Jesse Ventura's MSNBC show is now on the air, surprisingly. I say surprisingly not just because it's been in development hell for seemingly as long as the Tim Burton Superman movie that was never made, but also because we went to a test show this summer and it was, well, painfully bad. The umbrella problem, as it were, was simply that there was no reason for the show to be hosted by Jesse Ventura. They'd tried to add some vague, wrestling-ish aspects to it -- the working title was The Arena, at one point the audience voted thumbs-up or thumbs-down on which side of a debate it agreed with -- but, essentially, any guy in a suit could have been the host. There were about seven different formats crammed into the hour, and Ventura had no idea how to steer a television discussion; at one point he blithely derailed a guest by lobbing a non sequitur at him a minute or so before that segment ended.

On the other hand, it's not like anyone watches MSNBC...