Macca show not quite like being there

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Paul McCartney’s Citi Field concert pays homage to his appearance there, back when it was Shea Stadium, with the Beatles. (ASSOCIATED PRESS)

The year was 1965 and the concert featuring four kids from Liverpool at New York's Shea Stadium -- home of the hapless Mets -- was the talk of the town and, reportedly, the largest, highest-grossing rock concert of its era.

They say one should never repeat a success, but someone clearly forgot to tell Macca that. Paul McCartney returned to Shea Stadium, renamed Citi Field, in Queens, N.Y., this past summer to perform some of his Beatles, Wings and solo hits.

Tonight's concert program at 9 p.m. on ABC, Paul McCartney: Good Evening New York City, is a truncated (very truncated) version of that night, culled from three hours of music and featuring the, by now, de rigueur, "rarely seen footage" and artist interviews.

Good Evening New York City is being billed as an emotional journey through Macca's 50-year musical career, with time out for commercials.

More important for music-history buffs and anyone curious about Beatlemania, the special will reportedly include archival footage from the original Beatles concert at Shea, though, given the crowded program -- Good Evening New York City is scheduled to last just an hour -- it's hard to imagine the original Beatles concert rating more than a token few seconds.

Macca will reportedly talk, however, about those early years, and what it was like to return to the place where the Beatles made what could be argued their biggest impact on North America, aside from their sensational Feb. 9, 1964, appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show.

Even in the early SSRq60s, TV had a more profound influence on the record-buying public than an arena concert, even a concert in an arena as famous and steeped in history as Shea Stadium.

Here's a sobering number to consider in this present-day, ratings- and box office-obsessed age. The Beatles' appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show was seen by an estimated 74 million viewers, or 40 per cent of the U.S. population at the time.

Good Evening New York City will be lucky if it reaches even a 10th as many viewers -- say, seven million viewers, or the rough audience equivalent of the number of viewers who watched the Latin Grammys on Univision earlier this month. Don't let that detract from your enjoyment of the show, however.

Macca may be getting a little long in the tooth, but seeing him perform Hey Jude never gets old, somehow.

-- Canwest News Service

3 to see tonight

Survivor: Samoa airs its stuff-you-never-saw episode, a recap of the past 27 days -- or 10 weeks in TV time -- which means more footage of new Entertainment Weekly "Must List" poster boy Russell Hantz, "a cocky, backstabbing, misogynist liar whose crazy-eyed manipulation of his fellow castaways initially made us cringe." That is, he single-handedly made Survivor must-see-TV again. (Global/CBS, 7 p.m.)

Megan Fox, who was, like, the world's biggest movie star ever -- until that Twilight thing came out -- is Jay Leno's very special guest on an all-new U.S. Thanksgiving edition of The Jay Leno Show, featuring an all-U.S. military studio audience. Corny or patriotic, you decide. (NBC, 9 p.m.)

B.C. journalist/filmmaker Miro Cernetig's Doc Zone documentary Carbon Hunters profiles eco-entrepreneur Shawn Burns, chief executive of Vancouver-based Carbon Credit Corp., as he scours the world, looking for carbon credits to trade on the lucrative carbon-trading market -- a market worth an estimated $100 billion, according to one recent count. You've heard the old saying: if something sounds too good to be true, etc. In the end, as with most things in life and in TV documentaries, it's left to the viewer to decide where the truth lies. (CBC, 7 p.m.)

Top TV SHOWS

1 C.S.I. New York (CTV) -- 3,466,000

2 House (Global,) -- 3,160,000

3 Grey's Anatomy (CTV) -- 3,026,000

4 Survivor: Samoa (Global) -- 2,916,000

5 C.S.I. Miami (CTV) -- 2,828,000

6 Criminal Minds (CTV) -- 2,715,000

7 NCIS (Global) -- 2,646,000

8 Amazing Race 15 (CTV) -- 2,619,000

9 C.S.I. (CTV) -- 2,558,000

10 The Mentalist (CTV) -- 2,403,000

-- Source: BBM Canada, week of Nov. 9-15

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition November 26, 2009 E5