Compelling TV

The Sundance Cable Network is going to broadcast the "highlights" of the "Al Franken Show".

Radio. On TV.

Who knew?

Starting Sept. 7, Sundance will package the best of Franken's three-hour weekday radio program into a one-hour telecast of highlights that will air at 11:30 p.m. the same night, with repeats at 2:30 a.m. and 7 a.m. the next morning.

It's a sign that there are officially too many cable networks, certainly.

Of course Howard Stern has been doing basically the same thing, rebroadcasting a quick-cut video of footage from his (very gussied-up) studio on the "E" network for years, now. The difference is that Hoard Stern does an interesting radio show; not everyone's cup of goo, to be sure, but interesting to listen to and watch just to see how Stern does it.

Franken, on the other hand? His program is audibly labored, and deadly dull, and yet parallels Stern in many ways; he merely subsitutes the cynical for the salacious, the trite for the tasteless.

Worst of all; while the Stern TV show offers strippers and other assorted eye candy to draw attention for the cartoonish, Joey-Ramone-on-HGH presence of Stern, what will take our attention away from the visage of Franken stuffing his face, or Kathryn Lanpher's booze-puffed mug?