Networks feed off of celebrity scandal

Networks have long been ushering reality show castoffs onto morning shows and otherwise deploying news divisions to promote in-house product, but on Wednesday night, in the heat of the May sweeps, some kind of dam seemed to burst. ABC, in a twist on the typical embrace, used its news division to go after the hottest property in Fox’s entertainment division, airing a so-puffed-up-it-was-hilarious expose of the alleged affair between “American Idol” judge Paula Abdul and ex-contestant Corey Clark.

Viacom-owned CBS, meanwhile, sucked up an hour of prime time to do some corporate cleaning: Dr. Phil, host of the Viacom-owned “Dr. Phil,” conducted a post-sex scandal, post-rehab interview with Pat O’Brien, the host of the Viacom-owned syndicated entertainment show “The Insider.” With synergy like this, it was easy to miss the fact that “Dateline: NBC” aired a special on out-of-this-realm survival stories (“a baby caught in a tornado”), evoking the drama that followed at 9, “Revelations.”

“Fallen Idol,” the name of ABC’s “Primetime Live” special, aired after it was revealed that current “American Idol” contestant Scott Savol had been voted out of the final competition. The departure of Savol added to a general sense that “American Idol” is in the throes of a putsch, cleansing itself of recent scandal and tumult. Savol, who sings off-key, was voted out before he could become the show’s first antihero, his candidacy the subject of a subversive Internet site, www.votefortheworst.com, that was hoping to carry him to victory.

So Savol the fallen Fox idol ended up setting the table for “Fallen Idol,” the ABC special. After drumming up much speculation about what they had on the Fox show, the ABC special revealed that it only had what everyone figured they had -- an interview with an ex-contestant, Clark, who is selling a record and writing what ABC News termed a “memoir” (you know, like Kissinger), alleging an affair with Abdul.

Granted, if the charges are true, Abdul will probably lose her job. But the “Primetime Live” hour itself was a joke, featuring co-anchor John Quinones in casual chic, prowling the L.A. night like a Raymond Chandler detective, or maybe just somebody who’d been abandoned by Snoop Dogg’s posse three clubs ago and now can’t find his car.

This was an L.A. story, complete with receipts for clothes Abdul purportedly bought Clark at Fred Segal in Santa Monica, although whether it was during one of the store’s sales I can’t say.

As it happened, ABC’s “20/20” had done an earlier piece going behind the scenes of “Idol,” for a “nice” story, so now “Primetime Live,” doing the “mean” story, had B-roll of Clark’s audition two seasons ago, in which he serenaded Abdul and kissed her hand, which “Primetime Live” kept re-showing in Zapruder--like fashion.

What the hour told, for all its ham-handedness, was a classic story of workplace sex harassment, the boss in this account being a woman and the victim an impressionable 22-year-old kid from Nashville who came to Hollywood with a dream and ended up in a different kind of dream, one that involved getting Abdul’s home and cellphone numbers on a scrap of paper, followed by late nights at Chez Paula, where promises were whispered into his ear in the hills above the glitz factory. He ends up with a broken heart, while the other contestants feel wronged when they learn -- courtesy of “Primetime Live” -- about the favoritism occurring under their noses.

As Hollywood cliche, the Abdul-Clark story used to end with the kid back in Nashville, or maybe bagging groceries in a Vons on Fountain. “Hey, aren’t you Corey Clark?” a shopper would ask, and Clark, not wanting to go back there, would mumble that he wasn’t.

But nowadays there are no standards of fame, there is just fame, however it’s gotten. And so Clark (and no doubt the people behind him) put together their own little media campaign. Clark said it wasn’t about publicity for a record deal or a book contract. “I want to set the record straight for myself,” is how he put it.

Pat O’Brien said it differently. He said: “I think it’s time to tell my side of the story.”

O’Brien’s story, wrapped in the tough love of Dr. Phil, pre-empted the CBS newsmagazine “60 Minutes Wednesday,” probably after a spirited game of rock-paper-scissors among the “60 Minutes” correspondents failed to resolve who would take on the O’Brien interview. Either that or the show’s producers successfully argued that the “60 Minutes” brand wasn’t worth selling out for a celebrity as marginal as O’Brien, who with Dr. Phil revealed that he’d been drinking copiously for years but had “never missed an hour of work, never missed a call, never missed an interview.”

All of which threw into question just how focused you have to be when chatting with Ashton Kutcher on a red carpet.

If O’Brien has been on TV for decades, the Internet is what finally made him a star -- or more specifically, the fact that people at work get e-mailed funny things, which they then pass on to other people who are at work surfing the Net for funny things. In O’Brien’s case, it was lascivious voicemails he left on a woman’s cellphone one drunken evening in New York. Now here he was, fresh out of rehab and seated opposite Dr. Phil for his re-integration into show business, the interview taking place in a living room before a roaring fire, O’Brien sitting stock still and looking miserable as Dr. Phil spent half an hour on his transgressions, most of which seemed to involve drinking and dialing.

But there they were, two Viacom men, sitting on Viacom furniture and having a Viacom-sanctioned chat about the code of behavior in a Viacom-owned world.

As the special stretched into a full hour, we achieved maximum absurdity. O’Brien was seen returning to the set and addressing the troops at “The Insider,” where staffers could now continue to do what publicists told them to do, but with their leader rested and refreshed.

The loving, sensitive father -- that’s Pat O’Brien, Dr. Phil said, after he seemed satisfied that O’Brien wouldn’t drink and dial again. “This is not Pat O’Brien. And out of the people in this world who know that, put me at the top of that list.”

“Thank you, Phil,” O’Brien said.