Barack Obama has just signed a deal with CBS and NBC to run a half-hour ad on Wednesday, Oct. 29, less than a week before the election, and a night before the start of November sweeps. Obama will make his pitch to the entire country, rather than just to battleground states, with a chunk of prime time TV. The last time a presidential candidate bought a half-hour: Ross Perot in 1992.

"Obama's theme is not just change but unity, so he's appealing to the whole nation rather than a handful of tossup states," one political analyst told the Hollywood Reporter yesterday. "He wants to win the popular vote by a good margin, which will enable him to govern."

The Obama campaign has a few dollars to spend, which might not be the case if the senator had not opted out of the campaign financing system. The price of prime time has to be huge, but according to the New York Times, the networks and the campaign will not disclose the cost. If McCain decides to take the same path, by the way, the networks are obliged to offer him a similar time slot and the same price.

An Obamercial? Yes, and followed by laughs. CBS will move "The New Adventures of Old Christine" to 8:30 that night, and NBC will pull "Knight Rider" and fill in the 8:30 slot with a sitcom.

I'll definitely watch it, but I do hope the influence of reality TV -- so huge since the days of Ross Perot -- is not visible in the production. That would just be grotesque. Will you watch?

At first, I thought I wanted Tim Gunn to be president. But I don't think he'd like that job. So now I'm proposing that he head up a cabinet department -- a National Ministry of Making it Work. He'd be dedicated to helping us all reach our potential, by self-editing and thinking long and hard about our decisions. He'd talk us through crises. He'd cry a little bit, but we'd understand. And sometimes, if we really begged him, he'd go with us for darling tandem bike rides through urban parks.

And he'd certainly help us pick out wedding dresses, which, I know from experience, requires a team of advisers. (When I picked out mine, nine - gulp! - years ago, I first went with my mother, then with my friends. The opinions proffered were strikingly different.) I favor simplicity in bridal gowns, so I agree with the judges that Jerell's and Korto's were wayyyy too much. To paraphrase Michael Kors, you don't want too much stuff going on above, below, and around your boobs. And you definitely don't want anything growing out of your hair.

I'm having a hard time deciding whether I'd rather wear Kenley's or Leanne's. I think I might actually go with Kenley's, which looks like more fun to dance in. (Besides, it would probably give my relatives more shpilkes, which would be fun.) I love Leanne's structured dresses on an intellectual level, but I'm not sure I'd ever want to wear them. And as odious as Kenley is -- did you find it as striking as I did that she didn't introduce Tim Gunn to any of her friends? -- she seems to understand the spirit of a wedding. Or, at least, the spirit of a wedding I'd want to attend.

But does her dress look too much like the Alexander McQueen feather dress that Michael Kors was likely referring to? You be the judge. (Photo via televisioninternet.com)

"Dexter" returned to Showtime last month with an ad campaign that found our hero on the covers of many popular magazines, including Vanity Fair, Rolling Stone, The New Yorker, Esquire, and US. Or, rather, the fake covers of these magazine. The campaign was really clever and attention-getting, with mock cover lines to match each magazine -- for instance, "Dexter's 5 Signs You're Dating a Serial Killer" in US.

These tongue-in-cheek ads also matched tone of the series. Dexter Morgan is a chameleon, and he changes colors to fit in in different milieus. Seeing Dexter pop up in the realm of Wired and then GQ and then Vanity Fair was perfectly Dexter. And then, the ad campaign lifted Dexter and "Dexter" to the iconic level where, I believe, they belong.

But still: Even though the covers are marked "Advertisement" in little letters, and the logos read "Dexter" instead of "Esquire" or "DQ" instead of "GQ," the potential does exist for some people to be fooled -- not consciously, perhaps, but subconsciously, on that level where things register unexamined. I'd hate to see magazines continually lending the looks of their logos and covers to products in this way, and further blurring the lines between editorial content and ads. What if a TV show, say "Desperate Housewives," lent its signature opening credits to a soap company? That could get a little obnoxious, don't you think?

I started to worry when I saw that ABC is taking a similar approach for "Life on Mars," the time-warp cop series that premieres Thursday night. The "Life on Mars" campaign mocks up full-page, 1970s versions of magazine covers. On the back of this week's issue of TV Guide, for instance, is a what looks like a slightly dated TV Guide cover devoted to the actors from the show, with the headline "'Life on Mars' premieres years ahead of its time."

The Rolling Stone version of the "Life on Mars" ad is more obviously a joke, even though the mock-up lays directly over the real cover. The mock-up is from March 23, 1973, the caricatured faces belong to Dr. Hook and the Medicine Show, and the cover lines pertain to Alice Cooper and Evel Knievel. But still, the classic Rolling Stone logo is deployed to promote.

Not that ABC is copying Showtime -- the "Life on Mars" campaign ran in the U.K. last year, in support of the BBC version of the series. Still, the two campaigns have me wondering: Do magazines devalue their trademarks by allowing them to be appropriated?

What do you think?

Love or hate her, you can surely say this for Sarah Palin: She drives web traffic, she drives blood pressure rates, she drives interest in "Saturday Night Live," and she drives appreciation for Tina Fey -- enough, I'm hoping, that more people will tune into "30 Rock" when it premieres on October 30. The frenzy she's injected into this political season will surely be a boost for "Weekend Update Thursday," the series of election specials that will premiere this Thursday night at 9:30.

Fey, who reportedly resisted playing Palin at the start -- she told Lorne Michaels that she wasn't an impressionist -- has inhabited this part as if she were born to play it. And Palin is certainly a gift to comediennes; I can't think of anyone on the political stage who has played her own role so broadly. Does she know that what she's contributed most to this election ramp-up is a heightened sense of entertainment? (If it weren't accompanied with such rancor, from both sides, it would be something of a relief.) This week's debate sketch was probably my favorite of the "SNL" Palin sketches so far, which has a lot to do with the raw material. If the Katie Couric interviews were all about discomfort, last week's vice presidential debate was all about showmanship.

The sketch was probably a bit of national catharsis. Nearly 70 million people watched the actual debate, hoping for fireworks or major gaffes, and not getting quite enough of either. "Saturday Night Live" stripped away the facts and partisanship and reduced the debate to its raw material: personality. I think I laughed hardest when Fey-as-Palin referenced the drinking game -- "Maverick!" she said proudly into the camera, then pantomimed chugging a beer -- though I also giggled a lot when Jason Sudeikis, as Joe Biden, launched into a monologue about the awfulness of Scranton. Getting spoofed by "SNL" is a badge of honor, and Biden should be proud. But he should also know that far fewer people would have watched (and forwarded, and clicked) if he had been debating, say, Mitt Romney.

I can certainly understand why the producers of "Project Runway" are reluctant to let Kenley go. She's not the gods' gift to high fashion, but she's great for TV. And last night, I found myself actually empathizing with her. OK, not the excuse about how growing up on a tugboat made her hopelessly self-centered. But in five seasons, I've never seen someone so isolated in the workroom. As irritating as she can be to watch and listen to -- and as horrible as she's been, laughing at her fellow designers on the runway -- I still feel for anyone who's ostracized by the cool kids. And really, they weren't going to give her extra tulle? That's kind of petty, and not especially sportsmanlike.

That said, I didn't care for Kenley's flower-with-a-fish-tail evening gown (not to mention her runway backtalk), but I also didn't love Leanne's lavender-explosion dress or Korto's enormous V-neck with a ballgown train (and how did bright orange get translated to wimpy peach)? Jerell's dress was pretty, but Heidi was right: if it didn't get hiked up, pronto, the show was going to have to use some of that those privates-blurring technology that's been so prominent on "Survivor" this season.

One other general "Project Runway" gripe: I can't stand the way the contestants are forced to keep up the charade that they'll only show at Fashion Week if they're one of the final three. As any obsessive fan knows -- and how many "Runway" fans aren't obsessive? -- the final six showed collections, so as not to telegraph the last few episodes' outcome. Which means these four are terrific actors. Or really emotional people. Because those were a lot of I'll-die-if-I-don't-make-it tears.

Come and leave your TV comments and questions today, here. MG

I wanted to take a moment to add my voice to those mourning the passing of Globe columnist Alan Lupo. More vibrant than most characters you find on TV, he was always available -- and generous -- with advice, good humor and an unparallelled knowledge of Boston. In a newfangled world, he was old-school in the best of all possible ways, and he will be missed.

PBS President Paula Kerger and WGBH President Jon Abbott came to the Globe this afternoon to meet with reporters and editors. Kerger, who marked her two-year anniversary in the job in March, talked about her vision for PBS, which she sees concentrating in three areas: public affairs, children's programming, and the arts.

Kerger and Abbott also talked about the ways that PBS is putting its content onto other platforms, such as iTunes, Hulu.com, and the free students'-service iTunesU (where biographies of U.S. presidents, culled from WGBH's "American Experience" series, represent some of the top downloads, Abbott said.)

As for what's specifically coming to PBS stations? Kerger wouldn't say for sure whether "Click and Clack's As the Wrench Turns," the animated sitcom about the Boston-based NPR show "Car Talk," would get a second season, though she did note that responses were decidedly mixed and that no new episodes have been ordered. And she said there has been no decision about what PBS will do when it airs a filmed version of the stage play "King Lear," starring Ian McKellen. The controversy: the play a full-frontal nudity scene, fearing McKellen. It's unclear, at this point, what the FCC will allow and what PBS is willing to risk for the sake of art (and for the sake of buzz and audience buildup, too).

The third season of "Friday Night Lights" begins Wednesday, but PSYCH -- only if you have DirecTV. The rest of us heathens (and legally minded types) will have to wait until next February, when NBC will do the honors.

I did see a preview disc of the premiere, and it’s mostly good ol’ “FNL.” Last season, the writers strayed from their vision of everyday heroism to give us a misbegotten murder plot. But they seem to be getting back to what matters: character, the forces of despair, and the need for hope. The show is at its best when it captures the smallest challenges in people's lives, with the camerawork accentuating the realism. And the new season promises to focus in, looking at Riggins's effort to be more than a local screwup, Eric Taylor's hunger for a new star now that Smash and Jason aren't in the game, and Tyra's newfound need to find more independence and satisfaction and not be like her mother.

This season, by the way, Tami Taylor is the school principal. Talk about the fast track...

Are you going to watch "FNL" on DirecTV? Or on NBC? Or maybe some other way?

A lot of politics on this week's "SNL," and couple of alumni, too: Tina Fey reprised her role as Sarah Palin, Chris Parnell turned up as Jim Lehrer in a mock-debate sketch, and the news contained its fair share of political jokes, none of which I can remember nearly 24 hours later.

While Fey's impression of Palin remains pitch-perfect, her sketch -- a nearly point-for-point parody of Katie Couric's interview with Palin, co-starring Amy Poehler as a perplexed and irritated Couric -- wasn't as jaw-droppingly funny as the the one two weeks ago. The novelty has worn off a bit, but I think the bigger problem is that the original CBS interview was such an incredible TV artifact that it required no further elaboration. (In fact, as Andrew Sullivan points out, some of the sketch was transcribed directly from the interview.)

As for the debate sketch, it was OK, and notable for the fact that the "SNL" writers are clearly trying to stick it to Obama as much as they are to McCain. But again, unlike last spring's first Clinton-Obama debate sketch, in which one of the moderators asked Obama if he'd like a pillow, I doubt this one is going to change the national conversation. Still, I think I'm being a little harsh. I'm sure these sketches are incredibly hard to pull off, great or merely good, in just over 24 hours. The source material wasn't ripe for parody, aside from Lehrer's desperate attempts to get the two candidates to address one another. Plus, it's always nice to see Parnell. I'm looking forward to more time with Dr. Spaceman on "30 Rock."

Today, Gawker notes the diminishing viewership for many of the fall premieres, and wonders whether people are (gasp) watching the news instead. And just now, Nielsen offered some evidence that the theory might be true: Nearly 53 million people watched President Bush's address about the economic crisis on Wednesday. Granted, it was only 15 minutes long, but those numbers still put "American Idol" to shame.

Tonight, of course, is the on-again-off-again-on-again presidential debate, broadcast live from Oxford, Mississippi beginning at 9. Americans might be interested in this one, as well. And Comcast announced today that, in conjunction with WGBH, it will help its digital cable subscribers tune in without ruining their Friday night dinner plans. Tonight's debate will appear free on demand tomorrow morning, and stay up until election day. Same goes for the other two presidential debates, and next week's vice presidential debate. The hard part is remembering where to find it: under "Get Local," then "Local Networks," then "WGBH," then "Vote '08." Got it?

Love this series, which returns Sunday at 10 on Showtime, after "Dexter" (here's my review of the two shows). David Duchovny’s Hank Moody is becoming one of TV's most memorable characters. He's a brainy good-guy writer, but he's desperate to let real feelings penetrate his numb exterior. That's why the Hollywood world of weed, whites, wine, and women beckons to him so strongly. He has integrity, and he is all about the realness of his beloved Upper East Coast; but he is weakened by cynicism and hedonism and takes to Hollywood like a pig to mud.

At the end of last season, Hank got the girl, as Karen (Natascha McElhone) abandoned her wedding to another man to be with him. This season, Duchovny and McElhone accomplish the nearly impossible -- maintaining a dynamic chemistry even though they play a couple that has gotten back together again. Often, once the tension is gone, so is the acting spark. But of course, there will be challenges facing them -- Hank’s new writing project, about a rock ‘n’ roll producer, promises to throw plenty of temptation his way.

Check it out, especially if you think you'll like a take on Hollywood that makes the Hollywood of "Entourage" look like Disney World.

I mean, really. I don't think I've ever seen a "Project Runway" contestant blow off Tim Gunn as blatantly as Kenley did last night, and I don't think I've ever seen Gunn look so irritated. I was irritated on his behalf: He's America's adopted gay uncle, and he deserves our adoration and respect. For that reason alone, I wanted Kenley to be told to pack away her vintage duds, and that's before getting into the floral print and the high-waisted "hip-hop" pants. Would it hurt the woman who dresses like Betty Draper to admit that she could use a little guidance as to what hip-hop means?

I'll avoid spoilers by putting the rest of my rant after the jump...

I haven't yet gotten to last night's episode of "Fringe." I was a little too busy previewing this Sunday's "Desperate Housewives" (More about that on Saturday.) But I have a feeling I can guess exactly how it went on the show I've started thinking of as "X-Files: The Next Generation." If you watched, let me know how I did:

OPENING SCENE: A bunch of bus passengers wind up frozen, in a mysterious, scary, and vaguely gory way.

AGENT BROYLES summons OLIVIA.

AGENT BROYLES: Something mysterious, scary, and vaguely gory just happened to these frozen people on a bus. I need my special team to check it out.

OLIVIA: (Pouts, looks lovelorn and vaguely confused.) Whatever you say.

OLIVIA goes to the hotel where WALTER and PETER are staying.

OLIVIA: We need your help. Something mysterious, scary, and vaguely gory happened to some frozen people on a bus.

WALTER: How interesting! Back in the '70s, I was doing some top-secret government experiments involving mysterious, scary, and vaguely gory frozen people. Now, if I could only get my old lab at Harvard back, I could solve this problem once and for all!

PETER: Walter, you moron, you've had your lab back for three weeks now.

WALTER: Oh. Can I have a cupcake?

OLIVIA, WALTER, PETER, and that OTHER YOUNG ETHNIC AGENT go to Walter's old lab, where they examine a mysterious, scary, and vaguely gory frozen body.

WALTER: I know just the thing that will solve this mystery. It's a special piece of supersecret equipment that's only made by one firm: the Massive Dynamic Hanso Corporation.

OLIVIA: I'll go to New York right now to get it from Nina Sharp.

OLIVIA flies to New York, looking pouty and vaguely lovelorn on the plane.

NINA: Sure, you can have this piece of supersecret equipment. Just don't tell anyone. Hey, want to see my mechanical arm?

OLIVIA: No, thanks.

NINA: OK. Hey, I was just talking to your dead partner, and he told me the funniest story about your vacation to Quebec City.

OLIVIA: What?

NINA: Never mind.

OLIVIA brings the supersecret equipment to WALTER, who does something gory with it.

WALTER: Mystery solved! Can I have my cupcake now? Hey, why is there a cow in here?

PETER: Walter, you're a nut job.

Closing credits.

A few non-Wall Street numbers to help you make sense of your Tuesday:

20.7 million: Number of people who were tuned in, at peak, to Sunday night's Cowboys-Packers NFL game, according to Nielsen ratings. (The average for the night was 16.6 million)
12.2 million: Average number of people who tuned into Sunday's Emmy Awards. That was about a 6.6 percent drop from last year's viewership.

Other ratings tidbits: Last night's season premiere of "How I Met Your Mother," in which we learned Stella's answer to Ted's proposal but discovered that (gasp) there are flaws in the relationship, fared 25 percent better than last year's premiere. (And I love that Barney loves Robin, but still can't stop being Barney. Neil Patrick Harris is my hero.)

Meanwhile, the premiere of "Dancing With the Stars" -- which I am working my way through slowly, because 13 oversequinned ballroom-dance numbers are a little too much for me to handle in one evening, was down 9 percent from last fall's premiere. "Heroes," meanwhile, fell 25 percent from last year's premiere -- and rightfully so, alas, because it wasn't that good.

NBC’s ‘‘30 Rock’’ swept the comedy Emmys! (Small applause.)

AMC’s ‘‘Mad Men’’ won! (Smaller applause.)

Bryan Cranston from AMC’s ‘‘Breaking Bad’’ triumphed! (Sound of one hand clapping.)

Tonight's Emmy Awards revealed just how fractured today’s TV audiences are. Most of the major awards went to low-rated series that the average TV viewer hasn’t seen or, in some cases, hasn’t even heard of.

Along with ‘‘Mad Men’’ and Cranston, who plays a meth-dealing man with cancer, the drama winner’s circle included Glenn Close and supporting actor Zeljko Ivanek of FX’s ‘‘Damages’’ and Dianne Wiest for supporting actress in HBO’s ‘‘In Treatment,’’ a series whose entire viewership might populate one full group therapy session.

And the comedy statues — for ‘‘30 Rock,’’ for actress Tina Fey, for actor Alec Baldwin, as well as for supporting players Jeremy Piven of HBO’s ‘‘Entourage’’ and Jean Smart of ABC’s ‘‘Samantha Who?’’ — all represent pretty small potatoes in the Nielsen basket. The night seemed to belong to niche programming, with very few nods to popular hits — Fox’s ‘‘House,’’ for example, or CBS’s ‘‘Two and a Half Men.’’ Even the reality-competition prize went to a small show — CBS’s ‘‘Amazing Race’’ — as opposed to a crowd pleaser such as ‘‘American Idol’’ or ‘‘Dancing With the Stars.’’

Many of the big winners were from the cable side of TV — with ‘‘Mad Men’’ the first-ever basic cable show to win a best series prize. Not that pay cable didn’t get its due: HBO’s movies and miniseries were all the rage — ‘‘John Adams’’ took home the most Emmys for a miniseries ever (13), including actor (Paul Giamatti), actress (Laura Linney), and supporting actor (Tom Wilkinson), and HBO’s ‘‘Recount’’ won best movie. But officially very long gone are the days of network dominance, with basic cable emerging as a threat even to revered pay-cable outlets such as HBO.

As if anticipating this disconnect between the winners and the Emmy telecast viewing audience, the entertainment on the show played to the mainstream, with an emphasis on reality TV. Giving us five reality hosts was the Emmys’ not-so-swift effort to hold viewers, since these folks — Jeff Probst, Howie Mandel, Heidi Klum, Tom Bergeron, and Ryan Seacrest — preside over some of TV’s most highly rated shows, particularly ‘‘American Idol.’’ Meanwhile, the random audience shots stayed away from the lesser-known likes of ‘‘Mad Men’’ star Jon Hamm.

After an intro by Oprah Winfrey, during which she managed to defend TV by reminding us she uses the medium to sell books, the hosts came onstage. Nominees in the new reality-host category, they jovially pretended to be winging it as if they were on reality TV, as if reality TV is really about winging it, as if we care. They talked over one another and didn’t manage to make a single decent joke. It was a disaster.

‘‘This is not a bit,’’ Mandel assured us. ‘‘We are on Sarah Palin’s bridge to nowhere.’’ And so they all strolled that bridge. And perhaps they are still strolling it today, with Probst smiling extra hard, since he won the award in the category. Piven snarkily summed up the debacle during his acceptance speech: ‘‘What if I just kept talking for 12 minutes? What would happen? Oh wait, that was the opener.’’

If only the reality hosts had been a fraction as funny as Don Rickles or Ricky Gervais, who demanded his Emmy back from Steve Carell, referring to last year when presenters Stephen Colbert and Jon Stewart gave the absent Gervais’s Emmy to Carell. Gervais actually tickled Carell, who sat through the gag, deadpan, in the front row.

Lest the reality TV hosts make the Emmycast look too trendy and opportunistic, the show was peppered with uninspired references to classic TV. They ranged from a TV-catchphrase-strewn sequence to a re-creation of the Monk’s coffee shop set from ‘‘Seinfeld’’ that looked like it was pulled from the basement storage closet in an amateur theater. Also off: Lily Tomlin, Ruth Buzzi, Alan Sues and other ‘‘Laugh-In’’ originals telling bad jokes.

Oh yeah, and Josh Groban singing TV theme songs, from ‘‘Friends,’’ ‘‘Gilligan’s Island,’’ ‘‘South Park,’’ and ‘‘The Love Boat’’ — how could I forget that. Seriously bizarre? Disturbing? Just wrong? Words fail.

ABC probably didn’t like the fact that a number of acceptance speeches took on a political bent, but those moments did give viewers a periodic tweak during the long broadcast. Laura Linney paid homage to ‘‘the community organizers who helped shape our country,’’ a reference to Palin’s speech at the Republican National Convention. Tommy Smothers, ranging unpredictably from irony to sincerity while accepting a belated Emmy for ‘‘The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour,’’ talked about the war, freedom of speech, and how there is ‘‘nothing more scary than watching ignorance in action.’’

And ‘‘John Adams’’ writer-producer Kirk Ellis was cut off as he began talking about the articulateness — and inarticulateness — of public figures. There's an irony in there somewhere...

So there are my thoughts. What did you think?

"Mad Men" wins best drama, after all. Fans will be relieved, pundits will renew their talk about how great basic cable is, and AMC executives will no doubt party hard into the night. Matthew Weiner looks thrilled, if a little bit flustered, and a quick scan of the cast reveals that Elisabeth Moss looks great, Christina Hendricks looks just like she does on the show, and January Jones looks different, though not too different, when she's out of her early-'60s duds.

"30 Rock" wins for best comedy, so I will repeat my call: Watch this show, please.

In a year packed with strong performances and shows, the Emmy voters made some good decisions. Better decisions, on the whole, than Emmy show producers, who spent a lot of money recreating old TV sets for use in very brief bits, and proved that born comedians, left to their own devices, are funnier than writers of variety-show banter. But I'll leave it to Matthew to explain more.

Upset! Bryan Cranston wins the Emmy for lead drama actor in "Breaking Bad." He isn't James Spader, and he still looks shocked. This will be billed -- as it should -- as a big victory for AMC, which now has put up two new Emmy-winning shows. And Cranston is good.

Tina Fey gets another big win for best comedy actress. I hope this makes more people tune into "30 Rock." You'll be happy you did, I promise.

Nice fakeout, meanwhile, from Jimmy Kimmel, who makes us wait and wait to see who wins for best reality host. As I sit through the commercial break, I ponder: How many costume changes has Heidi Klum had tonight?

Wow, they're getting down to business now that there's only a half-hour left. First off, "Mad Men" takes a statuette at last: a writing award for Matthew Weiner's pilot, which was famously written eight years ago, and famously got him a job on "The Sopranos," and even more famously was rejected by HBO and Showtime before AMC picked up the show.

Then Paul Giamatti, who wins the miniseries acting prize for his role in John Adams, thanks "my wife." And as the cameras go to his real wife, but then Giamatti said, "not my real wife, my fake wife, Laura." And his real wife looks a little irritated. And he doesn't get around to thanking her.

Alec Baldwin, who wins a much-deserved Emmy for "30 Rock," says his role as Jack Donaghy is the greatest job he's ever had, and though that's not what he suggested that in the New Yorker profile that ran a few weeks ago, I happen to think that he's right tonight. He does give a huge compliment to Tina Fey, calling her "the Elaine May of her generation." He might be right there, too.

Glenn Close wins for "Damages." Personally, I liked her better in "The Shield" a couple of years ago: not evil, but strong.

Truth to power: Don Rickles tells Kathy Griffin, "Let's read these funny lines they wrote for us." Biggest audience laugh last night. He's toying with the Emmys because he can. It feels good.

Actual power: Jerry Bruckheimer. People must be scared of him. How else could "The Amazing Race" win six times in a row?

Advantage, truth: I think Rickles took up so much time with his ad-libbing that the "Amazing Race" victory speech was cut quite short.

Truth becomes power: Rickles wins an Emmy, too! And he gets to talk for as long as he wants.