What do you do when your guest host gets booed by 80% of the audience?
The WWE is continuing to try to insert themselves in the talk show circuit (see WWE + Talk Show = Raw), by booking celebrities as guest hosts on their live Monday Night Raw program. If you’re a celebrity with something to plug, you’re in. The guest host usually does some kind of schtick, and the WWE bends over backwards and kisses their ass. WWE “Creative” writes the whole show around them and sets up some matches that the guest host pretends to book on the fly. Since the host is expected to be well liked, the WWE gets more viewers and the celeb gets to plug their wares to a different type of audience.
Except this week.
This week’s guest host was the Reverend Al Sharpton. Reverend Al was there as part of his tour to promote literacy among minorities. Noble cause, sounds good so far.
But Raw was broadcast live this week from Albany, NY, and apparently Albany doesn’t really like Sharpton. Not even a little bit. And did I mention it was live? No chance to “sweeten” the audio to tone down the chorus of boos. Just have to run with it I guess.
Jeremy Piven was the only other guest host I can think of that was booed, but only after he turned “heel” during the program. That was planned, and the crowd reacted as planned.
For a typical talk show, the audience gets in for free, provided that they win the ticket lottery or get in line for standby tickets. They are mainly there to see the host.
The WWE fans paid money to see wrestling. Considering that in the first hour and 14 minutes of the program there were only two wrestling matches, they had a lot to be angry about besides Sharpton.
I saw the booing incident on a clip of the live program. I’m not a big fan of the Rev. Al, but I feel the booing was in poor taste.