hasselhoff-booze

David Hasselhoff’s contract with “America’s Got Talent” wasn’t renewed, and NBC will replace the drunken mess with obsessive-compulsive mess Howie Mandel.

Though NBC, the show’s producers and Hasselhoff all have issued the usual fluffy statements indicating it was a mutual and amicable parting, I’ve learned the former “Baywatch” star had no say in it — and is deeply upset to have lost one of his major income sources.

”Even when he was sober, he was usually hung over and often in a really foul mood,” said a longtime show production honcho. ”He was horrible to deal with, and we’re all saying ‘Good riddance!’ ”

This crap always blows my mind. Being a judge on a reality show has the highest dollars-to-ease ratio of any job in America. You sit there, you put up with someone singing or dancing or juggling puppies, and then you say if you liked it. You don’t even have to be sober for the job; you just have to be not wasted, and people still manage to F it up. A trained seal could bark and clap its flippers for way cheaper, but for some reason TV execs need YEARS to decide that hey, maybe putting up with drunken Hasselfhoff or a slurring Paula Abdul isn’t quite worth the return on the investment. The people too stupid and useless to keep those jobs shouldn’t be fired; they should have their organs harvested for scientific research. Anything to keep them from stealing more of our precious oxygen.