Audience ticket for the first three episodes of Lifetime television show Jane Pratt, taped on February 16, 1993.
Depending on how much a fan you are of the late teen mag Sassy, you may or may not know that onetime editor-in-chief Jane Pratt also had a short-lived career as a daytime talk show host.
Honestly, I was not the target demographic for Sassy when it debuted in 1988. After all, teen girls like myself read Glamour and Cosmopolitan. Pre-teens were the ones who read the so-called teen mags like YM, Seventeen and Sassy. But when I found out the editorial staff of Sassy were into indie music—heck, the magazine ended up collaborating with Sub Pop Records on a free 7″ single!—I needed to subscribe. Oh, and the zine column was also key. I even gained a couple of Sassy readers when they picked as “Zine of the Month” Geoff Farina of Karate’s zine No Duh, the latest issue of which contained a review of my own zine.
So I was certainly aware of who Jane Pratt was in 1993, when I was living in New York City taking a, uh, college “gap year.” Out of curiosity, I’d watched an episode or two of her daytime talk show, Jane, for the local Fox affiliate the previous year, before it was cancelled. But then Ms. Pratt got a second chance, in the form of a new show, Jane Pratt, to be debuting on cable network Lifetime. And my friend Chin-a had audience tickets. Would I like to go?
I was pretty sure that wasn’t my scene, but I was convinced to go since a friend of hers, music journalist Ann Powers, was going to be appearing as a guest on a show about music fandom. Music, you say? Sure.
I don’t remember too much about the taping, other than Chin-a stepping up to Jane’s mic to berate some sexist dude in one of the non-music episodes (they taped three total). But my memory was recently refreshed by a re-watch of the VHS tape onto which I’d recorded those three episodes when they were aired. And yes, I digitized them. Here’s that episode on music fandom, also with guests David Cassidy and Downtown Julie Brown.
The taping may have been a bit of a snooze, but Jane Pratt made a bit more of an impression on me when I saw her perform onstage as the violinist with short-lived “Sassy house band” Chia Pet. Their amateurish set opening for Bratmobile in a dank basement club on Houston called The Spiral was engaging in the way nothing on manufactured television stage set in Queens could ever be.
