TBS to try vaudeville...no kidding

Memo to TBS: vaudeville is dead. Apparently, the folks at Turner never got that news flash. TBS has greenlighted a vaudeville pilot to be hosted by Harland Williams. The half-hour installments -- should it get picked up -- would be a late-night entry.

That means you'd have to be up late and probably pretty bored with infomercials to not surf away from the jugglers, puppets, plate spinners, gymnasts and other novelty acts likely on the program.

TBS is serious about this concept, tentatively called The TBS Comedy Roadshow, and if they emphasize the comedy aspect, maybe it'll find a niche. But the term vaudeville makes me very wary.

Vaudeville is not unlike the musical variety genre that Rosie Live pretty much destroyed about a week ago. Remember how she included the tap dancing brothers and the anti-gravity act? How about that hilarious "Little Sally" sketch in front of the curtain? That, my friends, was a vaudeville bit and it was bad. No, let me correct that. It was b-a-a-a-a-a-d.

So, when TBS puts together this "celebration of what's funny in America," please remember Rosie Live and go in the other direction. And stop calling it vaudeville because that just brings up images of baggy pants comics doing pratfalls, lame magic acts and Ed Sullivan, who was great at introducing the acts and knew better than Rosie not to try and sing with the stars. Vaudeville is dead and unless you're as good as Ned on Pushing Daisies at reanimation, let it remain dead.