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RANTS & RAVES  KATIE COURIC ...perkiness down, gravitas up |
These are a few of our
unfavorite things about TV
of TheColumnists.com
It’s no secret--was it ever?--that the television networks regard the viewing audience as one of the lower forms of animal life. There is a reason for this. TV audiences tend to behave like sponges, soaking up the very worst television has to offer.
(If you think I’m exaggerating, consider the fact that the reason Jay Leno is no longer hosting his 10 p.m. NBC show is that the affiliates complained that not enough people were watching to provide a good “lead in” to the local news. In other words, TV audiences are too lazy (or asleep) to change channels from Leno to their favorite local newscast or too dumb to remember that the local newscast comes on at 11 p.m. They need to be led there every night.)
I’m not even talking about purposely dreadful sitcoms, hokey reality shows and violent cops series. I’m talking about TV aimed at semi-intelligent life forms (like you and even me)--the evening news, public television, documentaries. Here are a bunch of video rants I’ve collected over the last few months, along with an actual rave or two:
. Why do evening news anchors invariably thank their correspondents after a report? Is it to establish a chummy rapport between the news folks and us? And they always use the other’s name as often as possible “Thanks, Kelly, as always, for that,” Brian Williams tells Kelly O’Donnell. And at the end of the report, Kelly, or whomever, invariably ends the report with, “…Brian?”
. Have you ever noticed (excuse my Andy Rooney imitation) that when a correspondent has finished his basic report, the anchor asks a few questions to establish that he is very much up to speed on the subject, and the reporter’s replies are always perfectly thought out. The reason is that it’s all carefully scripted--to make the anchor look brighter and not just a well-coiffed news reader. The correspondent usually starts his answer with, “That’s right, Brian/Katie/Diane….” You never hear them say, “Actually, Brian, you haven’t got a clue what’s going on in Haiti,” or, “No, no, Katie, you’ve got it sort of muddled….” That would be refreshing.
. In a ploy to lend empathy to the stories they report on, the three network anchors affect a concerned tone and look. Brian Williams, whose eyebrows give him a sorrowful expression anyway, after delivering that week’s butchered young girl story, sounds a bit like Uriah Heep as he adds, mournfully, “And of course our thoughts and prayers go out to the friends and family of little Jody Jenson…” Diane Sawyer is constantly emoting now that she’s won the ABC News anchor slot, whether it’s putting a chuckle in her voice for light-hearted pieces or knitting her brow ever-so worriedly over this or that calamity, an imploring note in her voice as she addresses reporters. This is to let us know they care and are not mere news readers. Katie Couric, in her constant battle to appear un-perky, has begun to seem like the crusty old pro of the three anchors, delivering much of the news in a calculated monotone so as to display “gravitas.”
. Something TV critics never comment on is what I called the “coming up next syndrome.” This is where the news item--or the show --that follows the one you’re bored with right now is made to sound so tantalizing you won’t skip to another channel. The constant hyping of what’s coming up next is to keep you tuned in. What you’re watching may be dreadful but what’s “coming up next” promises to be terrific--so don’t go away! This isn’t just a desperate contemporary TV tic. It’s been a broadcasting fixation since the golden age of radio, when announcers like Howard Petrie were always crying, “Ah! Ah! Ah! Don’t touch that dial!”
. TV critics are so busy covering network corporate machinations that they rarely get around to actually reviewing shows, and when they do they rarely go beyond reviewing the major series, about 10 percent of what’s on TV. Television has moved on but TV’s critics are still stuck in the `80s
. To wit: perhaps TV’s most underrated host is Turner Classic Movies’ Robert Osborne, a fixure at TCM since it began in 1994; it’s hard to imagine the movie channel without him in his familiar cozy living room setting, introducing each movie and providing factoids after it ends, doing interviews with stars old and new. Osborne is the closest thing on TV to Alistair Cooke, only more accessible--a knowledgeable, personable, urbane, thoroughly ingratiating fellow.
Osborne’s conversations with movie legends, called “Private Screenings,” are wonderful archival moments. He doesn’t just gush but ferrets out great film lore from icons like Betty Hutton, Mickey Rooney and Ann Miller. Yet I’ve never read a word about Osborne in the press. Fastidiously groomed, with distinguished white hair, and always clad in suit and tie, he presides over the TCM world like a combination CEO and friendly tour guide. He seems thoroughly immersed in movie lore, yet never sounds scholarly or gaga, just well prepped. Does Osborne actually do his own research and actually know all that film history or is he just a genial, well-prepped movie buff?
A brief Google search unlocked cable TV’s mystery man, revealing that the dapper Osborne is (gasp!) 77 years old, but looks 57, began as a would-be actor at Desilu and was mentored by Lucille Ball but soon gave up acting. He lives in New York City, not Hollywood, and flies to Atlanta to tape his TCM segments, co-owns two movie theaters in his native Washington state (one called The Rosebud), runs the Robert Osborne Classic Film Festival every year in Athens, Georgia, writes a column for the Hollywood Reporter called “Rambling Hollywood,” has a star on the Walk of Fame, is an official Red Carpet greeter at the Academy Awards, has written several books about the Oscars, and, the ultimate honor, once was parodied on “Saturday Night Live.”
. After 38 years, “Masterpiece Theatre,” the jewel in the PBS crown (even if it was from the BBC) changed its hallowed name last season. I think I know why. The word “theatre” was likely judged by PBS to be a turn-off to those venerated younger viewers that every network lusts after--even vaunted PBS. You might have thought that PBS, and especially “Masterpiece Theatre,” was above such pandering, but no. Now the title changes several times a year, from “Masterpiece Classics” (where it is right now) to "Masterpiece Contemporary," when the program takes place in today's world, to "Masterpiece Mystery" when detecives are involved in the storylines--as if we couldn't tell the difference.
One of the best things about “Masterpiece Theatre” was its opening, which got unceremoniously trashed in a misguided effort to "freshen up" the series. The original opening added vigor and luster to the longtime treasured series. For three decades, that opening sequence put you right in the mood for a masterpiece.
“Masterpiece Theatre”’s great opening musical fanfare was drastically shortened to 15 seconds and the lovely slow pan over the photos of great former “Masterpiece” series was also dumped, probably judged as too languorous for those fidgety younger viewers afflicted with terminal ADD. Gone, too, was the cozy library set and easy chair formerly sat in by such comforting, informed personages as Alistair Cooke and Russell Baker, who helped set up each episode with background details, intriguing footnotes and other worthwhile commentary. Too much damn talk!, decreed PBS, and (even worse) spoken by literary personages. We need some film stars instead, they must have reasoned, to pull in those young `uns.
The new (younger and presumably hotter) hosts are Laura Linney and Alan Cumming. And why them? They must have scored a high “Q” (likeability) rating or something. The two alternate standing before a plain backdrop that looks like a screen test and mouth one or two meaningless comments before the drama begins. The reason, clearly, is a fear of scaring away young viewers who might well retch at the sight of a library with (ugh!) books, and then turn off the show if forced to listen to an interminable three-minute prologue by a well-versed host over 60.
. Network news seems to spend more and more time quoting polls, which are treated as the Holy Grail. Even PBS' "Newshour” is forever interviewing pollsters, whose dubious surveys and results are taken at face value, which then become self-fulfilling when the reporters and pundits sit around hashing over the meaning of what amount to tea leaves.
Let’s examine the most popular question asked the great unwashed: “Do you approve of the direction the country is going in?” What does that even mean? Does the U.S. go in only one direction at a time? Isn’t it going in many directions simultaneously? Second, most people, asked that, want to sound informed and smart, so they always tend to answer “No.” If they were truly smart, they would reply, “What the hell are you talking about?”
Most people have little or no grasp of major issues but feel obliged to mutter something, just to sound informed or to get rid of the damn pollster. The result invariably is that those polled don’t think the country is going in the “right” direction --maybe because they’ve had a bad day or their shoes hurt or they’re mad at their wife. How is this “direction” measured? What constitutes “right”? I’ll wager the pollsters don’t even know.
In brief, it’s a nebulous answer to a nebulous and empty question, but Washington reporters seize on it like it actually tells us something--and by reporting it, make it so. Newspapers treat polls like hard news, because newspapers (online or off) have a horserace mentality and would rather print a poll than bother to dig into the public’s real feelings on matters. It’s so much easier (and easy to glimpse at a glance) to print the results of a poll by some self-appointed authoritative source. Nobody ever questions polls and pollsters. Their word has become journalistic scripture.
. Bill Maher, probably the sharpest (but too %&*$# often the crudest) comedian working today, came up with a term, “disaster porn,” which he described on “Larry King Live” as the networks’ obsession (CNN very much included) with stories like the Haitian earthquake. He accused the networks of “wallowing” in tragedy.
For at least a week, every network behaved as if there were no other important stories, and of course the reason is obvious: TV news goes berserk when there’s an earthquake, a tsunami, blizzards, forest fires, tornados--anything that allows TV news simply to aim its cameras at the disaster and depict as much death and destruction as they can squeeze in, while the correspondents tramp through the wreckage and all but cry, “Oh, the humanity!” like that famed reporter’s wail on the scene of one of broadcasting’s first breaking major tragedies, the Hindenburg explosion.
TV is forever lusting for just such massive horror stories, because it brings in great ratings, justifies TV’s usually dubious existence and makes the networks feel good about themselves for a change. Most of the time, TV isn’t much good to anyone, a constant embarrassment, but throw a calamity in its path and it will be there with 100 cameras to show us the grim devastation. Hurricane Katrina was the ultimate TV godsend.
This also demonstrates TV’s (all of journalism’s, in fact) copycat mentality, following one or two stories no matter how dumb, and hammering them to death for weeks. If it’s not Haiti--which (so I don’t sound too coldhearted) deserves continuing if not round-the-clock coverage--it’s the balloon boy story or the air traffic controller’s kid; indeed, anything involving children is TV news gold, especially kids in harm’s way. Swine flu, with its implication that it could well kill zillions of children and become “pandemic” (favorite 2009 TV news scare word), like the 1918 influenza plague that killed thousands. Say, whatever happened to those killer bees? Aren’t they about due?
©2010 by Gerald Nachman. This column first posted March 15, 2010.
EDITOR'S NOTE: Nachman's first professional role in journalism was as a television columnist for the San Jose Mercury News.
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