Ed Sullivan tried putting on the Met in the early days of television and his ratings bombed. Writes one critic of a more recent small-screen encounter: “I’m in favor of real writers’ getting television money for something other than sitcoms about pimples, and real composers’ getting television money for something other than jingles about deodorants, and public television’s investing in more than three tenors. It can’t be that spectacle doesn’t work on a smaller scale — what else is pro football, not to mention pro wrestling? Isn’t opera just premature music video?” – New York Magazine