January 22nd, 2010
Golden parachutes on steroids
General Electric today announced that it had applied for Obama government bailout funding, citing extraordinary unexpected financial difficulties. Sources say that their difficulties all stem from its NBC division having to pay Conan O’Brien and his staff $45 million to not show up to work. It had been rumored that NBC might easily qualify for bailout funding, stimulus funding, or some kind of earmark funding which could come out of a special bucket for companies adept at sucking-up to the Administration.
But the Obama bailout czar suggested that the well is dry, and that GE should just put O’Brien to work mopping office floors, cleaning toilets, and restocking shelves at 11:35 pm every night. “Put a couple cameras on him, and just call it the Tonight Show with Conan O’Brien.” He proposed that they keep his staff busy dusting furniture, emptying garbage, spraying pest control, and washing windows all night…cancel the cleaning crew.
It is possible that the O’Brien camp might consider that option, considering the difficulty he may find trying to land another show with another network. Television experts say that there is already a plethora of pathetic unfunny nitwits in the Telesphere, hardly room for one more… let alone a guy who just got fired from a job in 7 months, from a show whose average tenure of predecessors was 25 years. “He could always change his shtick to drama: maybe Conan MD, Hairmeister NYPD, or Desperate Talk Show hosts.
The GE spokesman said he was disappointed in being turned down for bailout money, and that the company would need to seek alternate financial help. He remarked that the Conan payoff was just a small piece of their difficulties. “About 50 NBC executives will need to get the boot after this fiasco, with untold golden parachute costs. Then there are the rehiring costs of a whole new team of execu-bozos who will need to doll up their offices, stock up their mini-refrigerators, and load up on gold-plated staplers and business card holders. Yeah, it’s more than just Conan.”
Disclaimer: all stories in Bizarreville are fiction, even the ones that sound like they could be real.
