{"id":4988,"date":"2009-12-20T14:56:00","date_gmt":"2009-12-20T14:56:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/?p=4988"},"modified":"2018-11-29T05:11:19","modified_gmt":"2018-11-29T11:11:19","slug":"book-report-tv-babylon-by-jeff-rovin-1984","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/2009\/12\/20\/book-report-tv-babylon-by-jeff-rovin-1984\/","title":{"rendered":"Book Report: TV Babylon by Jeff Rovin (1984)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Consider this book to be the antidote to the little elementary school books about 1980s television stars that I&#8217;ve read before (<a href=\"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/2009\/09\/16\/book-report-tv-superstars-82-by-ronald-w-lackmann-1982\/\" target=\"_blank\"><em>TV Superstars &#8217;82<\/em><\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/2005\/09\/16\/book-report-tv-superstars-83-by-ronald-w-lackmann-1983\/\" target=\"_blank\"><em>TV Superstars &#8217;83<\/em><\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/2009\/08\/12\/book-report-tv-close-ups-by-peggy-herz-1974\/\" target=\"_blank\"><em>TV Close-ups<\/em><\/a>).  In it, the author recounts suicides, crimes, breakdowns, scandals, and all sorts of shenanigans that take place in Hollywood to television stars.<\/p>\n<p>Oddly enough, the book covers some of the same stars as the books mentioned above, including Freddie Prinze, John Schneider, Tom Wopat, and Gary Burghoff.<\/p>\n<p>So it&#8217;s a bit of a quick tabloid read that&#8217;s only relevant if you were alive and sentient prior to the publication date.  You might learn something or learn some stories you weren&#8217;t familiar with before, such as the Jack Paar\/Johnny Carson spat and who Ernie Kovacs was.  However, you probably won&#8217;t come out of it like Tobey Maguire&#8217;s character from <a href=\"http:\/\/www.imdb.com\/title\/tt0185014\/\" target=\"_blank\"><em>Wonder Boys<\/em><\/a>.  Mostly because James Leer dealt with movie stars.<\/p>\n<p><center><b>Books mentioned in this review:<\/b><\/p>\n<p><iframe src=\"http:\/\/rcm.amazon.com\/e\/cm?lt1=_blank&amp;bc1=FFFFFF&amp;IS2=1&amp;bg1=FFFFFF&amp;fc1=000000&amp;lc1=0000FF&amp;t=stlbrianj-20&amp;o=1&amp;p=8&amp;l=as1&amp;m=amazon&amp;f=ifr&amp;asins=0451166337\" style=\"width: 120px; height: 240px;\" marginwidth=\"0\" marginheight=\"0\" frameborder=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><\/center><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Consider this book to be the antidote to the little elementary school books about 1980s television stars that I&#8217;ve read before (TV Superstars &#8217;82, TV Superstars &#8217;83, TV Close-ups). In it, the author recounts suicides, crimes, breakdowns, scandals, and all sorts of shenanigans that take place in Hollywood to television stars. Oddly enough, the book [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3334,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20,11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4988","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-book-report","category-books"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4988","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3334"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4988"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4988\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23916,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4988\/revisions\/23916"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4988"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4988"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4988"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}