Friday night's presidential debate between John McCain and Barack Obama was seen in one out of every three  homes in America, according to preliminary overnight ratings from The Nielsen Company.

Overall, the debate earned a rating of 33.2 for the combined audience of the nine networks and cable channels that carried the 90-minute event.

In some cities, the size of the audience was staggering. In St. Louis, for example, which had the highest percentage of viewership, the rating was 52.1, which means that the debate was seen in more than half of all homes in the St. Louis TV market.

Baltimore finished 3rd highest in terms of viewership with a rating of 47.1, which means 515,000 homes in the Baltimore area were tuned to the debate.

The nation's capitol finished fourth with a 44.6 rating or 1.03 million homes tuned to the debate. (The reason the Washington audience is larger even though the rating is lower than that of Baltimore is that Washington is a larger TV market. It ranks 9th, while Baltimore is 26th. St. Louis is 21st.)

These are Super Bowl sized audiences.

The overnight ratings are based on 55 metered markets. The complete audience figures, with a tally of how many viewers watched, won't be available until Monday, according to Nielsen. But preliminary as these figures are, the confirm the enormous interest in these debates.

Posted by David Zurawik at 8:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)
        

The problem that both McCain and his Democratic opponent, Barack Obama, suffered from in the first third of the debate was finding the right voice in which to speak. They couldn’t decide who to address their answers to and in what voice.

Both started out wanting to speak directly into the camera – in effect, addressing the America people. But moderator Jim Lehrer, PBS anchor of the NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, repeatedly urged them to speak to each other. Lehrer’s instincts were right – he wanted a more revealing and authentic conversation than the kind you get when candidates are cranking out campaign-stop sound bites in big voice.

In the end, neither was allowed to speak in the campaign voice, and that was a victory for viewers in terms of getting to know more about them and their positions. But Lehrer never really got them speaking to each other either.

Initially, both candidates were thrown off by Lehrer’s repeated admonitions, but it hurt Obama, who is very good at speaking in a large voice, more. McCain who shines in town hall meetings, went to the voice he uses in that setting -- focusing his gaze on Lehrer and speaking to him as he would in a town hall meeting focus on the person in the audience who is asking the question.

McCain did go overboard with that form of address in never looking at Obama and rarely talking to him. But it was clearly part of a strategy to use his gaze and body language to underscore the apparent contempt he had for what McCain repeatedly tried to depict in words as Obama’s “naivete” and lack of experience especially in matters of national defense. McCain repeatedly used the phrase “he doesn’t seem to understand.”

That strategy was a risk, and some viewers might read it as being overly aggressive. But historically in TV debates, the person on the offensive, the one who is more aggressive, tends to do better – if he doesn’t go too far. And just the fact that McCain could stay on the offensive for most of the 90-minute encounter was in itself a kind of victory given that Obama had three big advantages going in with McCain tied to a bumbling administration, a hated war, and an economy in crisis.

Give Lehrer high marks for ditching the debate organizers’ plan that the candidates talk only about national security and foreign affairs in this first debate. The first 40 minutes were spent on the economy, as they should have been given the moment of economic crisis in which the nation finds itself.

Obama had no really bad moments, and overall he seemed informed, poised and knowledgeable – all presidential positives to viewers trained in their presidential expectations by the values of shows like West Wing. But again, strictly in terms of TV performance, McCain did slightly better.

When the Arizona senator spoke about the mother of a soldier who had been killed in action giving him her son’s bracelet to wear, his voice and body carried some emotion. Rhetorically, Obama countered deftly, pointing out that he had a bracelet, too, from the mother of a soldier who had died in battle, but his voice was flat when he said it.

And while there was no stinging sound bite that is likely to be played over and over again on TV this weekend, McCain came closest to delivering one when he said, “It is hard to reach across the aisle when you are that far on the left.”

In fact, it was the one time Obama seemed a bit ruffled, referring to McCain as “Tom” instead of John a few seconds later.

But the Democrat quickly recovered and fought back -- especially in the last third of the hour when he found a smaller and more natural sounding TV voice. As a result, round one of these landmark debates will probably be judged strictly through partisan prisms with each side finding enough to declare its candidate the winner.

A prediction: Look for record ratings for the first 45 minutes, and then, a steady tune-out when the ratings are released. As epic as these debates are, it was, after all, getting late on a Friday night at the end of a very emotional and trying week in America.

(Above: Getty Photo of John McCain and Barack Obama by Jim Bourg)

Posted by David Zurawik at 11:44 PM | Permalink | Comments (8)
        

The first presidential debate is on for tonight at 9 at the University of Mississippi, according to the AP, and that means that I'll be here at the Z on TV blog right after it ends to analyze the event in terms of the language of television.

Just as they do with most of national politics, the vast majority of voters will experience tonight's highly anticipated encounter between Democratic candidate Barack Obama and his opponent, Republican John McCain, through their TV or computer screens. And those filters make a difference.

That's a big part of the mission of this blog -- to explore the way our reality is mediated and shaped as it is processed through our media machines. 

So, I'll see you tonight. Meanwhile, here is a picture of the run-through using student stand-ins at the University of Mississippi several hours before McCain made public his decision. It comes to us courtesy of the school and The Oxford Eagle.

Posted by David Zurawik at 12:25 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)
        

While the campaign of Republican presidential candidate Sen. John McCain was still undecided last night about a scheduled debate with Sen. Barack Obama, network and cable TV news executives across the board were preparing their coverage as if the event would definitely be held tonight.

"We are proceeding as if it's on until someone tells us it's officially not," Natalie Raabe, a spokeswoman for ABC News, said late yesterday.

Most of the correspondents and crews that will provide on-scene coverage at the University of Mississippi in Oxford, starting at 9 p.m. if the debate is held, were already in place or on the way last night. Some had been there since Wednesday, including PBS anchorman Jim Lehrer, of the NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, who will moderate the debate, and who talked to the Sun about his role in the event.

Posted by David Zurawik at 6:47 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)
        

It was a bad day at CBS for Republican candidates John McCain and Sarah Palin. It started with CBS News anchorwoman Katie Couric and ended with late night host David Letterman, and between the two, it looks like some serious damage might have been done to the GOP ticket.

In a particularly wild day on the campaign trail, TV news was at the center of events -- mostly in the person of Couric. Beyond getting two exclusive interviews with John McCain and Sarah Palin, the veteran newswoman served viewers extremely well in her superb handling of the Republican candidates.

The headlines: Palin told Couric she thinks "America may find itself on" the road to "another Great Depression."

Then in a separate interview, when Couric repeated Palin's answer to McCain, he had to try and do damage control saying: "I, I don't know if, if, if it's exactly the depression..."

The campaign trail tumult started when McCain announced that he wanted to delay Friday's debate with Democratic opponent Barack Obama so that the two candidates could help resolve the country's economic crisis. Obama responded by saying the debate should go on as planned: "This is exactly the time when the American people need to hear from the person who, in approximately 40 days, will be responsible for dealing with this mess," Obama said.

Couric's newscast skillfully included Obama's remarks on the campaign trail and contextualized all the news being made in the Couric interviews with a series of correspondents' reports on the nation's financial crisis. Executive producer Rick Kaplan and Couric, who also serves as managing editor, delivered one of the strongest and most informative half hours of news that I have seen in the two years of Couric's tenure. If this is a dinosaur, it was having one great last roar -- and mostly at the expense of a couple of candidates who at times seemed overwhelmed by the intensely focused anchorwoman.

Here's Couric pressing McCain on Palin's talk of American being on the road to another Great Depression:

Couric: “But isn't much of this, Senator McCain about consumer confidence?”

McCain: “Sure.”

Couric: “And using rhetoric like the Great Depression, is that the kind of language Americans need to hear right now?”

McCain: “Well, listen, I've heard language from respected people who are staring at the abyss. I've, I've heard all kinds of, of things from people. I don't think we need to scare people. …”

And here's Couric pressing Palin on a claim that McCain is the right man to "reform government" and Wall Street.

Couric: “But he's been in Congress for 26 years. He's been chairman of the powerful Commerce Committee. And he has almost always sided with less regulation -- not more.”

Palin: “He's also known as a maverick though. Taking shots from his own party, and certainly taking shots from the other party. …”

Couric: “I'm just going to ask one more time, not to belabor the point -- specific example in his 26 years of pushing for more regulation.”

Palin: “I'll try to find you some, and I'll bring them to you.”

If ABC anchorman Charles Gibson showed Palin's limitations, Couric revealed the near-total lack of evidence behind the talking-point bromides and clichés Palin rattles off in TV interviews.

But it was prelude to the wrath of Letterman after McCain canceled an appearance on his show -- especially when Letterman found out that McCain was still doing an interview with Couric at CBS News.

“I’m more than a little disappointed by his behavior,” Letterman said of McCain's decision to cancel his appearance on the show and suspend his campaign until Congress passes a bailout plan.

“We’re suspending the campaign -- suspending it because there’s an economic crisis, or because the poll numbers are sliding?”

“You don’t suspend your campaign -- something about this stinks,” Letterman continued, using a phrase he would repeat over and over throughout the show. “Do you suspend your campaign? No, because that makes me think maybe there will be other things down the road, like if he’s in the White House, he might just suspend being president. I mean, we've got a guy like that now!”

Adding insult to injury, Letterman brought on MSNBC host and left-wing attack dog Keith Olbermann as the substitute guest for McCain.

During his chat with Olbermann, Letterman used the in-house CBS cameras and monitors to show McCain being readied for his interview with Couric on the set of the CBS Evening News.

“He doesn’t seem to be racing to the airport, does he?” Letterman said referring to McCain's call earlier in the day when he told Letterman he was canceling because "the economy is cratering" and he has to rush back to Washington to work on a Wall Street bailout plan.

“Hey John, I got a question! You need a ride to the airport?” Letterman yelled at the TV monitor as the in-house camera showed McCain talking to Couric.

The audience howled in delight at the merciless edge of Letterman's anti-McCain barbs. The comedian also repeatedly asked why McCain didn't send Palin in his place -- suggesting the GOP handlers were afraid that she couldn't handle it.

Meanwhile, most of the networks and cable channels said last night that their correspondents and crews were already in place in Oxford, Miss., for Friday night's scheduled debate, and they were going to stay put. In addition to Obama saying he wanted to have the debate, the chancellor at the University of Mississippi where the debate is to be held, said his institution is proceeding as if there will be debate.

McCain and Palin were not looking too good Wednesday under the unforgiving lights of TV news. But thanks mainly to Couric and Kaplan, it was a day when the industry did its job well and served the voters of a troubled nation with a revealing look at two if its candidates.

And then, Letterman piled on with the kind of non-stop, nasty, comedic needling no one can deliver quite like him.

(Photo courtesy of CBS Evening News with Katie Couric)

Posted by David Zurawik at 6:40 PM | Permalink | Comments (337)
        

One of the happiest developments in this increasingly partisan and hotly contested election is the fact that PBS' Jim Lehrer, the most trusted anchorperson on TV, will moderate the first presidential debate Friday night in Oxford, Miss.

If there is anyone in TV news who serves as a model for checking your ego at the dressing room door and trying to serve the public first when you are onstage, it's the 74-year-old newsman who will be at the helm of his 10th presidential debate when he stands between Senators Barack Obama and John McCain.

In an interview this week with The Baltimore Sun, Lehrer was crystal clear in his goals as moderator. He also talked about his health and concerns he has about journalists presenting ideologically charged commentary instead of verified facts and information to viewers -- especially during this once-in-a-lifetime election.

"The goal in the debate is to be a catalyst, really," Lehrer says. "It's about the candidates. It isn't about the moderator. It isn't about pressing the candidates. It's to make it possible for the people who are running for president to exchange their ideas rather than to bounce off mine."

"Fairness and the appearance of fairness are critical," he adds with emphasis, "because everything must appear to be absolutely straight and driven by the views of these people who want to be president rather than by some agenda that the moderator may have. This is not me saying, 'Hey I want to reveal this or I want do that.' This is a different purpose."

Lehrer, who moderated his first debate in 1988 between Michael Dukakis and George H.W. Bush, says the process has "changed dramatically" during the last two decades.

"The first one that I moderated included three other journalists on a panel, and the rule of engagement were very strict," he recalled. "You'd go from one journalist to the next asking a question, and there'd be one or two minutes for the response, and no follow-up. It was the same process that had been used in the first televised debate between John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon (1960)."

Lehrer says the "experimenting" with format began in 1992, and he was asked to help with some of it during a debate involving Bill Clinton, H. Ross Perot and George H.W. Bush in East Lansing, Mich. He describes Friday's format as "wide open" and “freewheeling."

"It's the first time that things have been really loosened up -- where the candidates can direct questions to each other. There will be a question that goes to both of them, and they'll have two minutes each to answer. But then, there's five minutes that is wide open afterward -- for them to speak to each other, or me, the moderator, to ask follow-ups, then go to another question, etc..  And there will be nine segments like over almost 90 minutes."

As to the questions he will ask, Lehrer said in our Tuesday afternoon conversation that he had already had them in hand: "I have drafted them all -- and I've shared them with nobody, cleared them with nobody." 

Nor did he share any with me. Nevertheless, I'll risk a prediction: Even though the debate is supposed to be limited to national security and foreign affairs, the economy will come up. Given the dire situation in which the country finds itself and the preoccupation most Americans rightfully have with their financial future, Lehrer will find a way to help citizens hear what these two men -- one of which will be charged with leading the nation out of crisis -- have to say about the economy.

As to his health after undergoing a heart valve procedure in April: "I'm feeling great," Lehrer says. "I have come back full strength plus or I would never have agreed to do this debate. I wouldn't be doing it if there was any lingering downside from my operation. It just worked perfectly. I feel good both physically and mentally. And I am delighted with how it all turned out."

And, finally, the newsman who has come to embody a journalism that seeks above all else to provide citizens with reliable information, weighed in on the movement among some cable news channels and other media operations toward highly partisan programming.

"I'm old fashioned-- I believe there is separation here," Lehrer said. "First, I'll tell you what happened. Then, I'll tell you the analysis of it. Then, I'll get you opinions from people to share. That's what it's all about. And when you cross those lines and you start blurring those lines, people don't know what you are and they don't know what to believe and whether to believe you at all."

(Above: Photo of Jim Lehrer moderating a 2004 debate courtesy of the NewsHour with Jim Lehrer)

Posted by David Zurawik at 6:40 PM | Permalink | Comments (15)
        

What a foolish move by the producers of Saturday Night Live to base a sketch ridiculing Republican presidential candidate John McCain on a suggestion from Al Franken, a former SNL writer-performer and Air America radio host who is now running for the U.S. Senate.

Talk about risking hard-won credibility and giving your critics a load of ammunition with one ill-advised and/or arrogant act.

Just as the show was riding a wave of top ratings for its season opener and feeling a cultural power that it hadn't known in years thanks in large part to Amy Poehler, Tina Fey and a once-in-a-lifetime presidential election, executive producer Lorne Michaels and writer Seth Myers feature a sketch on last week's show depicting McCain giving his stamp of approval to ads that outrageously and dishonestly attack his Democratic opponent Barack Obama. 

The satire is built around the boilerplate statement that runs at the end of political ads -- the one that has the candidate stating his or her name and saying he or she approved "this ad." The sketch shows Saturday Night Live performer Darrell Hammond as McCain recording commercials, and as he does so, the attacks in the ads mount outrageously with McCain giving his blessing to each and every vicious one.

It was't that funny in the first place. But it became a real problem when Franken's campaign spokeswoman told the Associated Press how Franken had suggested the idea to Michaels and then discussed it with Myers. How stupid was that?

Liberal activists like Franken might not get it, but here's a post by a conservative critic, Richard Vatz, at the Red Maryland blog. If nothing else, it shows how angry such a relationship between liberal partisans like Franken and the media makes conservatives. And the Franken-to-Michaels-to-Myers double play combination is excatly the kind of pattern that leads to conservatives making all-encompassing claims of media bias and conspiracies. And it is kind of hard to argue against evidence like this.

SNL is a comedy show, not a news operation, so it does not have to adhere to the same kind of high standards of impartiality. But there is no denying that like Jon Stewart on Comedy Central, SNL has come to have enormous impact of media and politics -- particularly during this presidential race. Remember the resonance of the sketch showing Obama getting easy treatment from the press while Hillary Clinton got hammered? The press went 180 degrees practically before the next week's show trying to refute the satirized version of itself shown on SNL.

Look, I think Franken is a brilliant satirist and author. Almost everything he writes makes he laugh -- and think. But once he started running for office, it was a different ballgame. He is not part of the media -- he is someone the media reports on, not collaborates with.

This SNL gaffe of using his suggestion to attack an opposition candidate only plays into all the trouble that Keith Olbermann, the gas bag of leftist rant, has caused for parent company NBC.

The network deserves every shot it is forced to take from the right in coming days. I can't remember a network playing as fast and loose with its credibility as NBC has in recent months since CBS let Dan Rather stonewall in the wake of Memogate. I wonder if NBC did lose its political and journalistic compass with the unexpected death of Tim Russert. CBS News is still trying to glue the pieces back together from the Rather debacle.

 (Above: photo of Al Franken from alfranken.com)

Posted by David Zurawik at 6:37 PM | Permalink | Comments (11)
        

I cannot remember an Emmy awards shows in which so many of the shows and people who deserved to win actually went home with trophies.

Start with AMC's Mad Men and the series creator, Baltimore-native Matt Weiner. Weiner won for best writing in a drama beating such competition as that of David Simon and Ed Burns of HBO's The Wire.

Then take Tina Fey and the series she created, NBC's 30 Rock. She won for best comedy writing, best comedy show and best lead actress in a comedy. Alec Baldwin won for best lead actor in a comedy series. Quite a sweep -- and a fine face-saving effort for all of network TV in a night otherwise largely dominated by cable.

And most of all, consider the historic accomplishment of the HBO miniseries John Adams becoming the most honored program in TV history surpassing Angels in America, Roots and Eleanor and Franklin, a 1976 miniseries about FDR and Eleanor Roosevelt, in Emmys. As my story in Monday's Sun says, it was a night for the record books -- even if the telecast itself was one of the sorriest ever.

And all three productions speak to the way in which great TV not only entertains, but also connects with the most important forces in American life. Just as Roots and Angels in America spoke to such powerful historical and social concerns as slavery and AIDS, so did John Adams arrive last spring just as the nation was starting to grapple with the question of what kind of president we want to try and lead us through one of the most challenging periods in our history.

(Please make sure and check out the previous post -- the first part of an interview with Mad Men staff writer and Baltimore native Robin Veith who was nominated with Weiner for another episode, "The Wheel." Veith was onstage with Weiner at the end of the night when Mad Men took top honors. I'll have more of my interview with her throughout the week here. But she really was kind enough to take us inside the show.)

Beyond the series and writers listed above, here are some other most deserving winners:

Dianne Weist as best supporting actress in a drama for In Treatment (HBO). Glenn Close as best lead actress in a drama for Damages (FX). Kirk Ellis for the teleplay of John Adams (HBO). Tom Wilkinson as best supporting actor in a miniseries as Benjamin Franklin in John Adams (HBO).

Jeremy Piven as best supporting actor in a comedy for Entourage (HBO). Laura Linney and Paul Giamatti as best lead actress and actor in a miniseries as Abigail and John Adams in John Adams (HBO). The Colbert Report for best writing in comedy or variety series and The Daily Show with Jon Stewart for best comedy or variety show, respectively.

Now, look at those shows and performers and tell me that TV is a boob tube or the "vast wasteland" blah, blah  blah -- or whatever else uninformed snobs want to call it. I think this year's Emmys make the case that TV is not only America's primary storyteller, but thanks to cable, it has become home to the best and brightest talents in all of popular culture. This year, the Emmys did the medium proud.

And one last thought. How about this comment reported at The Envelope Web site involving Weiner and his feelings about the fact that none of his cast members were asked to be presenters even though it was the drama with the most nominations:

Mad Men creator Mathew Weiner caused gasps back in the press room when he answered a journalist's question about what it felt like being the first basic cable show ever to win best series, the Los Angeles-based Envelope reported.

"I'm surprised that there is such segregation and caste system at the Emmys," he said. "I have this amazing cast, and none of them was asked to present awards tonight."

I could not agree more. What, Jon Hamm and January Jones aren't glamorous enough for the Emmys? Good for Weiner. 

 (Above: NBC Photo of Tina Fey)

Posted by David Zurawik at 12:12 AM | Permalink | Comments (7)
        

Sunday night, the 34-year-old rookie screenwriter was in the audience of the Nokia Theatre in Los Angeles as one of the nominees for best writing in a drama series as co-author of last year's season finale with creator Matt Weiner. It was her first writing credit, and it was up for an Emmy. She didn't win. Weiner took home the Emmy for another script he wrote solo, "Smoke Gets in Your Eyes." But he called out to Veith as his former writers' assistant and now co-writer in his acceptance speech. And, most of all, she was onstage at the Nokia standing right behind Weiner as they made history with Mad Men becoming the first basic cable series to win as best drama in the final moments of the telecast.

We had a cover story profile of Veith in the Sunday Sun Arts & Entertainment section, but there was so much of the interview with her that we couldn't use that we thought we'd share some here at the blog.

Here's Robin talking about the thinking behind the shift from 1960 in Season One to 1962 this year. It grew out of question asking where the idea for the arrival of the Xerox machine in the season opener came from -- and who thought of putting it in Peggy's office, a brilliant choice:

The idea to put the Xerox machine in Peggy's office was actually kind of a combo effort. But it was Matt's idea to have the Xerox machine arrive in the first place, because one of the things we were really trying to do in the first episode was to tell the audience this is a different world. It's 1962. It's not the same as 1960. And it's not Camelot. I mean, people refer to it as Camelot, but actually people were scared.

Veith later picked up the 1960 vs. 1962 thread again:

There really wasn't much going on in 1962 historically. When we were doing our research, we found there weren't nearly as many public events in 1962 as there were in 1960. Matt was saying that he thinks it was referred to as Camelot in part because nothing happened. It wasn't that it was such a great time, it's just that people were bored. And so, I think out of that boredom, you get a lot of tension. Because when things are that quiet, you're just for the bomb, so to speak, to come.

Here she talks about the way the staff approaches the period research. Historians take note of what Weiner says about point of view:

We have one consultant, Bob Levinson, who actually worked at [the ad agency] BBDO in the '60s, so he's sort of our real gauge. But other than that, for all of us writers, there is just a tremendous amount of research and reading that goes into it.

And it has to be very selective research, too, because one of the other precepts that Matt set up, which I think is brilliant, is that you have to look at the research through the eyes of what would our people [characters] know. I mean, so much is written about 1962 in retrospect through government documents and what was really going on. You can't use any of that, because there is no way that our people would know that. ...

And there is some fun to be had with misconceptions -- characters thinking things are one way when they weren't. And there's fun to be had because the audience does know what happened. That's the great thing about doing a period show: Everyone knows what happened, so it's just a matter of finding a very interesting way of telling our people about it."

With "The Wheel," there actually was a lot of discussion because we hadn't been picked up yet for a second season, we didn't know if this was going to be the last episode of Mad Men ever, and Matt feels and lives all of his characters, so it was a very emotional time for him -- as it was for all of us.

There was a lot of discussion over where to leave Don [lead character Don Draper]. Matt actually had the speech Don gives on nostalgia written several weeks before we actually knew what the episode was. He just sort of spouted off while we were working in the middle of another script. He said, 'Just take this down, I'm going to use this somewhere.' He just basically did the Kodak pitch. I mean, he didn't even have a product for it yet. He just wanted to talk about nostalgia, and then Josh Weldon came up with the Kodak projector, which was just brilliant.

But Matt just wanted Don to really feel the claws of his family drawing him back in. So then the debate became so what happens when he goes home. And it was a long running debate about whether he does make it home to reconnect with his family -- and how to make that a bittersweet ending. Or, does he miss it. And in the end, as you can see by the episode, we kind of did both. There were so many arguments over it, but I really love how it ended up.

 We had a lot of fun throughout the first season with images and certain shots that maybe nobody notices, but we enjoy it. Like all through Season One, there's sort of horseshoe theme if you look for it. In "5G," Don comes home with an award, and it's got a horseshoe on it. And then when he walks out of the room, it falls down, which is like a very, very bad omen. And then, of course, in Korea, the real Don Draper was killed with a toilet seat, which was in the horseshoe formation.

And then there's Don telling Rachel in his most candid moment ever, I think, about his family. And he says his father was kicked in the face by a horse. And there are specific shots like this one from pilot that's shot down from the stairs of Don walking into the house, and we use that as sort of a keystone many times through Season One and Season Two. It's actually the scene you see in "The Wheel" at the end is one of the shots from the pilot of Don walking in. So, we have a lot of fun with mirroring things like that along the way."

We try to stay away from reading the analysis because you don't want it to color your thinking. But after my first solo episode ("The New Girl"), I just couldn't help myself, and I looked at a couple of blogs. And the one that I thought was absolutely fascinating talked about a moment in the episode where Freddy Rumson comes out and plays music on the zipper of his fly.

And someone had written like two full pages of research on zippers and the specific pants that Freddy was wearing to see if he was researching a new product and whether it was a plastic zipper or a metal zipper. And I was like, 'Hey, that's just something really funny that a friend of mine does,' and I just threw it in the script. ... And there's no higher form flattery, really, if someone spent that amount of time looking into zippers, because my friend does a really funny trick, and I thought it would be appropriate to the script.

Here's thinking good wishes for Robin Veith Sunday night at the Emmys...

(Above: Mad Men production photos courtesy of AMC)

Posted by David Zurawik at 7:23 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)
        

This weekend at Z on TV, I'll be posting portions of an interview with Robin Veith, the Baltimore native and Mad Men staff writer. She's our Sunday cover story in the Arts & Entertainment section of the Sun, but we were only able to use about one-third of what she had to say in the print version.

So, I'll be blogging this weekend with some of her thoughts on Hollywood writers reading fan blogs, hidden themes of Mad Men, and what she really meant to say with the scene in "The New Girl" that features Freddy Rumson playing Mozart on his pants zipper.

Veith is up for an Emmy in best writing for a drama series as co-author of last year's season finale, "The Wheel," which she wrote with series creator Matt Weiner.

And then, tune in late Sunday night for post-Emmys blogging at Z on TV.

See you then.

Z

Posted by David Zurawik at 5:35 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
        

In a post last week, I voiced concerns about PBS presenting talk show host Bill Moyers alongside journalists like Jim Lehrer and Gwen Ifill in promotional spots for its election coverage 2008.

I said that it is more important than ever during this election of a lifetime that voters know where they can get verified factual information on the candidates and their campaigns. I pointed to Lehrer as the embodiment of a school of journalism that seeks above all else to provide such trustworthy data as its primary democratic duty, while Moyers, on the other hand, is an ideologue and propagandist promoting a partisan position.

As much as he decries talk show hosts like Bill O’Reilly or Sean Hannity on the right, Moyers is more like them than he is like Lehrer. (If you are reading this on a website other than baltimoresun.com and want to see the full post, click here.)

There was considerable reaction. The best by far came from Michael Getler, the PBS ombudsman, who offered as even-handed and thoughtful an analysis of the issues raised as one could hope for. See it here.

I was hoping to leave the discussion there. I felt like I did my part to say that Moyers should perhaps be on MSNBC with Keith Olbermann and Rachel Maddow rather than PBS with Lehrer and Ifill -- or at least viewers should judge his show that way. But I have since been directed to an excellent book that recently came out in paperback that offers a glimpse of Moyers, the liberal ideologue, in action -- something several commentators asked for in response to my original post.

The book is titled The Argument: Billionaires, Bloggers and the Battle to Remake Democratic Politics. And its author is Matthew Bai, who writes about national politics for the New York Times Magazine.

In the book which seems like must-reading for anyone hoping to understand new media and Democratic politics today, Bai reports on Moyers attending a secretive gathering of “progressives” who were trying to build a liberal media organization to compete with the right wing operation David Brock had described in his book The Republican Noise Machine.

According to Bai’s book, which recently came out in paperback, Moyers not only attended a gathering in 2005 that included billionaires like George Soros, Hollywood money men like Rob Reiner and “political operatives” like John Podesta and David Brock, he helped the group craft a strategy to combat conservatives in the media.

One Moyers’ suggestion involved “creating a ‘nerve center’ that could book progressives on TV news shows,” according to the book.

Here's a PBS talk show host telling political operatives how to manipulate bookings on TV talk shows. That sounds like a major conflict of interest for someone who self-identifies as a journalist. But in trying to be fair, I e-mailed Bai asking him if Moyers’ actions as he reported them seemed to be those of a journalist or an activist and ideologue.

"I have to admit, I was surprised that when the book came out, no one seemed to care that he had been an active participant in that conference,” Bai wrote in an e-mail response. “I did think it was odd. I tried to ask him about it, but he declined to be interviewed, which I also thought was odd. I admire Bill Moyers, for sure, but I would think that any journalist would have been profoundly troubled by the level of secrecy and the total lack of transparency."

Posted by David Zurawik at 2:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)
        

The Nielsen Company went inside the huge TV audiences for the Republican and Democratic conventions and came up with some compelling demographic breakouts on who was watching what.

The divides by race, age, education and income at the end of this post are worth some serious thought. I admit I did not think the audience was this divided. I wonder what it says about our politics, nation and the upcoming election.

Here are some of the findings:

Nearly two thirds of all households (64.5 percent or 73.2 million homes) tuned into at least one of the 2008 political conventions. This equals about 120.1 million people.

Viewership levels for the two conventions were essentially tied, with about half of all households watching each one. 15 percent of all households tuned to just the Republican convention, and 15.7 percent tuned to just the Democratic gathering. Another 33.9 percent of all households tuned to both conventions.

Homes that watched both conventions were more likely to be headed by someone 65 years or older. They also completed the most formal education: nearly one-third (32.3 percent) graduated from college.

Homes that only tuned to the Republican gathering were more likely to have higher incomes ($100,000 or more), to have a larger household size (four or more persons), to be white, to own a DVR, and to have a head of household with higher education (four or more years of college) and aged 35-54.

Homes that only tuned in to the Democratic convention were more likely to have a lower income (under $20,000 annually), to have a smaller household size (two persons), to be African American, and to have a head of household who is younger (under 35) and who has less education (one to three years of college).

All data and description of the audiences comes from Nielsen. See full findings and analysis here

(Associated Press photo of the GOP Convention by  Stephan Savoia)

Posted by David Zurawik at 10:58 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)