

P.S. People of Flint ? "The Awful Truth" has been liberated and will finally been seen in my hometown! After the local cable company refused to air our show, the local PBS station stepped in and will carry "The Awful Truth" every Sunday afternoon at 5pm, beginning this Sunday, October 8, and then rerun it every Saturday night at 10pm. It's the only place in the country where "The Awful Truth" can be aired as God intended over the free and publicly-owned airwaves! From the seven of us Flintstones who work on this show, "thank you" to WFUM-TV28 for bringing our work home to our friends, families and fellow survivors (and thanks to Bravo for giving it to them for free!).

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