Tell us what you want to see

The Piranha Club looks at TV news, with Arnoldine dressed up as a sexy blonde who delivers only the most mundane headlines at the expense of real news, competing against a chimp hired on the basis that people love chimpanzees.

Fourth panel says it all.

I worked in TV back when the "happy talk" format began, in the mid-70s, and we had some admittedly kind of non-telegenic people doing the news at our station, but they were people who actually knew how to gather news and who knew the market and could evaluate what mattered.

Then the station was sold and the new station manager brought in a group of good-looking people that included, as anchor, a fellow soon to be fired for not reading news very well, and later to be known as Charles Rocket when he re-emerged as a player in the darkest, least-funny days of Saturday Night Live.

The new weather guy also anchored a kids' show in the afternoon, during which, one afternoon, he asked anyone who had a ratings diary to get in touch and let him know how it was going, which earned us an asterisk in that quarter's ratings book. Soliciting the diary families is a major no-no.

The sports guy was the most talented and competent of the bunch, which is probably why he was gone within about a year, and, not only did he (wisely) jump ship, but, before he left, he married the best on-air talent the station had had to start with, and she left with him.

I think they were all gone within about a year and a half. Which was about a year longer than I lasted as marketing director under the new manager. One of those familiar situations where the only thing worse than getting fired was continuing to go to work every day.

Worst of all, dreary and depressing as the situation was, the ratings went up.

Stupid congeniality sells.

At some point before my ejection, as the advertising director (my boss) and I sat commiserating over something bracing, I suggested that they build a living room set, and that they could start the news each evening with the anchor puttering around making coffee, and he'd look up, greet the audience and start talking to them about the top stories.

Then the various other reporters, the weather guy, the sports anchor, would "drop by" and they'd sit in the comfy chairs, drink coffee and chat about the news, weather and sports.

We should have done it.

The other, less facetious, "should have" from that era is that one of the younger engineers started talking about this guy in Atlanta who already ran a station there that was carried on a lot of cable systems, but now was starting something that, instead of broadcasting, was going to be cable-only. Ed bailed out and headed to Atlanta to be part of it. Should have paid more attention to Ed.

Point is, the abandonment of authority and competence in TV news started before cable was strong competition and eons before the Internet popped up as an information source. Sadly, this was less than a decade after Walter Cronkite returned from Vietnam, pronounced the war a failure and, by doing so, plunged the Johnson White House into despair.

Who knew then that one day Jane Pauley and Stone Phillips would be begging people to log in to a web site "and tell us what YOU think," as if Jane and Stone were going to actually go through all the comments, as if anyone at NBC News really gave a rat's ass what YOU think.

And who knew, when they began doing that over at Dateline, that the infection would spread to the actual Nightly News itself, where Brian Williams now provides deathless coverage of YouTube videos you saw on Facebook a week ago.

So, to return to Bud Grace's cartoon, last week the Today Show celebrated its 60th anniversary and brought back many of its past hosts to celebrate. I didn't watch, but I'm confident they did not include J. Fred Muggs in this parade of talent, because, while his work on the show once raised issues around the judgement of whoever had hired him, I'm quite confident that, in the current news market, the question would be what idiot ever let him leave?

"That's what TV people call you if you go in front of the camera: A 'talent.' They call you that right to your face. Only, after a while, you realize they don't mean you have any actual talent. In fact, it's sort of an insult. In the TV business, 'talent' means 'not the camera, lighting or sound people, all of whom will do exactly what they're supposed to do every single time, but the bonehead with the pancake makeup, who will make all of us stay in the studio for two extra hours because he cannot remember that he is supposed to say 'See you next time' instead of 'See you next week.'" -- Dave Barry

 

Comments

[M. Rasheed]

"...a fellow soon to be fired for not reading news very well, and later to be known as Charles Rocket when he re-emerged as a player in the darkest, least-funny days of Saturday Night Live."

To be fair, is it possible that it was the "darkest, least-funny" time period for SNL for no other reason than because people were sad the beloved original cast was gone?

[M. Rasheed]

Similar to how heavy weight boxing champ Larry Holmes would never have been good enough to boxing fans even if he were the Second Coming of the Messiah?

[M. Rasheed]

"I suggested that they build a living room set, and that they could start the news each evening with the anchor puttering around making coffee, and he'd look up, greet the audience and start talking to them about the top stories.

Then the various other reporters, the weather guy, the sports anchor, would "drop by" and they'd sit in the comfy chairs, drink coffee and chat about the news, weather and sports."

Brilliant.

[Mike Peterson]

The second cast of SNL also had to deal with the second set of writers. The combination was a lot more Leon Spinks than Larry Holmes.