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Television

Can’t wait to watch this!!

Dennis Miller Courts Viewers to CNBC Show
LOS ANGELES – Dennis Miller will do almost anything to get people to tune into his new CNBC show.
Including hiring a chimpanzee.
And he’s not kidding.
Miller said when he was a kid he used to watch Dave Garroway on the “Today” show and he had J. Fred Muggs, the chimp, with him.
So Miller thought if he ever had his own news show, he’d have a chimp on it, too. “Just to see him scamper through the foreground of a shot (makes me) laugh out loud,” he told reporters.
“If I was watching at home and I was doing an interview, (and) in the back you saw a chimp swinging from a light standard; I don’t know about you, but I would call my wife and say, ‘Honey, they’ve got a monkey on this show!'”
Miller said people who watch his new show will realize he’s still the same guy from “Saturday Night Live,” although the hair’s different.
“My boys seem to watch ‘Comedy Central’ now, my sons,” he said. “And I see the old me on ‘Saturday Night Live.’ When I get pass the Billy Ray Cyrus mullet that I’m wearing, I notice one thing: That my humor hasn’t seemed to have changed since I first started there. I don’t see where I have this wide range that I can change what I do. My monkey trick is my monkey trick.”
Miller, who was in ABC’s “Monday Night Football” booth as an announcer for two seasons, said often times the people who don’t agree with him will watch him and that adds to the audience.
“I can’t tell you how many people would watch football and come up to me and tell me they dislike me, it was about equal to the amount who liked me,” he said of his 2000-02 stint. “Oh, I see, they kind of like disliking you. Because it defines their parameters. Don’t you watch somebody at home who bugs you once in a while? And you say, ‘Why am I watching him?’ Because they bug you and it makes you feel superior.”
Miller is fine knowing his style is an acquired taste, but there is little doubt as to his popularity. His HBO weekly series “Dennis Miller Live” won five Emmy Awards and three Writers Guild Awards.
“The way I do it, everything I’ve ever done, there’s 50 percent of the country (that) hates me and 50 percent likes me,” he said. “When I was younger I used to rail against that. I wanted more to like me. Then I got older, (and) there’s a real career to be made keeping it within one or two points of 50-50.”
The “Dennis Miller” show debuts Monday.