Category: Television

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War Pimps

Beware of making too much of the world you see on television. With that caveat out of the way, let me proceed to make something out of my last hour’s viewing on CNN.

Tucker Carlson was sitting in for Aaron Brown — a faux journalist substituting for a faux journalist. As part of his quick tour of the news, he interviewed an official with an international aid organization about the problems facing the Asian tsunami zone. Then he went on, “thanks to the miracle of television,” as he put it, to a signoff segment focused on troops who are away from home this holiday season pursuing George Bush’s dream of democracy in Mesopotamia. Several troops were put in front of Department of Defense cameras in Iraq while CNN did the same with their families here in the States. I suppose it’s great to connect the troops to their families — hell, after getting an email from the Kerry campaign that called on supporters to give money to the USO so soldiers could call home over Christmas, I chipped in — but turning the reunion moment into video entertainment seemed cheap and demeaning (especially in the case of one soldier and his family subjected to an anchor’s relentless nudging to discuss what they were feeling). But hey, if these guys were game to go on camera, who am I to complain about how they were used by CNN’s producers?

Well, there’s this: The prevalence of feel-good images from the guys who are out “defending our freedom” — during the holidays, during the World Series, even during on our Election Day — hits me as a particularly loathsome kind of propaganda. Especially when the news-media purveyors have so largely excluded more troubling images of the human cost of the war to both our troops and the Iraqi populace. And especially when the big media have failed so utterly to explicitly examine whether this whole war has anything to do with defending our freedom.

So instead, we get more messages home from the front, more messages to encourage us to support the troops no matter what the hell we’ve sent them there to do; all messages that appear to add up to the bigger message that our intentions our good and that darn it, we need to stay the course. That’s not news and information anymore. It’s a form of pimping for the guys who set this whole mess in motion.

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The Man Who Wouldn’t Go Away

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After an absence of a few years, “Hawaii Five-O” is back on local television in the Bay Area. For nostalgia’s sake, and because our hundreds of channels of DirecTV are filled with a whole lot of crap, Kate turned it on last night while she was stringing lights on our tree, and I wound up watching nearly the whole thing. The show became a favorite back in the ’80s in reruns because the shallow characters, formulaic plots, cliched scripts, and bad acting made it ideal for the “Mystery Science Theater” treatment: We’d watch and supply our own dialogue. Fun for the whole family, no controlled substances necessary.

As bad as ” Hawaii Five-O” looked back in the ’80s, it hasn’t aged well. I’d guess it looks worse than ever largely because a host of superior — at least as far as commercial TV goes — police dramas have come out since McGarrett, Dan-O, Chin Ho, Zulu as Kono, and Herman Wedemeyer as Duke vanished after their 13 seasons on CBS (then the longest-running police show in prime-time history; I think  ABC;s “NYPD Blue” is in its 13th season now). First, “Hill Street Blues,” which died a more or less noble death, canceled before it could get bad. Then, in no particular order, “Homicide: Life on the Street” (killed prematurely), “NYPD Blue” (which has long overstayed its welcome), “Law and Order” (which has produced one-spinoff too many with “L&O: Criminal Intent”), “CSI” (the Las Vegas original; the Miami version’s David Caruso is the Jack Lord of the now generation, a portentous and puffed-up mainland McGarrett), HBO’s “The Wire,” and, for good measure, the British import “Prime Suspect.”

The main thing all these shows have going for them is that — while all too often succumbing to the temptation to tie up stories with neat endings — they’ve dropped the pretense that cop business is clean, orderly, or enlightened. It’s sort of the same thing that’s happened with medical dramas: “Dr. Kildare,” “Ben Casey,” and “Marcus Welby” gave way to “St. Elsewhere,” “Chicago Hope,” and “ER”; the newer generation of shows appear to resemble actual hospitals and maybe even real life a bit more than the earlier doctors-as-demigods offerings.

But back to last night’s “Hawaii Five-O.” The episode involved a wrongly convicted murder suspect, a prison siege, a doctor with a shotgun taped to his neck, a crooked defense lawyer, a frightened witness, cartoonish thugs, an inscrutable Chinese gambler who actually said, “Things are not always as they appear,” and lots of the usual Jack Lord pose-striking. Everything about the show reeked, even the lighting, camera work, and sets. How did it get the ratings to stay on the air so long? One clue: at one point, Kate said unprompted, “Jack Lord was really handsome.” And obviously they were the product of an era where lots of people wanted to believe in an invincible, two-fisted straight-shooter like McGarrett.

What I started to wonder, though, is whether the current crop of cop shows are going to look just as wretched, crude, and artless in 25 years, when they’ve been superceded by something newer and better and we’re looking at them with different eyes.

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What’s the Frequency? Seldom

Dan Rather‘s quitting as anchor of the CBS Evening News, and that’s on the front page of both papers we get (the San Francisco one and the New York one). We’re sort of a news-oriented family, but we don’t watch Dan (or Tom or Peter or Jim, or any of their cable counterparts) and haven’t for a long time. I watched the cable news outlets during the day when I was working at TechTV out of professional interest; after all, we were doing a daily news show. And yes, when there’s a compelling breaking-news reason, like the election or a disaster or we’re going to war again, we’ll turn on network news. Watching usually serves as a reminder of how shallow, wooden, obvious, and journalistically unadventurous TV news is. What it’s good for, mostly, is showing pictures of things, and given the quality of the information or commentary that come with the images, most of the time you’re just as well served with the sound turned down.

And the ratings numbers make it look like a lot of people feel the same way. When Rather took over the CBS anchor job from Walter Cronkite in 1981, the Chronicle says, the Evening News had a Nielsen rating of 13.6 — that’s 13.6 percent of all the TV households in the United States. Now the number is 5.1. The Chicago Tribune has a story today recounting the long slide of network news ratings; in 1980, the combined audience share for the evening network news shows was 72 — that’s 72 percent of all the TVs in use at a given moment; in 1990 the number was down to 57, and now it has fallen to 36.

Obviously, people have a lot more news choices now: many choices on cable TV as well as the most compelling and addicting news channel of them all, the Net. But you have to wonder if the decline and collapse of the network news model was or is really inevitable. Would better and deeper news values over the decades made a difference? One of the major irritations and disappointments of major cable and network news shows is that the presentation seems so formulaic and the stories so pat; that’s one reason “The Daily Show” seems so inspired — it both sends up the “real” news shows and lampoons them for the way they shy away from controversy.

One interesting thought for CBS from the 2004 “State of the News Media” report from the Project for Excellence in Journalism: The network should become the news voice for the major lifestyle and entertainment outlets its parent company, Viacom, owns. Quoting analyst Andrew Tyndall, the report says:

“If … CBS News was responsible for news for children (on Nickelodeon), for youth (on MTV), for African-Americans (on BET), for men (on Spike), on the radio (Infinity) and so on, it would once again address the mass market that Cronkite once did and put the Tiffany in Viacom, as it were. That potential audience for CBS News is already waiting in Viacom’s distribution system, but the news division just does not have the vision or the corporate ambition to revive its once-famous name.”

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Guilty Bastard

After my extensive experience as a journalist and legal observer (I’ve put in hundreds if not thousands of hours watching top-notch crime dramas such as “Homicide: Life on the Streets,” “Law and Order” in regular, special, and extra-crunchy criminal flavors, “CSI” episodes set in venues as varies as Las Vegas, Miami, and New York City; not to mention formative undergraduate stints as a watcher of “Dragnet,” “Adam 12,” “Hawaii Five-O,” “Perry Mason,” “The Defenders,” and even “Burke’s Law“), I was unconvinced that Scott Peterson was guilty of anything but being a lying, conniving bastard (with a dash of sociopath thrown in). But that’s why we have a legal system in this country: to tell when people like that are also murderers. In any case, he’s guilty. At least until the case goes into overtime.

The best part of catching the verdict coverage early this afternoon (this can be read as an admission that I failed to occupy my time with more meaningful business; no need for a trial on that one) was the proliferation of mugging nitwits who showed up in the courthouse shots of every channel covering the story (I checked CNN, Court TV, MSNBC, and Fox News; the two specimens pictured here were captured on MSNBC). I mean, of course it’s nothing new. But it is kind of extraordinary that we’re all so conditioned to the presence of cameras that this kind of behavior — now apparently accompanied by cellphones, so we can talk to our buddies while we’re on screen — has become sort of automatic.

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Miles O’Brien, TV Dolt

A small moment of CNN anchor idiocy today: While Miles O’Brien, TV dolt extraordinaire, was filling time while the network waited for Kerry to show up for his concession speech at Faneuil Hall, he started jabbering about the hall’s history with fellow anchor-dolt Kyra Phillips:

O’Brien: Our affiliate, WCVB, giving us a live feed from inside Faneuil Hall where, really, the revolution was born. Patrick Henry, all the…

Phillips: I was waiting for the Bostonian history, because you lived there…

O’Brien: All the great orations of — the cradle of the revolution right there. And at this point, at that location, in that historic spot, Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts, of Beacon Hill, just a few minutes away, will offer up his concession speech. That is coming to us, we think within about 30 minutes time. They’re still plugging in all the cables and getting everything ready.”

Yes, dolt. They are still getting everything ready. And while they do, let’s remind you that Patrick Henry certainly did not — not — make one of those great orations there, since he was busy stirring up the Virginia legislature at the time.

Do you get the feeling I don’t like Miles? I don’t. He’s just a jot above the archetypal dumb TV news guy who’s on the air for his looks ‘n’ charm. Dolt. Miles O’Dolt.

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CSI: The Dark, Moody One

Yes, we here at the Infospigot headquarters and residence in Berkeley, California, indulge ourselves in all sorts of low-brow entertainments. For instance: Over the past couple of years, Thursday night has meant “Survivor” and “CSI,” viewed as we eat burritos in front of our flickering Sony. (Actually, this is kind of a high-brow evening, given that for a brief time our Thursday night habit was WWF’s “Smackdown.” That turned out to be time well spent, though, because we got to see The Rock in the day of “the People’s Elbow — the most electrifying move in sports entertainment.” But I digress.)

Now, we never cottoned to the Miami version of “CSI,” and quit watching after six episodes or so. Even though the same creative team is behind both shows, the Miami production just doesn’t feel like it’s up to the same level as the original, set in Las Vegas. The Miami lead actor, David Caruso, is one obvious difference. Sure, his Las Vegas counterpart, William Petersen, can be arch, but I can actually buy him as an inquisitive, creative investigator, and one who has some interesting character quirks. His acting has some range. Caruso’s work, by contrast, has all the subtlety and nuance of someone banging iron bars together outside your window. It’s relentless. Not particularly pleasant to watch or hear. One wonders how he’s gotten so far with this act.

The differences between the shows go further than that. Both shows share a sort of MTV/music video visual style, especially when they go into their crime-scene/crime-lab montages with the investigators and technicians doing their thing. But the style, which has a slick but natural feel in the Las Vegas show, feels pasted-on and artificial in the Miami version. I think that’s because the ensemble cast, one of the original show’s strong points, is weaker in Miami, or at least hasn’t developed the chemistry the Las Vegas show thrives on: The folks surrounding Caruso look like they’ve been hired because they’re beautiful people, period.

Now comes the third entry in the “CSI” franchise, a show set in New York City. The creators have come up with something much different in tone and maybe in substance from the Las Vegas and Miami series. Whereas the earlier shows use a lot of flash and attitude and humor and try to capitalize on the exotic nature of their locations, the New York show was dark and somber; in fact, the “CSI” characters seemed subdued and preoccupied to the point of depression. A key conversation involved the lead investigator, played by Gary Sinise, and a paralyzed, gravely injured victim who could communicate only by blinking. The exotic locations included brief forays into a garbage scow and a wasteland on the Brooklyn side of the Manhattan Bridge.The preview of next week’s show seemed to promise the same, tone-wise; and the little we found out about the characters suggests they’re in a justifiable funk and that it’s going to be some time before they emerge from it.

As far as the episode itself: The producers tried to jam too much into it. Partly that’s the burden imposed by having to introduce characters, suggest some history, and get them rolling on a complex case. That burden will get lighter as the series develops. It’ll be interesting to see whether the tone of the show gets lighter, too.

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‘Jeb and George’

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So, the “Jack and Bobby” billboards must be counted as effective advertising for the WB, because they’ve caught my attention. They make me think to myself, “What the hell’s that show going to be about?” Of course, the names, and the tease that one of them will be president, prod Kennedy memories (even if we have to wait till 2041 for the chosen one to become chief executive; will the war on terror still be raging?). When I look at the billboard, I have questions the designers probably didn’t intend: Are Jack and Bobby conjoined twins? And who in heaven’s name is the pensive woman in the background? And the WB probably answers this way: Who cares, as long as people tune in?

My puzzlement isn’t a compelling enough reason to break my record of never having knowingly viewed a WB production. Meantime, we’ve got the real-life drama of George and Jeb, who between them might leave nothing but a smoking crater for Jack and Bobby to preside over in 37 years.

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Funeral, Hold the Blather

Kate wanted to watch the Reagan service before she went off to school this morning, so she turned on CNN about 6:30. Within a minute or so, one of the “hosts” asked such an offensively insipid question about Reagan’s legacy that we switched to C-SPAN’s coverage. Not a new observation, of course, but it’s great to get a chance to watch events like this free of the network’s insistence on providing running commentary on everything. Aside from the awful quality of most of the noise the TV people provide, it’s like we in the media are terrified of ever letting anything speak for itself.

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End of TechTV

At 1 a.m. Friday (about two hours and 10 minutes from now), TechTV’s
signal will be merged with G4’s,  and something called G4techtv
will be born. What a business: Ziff-Davis, Paul Allen, and now Comcast
have dumped hundreds and hundreds of millions into TechTV between the
startup, Allen’s purchase from ZDTV and other investors (he’s reported
to have spent $320 million on it), Comcast’s buyout of Allen (they
reportedly spent $290 million), and all the money that’s gone into
operating the beast (an unschooled guess would be $100 million total
over TechTV’s run; though I imagine it easily could have been double or
triple that). And after all that money and six years, the channel is
back to semi-start-up mode (though it’s a very well distributed
start-up, with 44 million households to start). It’ll be interesting to
watch the trajectory.

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Swallowed Up

Not to self-promote too much, but it occurred to me while writing earlier that my involvement with TechTV actually goes farther back than my employment with the channel. About five and a half years ago, I reported on ZDTV (the station’s former name) for Wired: “You-Gotta-Be-Kidding TV.” It was my first assignment after I left the magazine to try my hand at freelancing and my first long feature ever. It’s pleasing to read now; I think it’s held up pretty well.

One small personal irony is that now I’m going back to freelancing, at least for the time being (I don’t anticipate doing a story on the channel now, though). A larger irony is that, through a history that involved ownership and management changes and a couple huge shifts in programming philosophy, ZDTV/TechTVmet the big challenges I wrote about. It kept expanding its reach, building an audience (a small but growing one), and establishing an ad base that was far richer than what even the CEO anticipated when I interviewed him (the big win there was to get past the reliance on tech-related advertising and bring in consumer companies, like carmakers; in fact, it’s similar to the ad mix that made Wired a publishing phenomenon). But despite the success, the channel is history.

On one level, the swallowing up of TechTV is just the way business goes. An early analysis of the sale called it “a teardown“: Comcast was buying the property to knock down the house (our programming, staff, and other assets), keep the real estate (our access to 43 million cable- and satellite-subscriber homes) and put up something new there (its G4 game channel, which has reportedly run through a big pile of money and has just 13 million or so households). Fine, it’s their dough, and you can play that way if you ante up. That doesn’t mean it’s a smart play, though you can’t really blame the buyers. The perverse part is the fact the former owner (Paul Allen) sold the property without any apparent concern whether it would be torn down or not. All you people who’ve worked to build this into something — get moving, because the building’s coming down.