In an earlier post Tuesday that raised questions about gatekeeping in the world of new media, I said I was trying to get an explanation from CNN of its role in the Rick-Astley-is-dead hoax Monday night.

The key point to understand in the explanation from CNN spokeswoman Jennifer Martin is that information posted on iReport.com only is carried on such outlets as CNN and cnn.com after it is vetted. That means gatekeepers and filters have been applied to anything that appears on the cable news channel CNN or the cnn.com online site -- but not on iReport. com.

That's a big difference, as CNN is relying on what it calls the iReport "community" to police iReport.com. Once something on iReport.com is vetted and found suitable for CNN or cnn.com, it then carries the stamp, "On CNN," according to Martin. The Astley material did not make it onto any of the CNN platforms.

Here is what Martin had to say, and, again, the distinction between cnn.com and iReport.com is key. As to her final point about how the iReport community functioned as its own watchdog in this case, I have to say I do not trust any online community to ultimately police itself. I still want professional journalists serving as filters.

Clearly the self-policing did not work in time to keep iReport from being part of the problem for about two hours (before the phony post was taken down in the early stages of the Astley hoax):

The iReport.com community worked exactly the way it was supposed to - a registered user uploaded a submission; and the community began commenting and questioning the authenticity of the report. Based on the community flagging, we explored the story further. Once we confirmed the submission to be false - and due to the nature of the erroneous report - the content was removed from the site in accordance with the community guidelines.  Per our terms of service we disabled the user's account, which incidentally was created less than 24 hours before posting the false submission.

For CNN, this situation simply underscores the value of verifying the authenticity of iReports before we use them in CNN branded reporting.  It also underscores how effective the iReport.com community is in policing itself. 

 

Posted by David Zurawik at 5:09 PM | Permalink | Comments (7)
Categories: New media
        

Last week, I wrote about AP having to correct a report it published saying Jon and Kate Gosselin had been living apart for the last two years. It troubled me to see a news organization that fomed the bedrock of fact-based journalism losing its way for a moment amid the Jon & Kate frenzy and all the enthusiam over the near-instantaneous news cycles made possible with the growth of social media, iReports and Twitter.

I wondered if anyone was acting as gatekeeper in the mainstream media any more. Well, here we go again with the Rick Astley is dead story that swept across cyberspace last night.

The 43-year-old singer who gained online noteriety singing "Never Gonna Give You Up" is not dead. It was just a hoax and a weird replay of the online geeks' game of "Rickrolling" people online. (You click on a link thinking it is going to take you to, say, BBC News,and instead it takes you to a video of Astley singing "Never Gonna Give You Up." Aparently setting up a Rickroll is what passes for a life for some people).

But what matters with this false story -- and all the others about such celebrities as Jeff Goldblum and George Clooney last week in the wake of the real deaths of Farrah Fawcett, Ed McMahon and Michael Jackson -- is how susceptible we have become to bad information sweeping through our lives.

And it is happening hand in glove with the indiscrimate celebration of social media and Twitter. I have long felt the chance to exploit their lightning speed was going to prove irresistible to some. And I am happy to be called a dinosaur if saying this will help mainstream media professionals think about the larger issues of gatekeeping and responsible dissemination of information even as we embrace and learn to use the new media wisely.

So far, the consensus seems to eb that the Astley report started on CNN's iReports and that what gave it authenticity was a fake AP story in the report. AP certainly bears no blame for someone faking a story and passing it off as authentic. As for CNN, I messaged the cable channel, and am waiting to hear what it has to say.

Last week, I interviewed Lila King, the senior producer in charge of iReports, for a piece in the Sun on how it vets reports out of Iran. Maybe I should have been looking at the vetting process for reports on dead-not dead celebrities.

Posted by David Zurawik at 10:27 AM | Permalink | Comments (10)
Categories: New media
        

Garrison Keillor: The Man on the Radio in the Red Shoes, an American Masters PBS documentary about one of the nation's most distinctive and beloved humorists, doesn't debut until Wednesday night. But I am writing about this remarkable American Master film now to give you time to clear your schedule or set your TiVo to make sure you do not miss it.

Nobody does biography like American Masters, the PBS signature series founded by Baltimore native Susan Lacy. In recent years, some entries in the series have a felt a little rushed and thin, but when this series gets it right the result is stunning. American Masters has not gotten a biography this right since its dazzling film on Leonard Bernstein that Lacy herself directed.

The producer and director here is Peabody and Emmy Award winner Peter Rosen, and he and his crew foillowed Keillor and his Prairie Home Companion crew around the country for most of a year to make the documentary. The power of this film is in the revealing -- and even transcendent -- moments that Rosen captures with his lens.

One such moment involves a sumertime stage performance ofthe  Prairie Home Companion radio show on a converted softball field in a small Minnesota town that Keillor himself compares to his beloved Lake Wobegone. As the performance gets underway, it starts to rain and a sea of embrellas sprouts up in front of the stage. But instead of remaining on the covered stage, Keillor walks out into the rain, among the the audience members sitting in folding chairs and on the ground and starts singing, "You Are My Sunshine."

The Depression-era song is moving enough in its own right, but the image and the sound of this unlikley looking entertainer standing among his fans, drenched to the bone, yet happily singing away is inspirational. And you can see his effect as audience members -- smiling joyfully as they momentarily forget the rain and sing along. His power is as palpable as that of a 1920s evangelist at a tent show out on the plains.

But Keillor is not selling religious hokum, he's selling an abolutely singular and inspired mix of smalltown nostalgia, love of the nation, irony, whimsy and keen insight into the human heart. I suppose the only apt comparison is to Mark Twain, but Twain could not deliver the kind of warm and winning music Keillor does with his hand-picked band of Prairie Home Companion musicians.

The final scene of the film rattles around in the heart and brain long after the final credits roll. As Keillor delivers a meditation in voiceover on the role of kindness in the American life and the beauty of ordinary experience, Rosen shows him in a perfectly sculpted montage of audience scenes. In each, he is leading the crowd in singing, "America The Beautiful."

The final moment of the film finds him at a state fair show standing in the middle of a crowd with only a lone spotlight up in the grandstand casting its long arc of illumination through the black prairie darkness to lluminate his image on the infield. He is holding a microphone in one hand, as his other conducts the audience in song.

It is one of the richest and most elevating moments of non-fiction film that I have seen -- an image of solidarity between audience and artist, and community in the face of all that deep, rich, deadly and dark space once known as the frontier that so defines us as a people. If you can keep from weeping as you watch, you are made of sterner stuff than me.

The film airs at 8 p.m. Wednesday on MPT, and will be released on DVD July 7 from docuramafilms.

Posted by David Zurawik at 8:41 AM | Permalink | Comments (6)
Categories: PBS
        

In 25 years of writing about TV award shows, I have never seen one with the energy of Sunday’s BET Awards Show. Refashioned in the wake of Thursday’s death of Michael Jackson into a tribute to him, the live telecast brilliantly tapped into the wellspring of admiration, love, hurt and shock over his death that engulfed the show business community – particularly among Jackson’s fellow black performers.

Race was a part of the energy in Sunday’s tribute – let’s not ignore it. Host Jamie Foxx certainly put it out there on the table from his first words.

Following a show-stopper of an opening that featured New Edition doing a medley of Jackson 5 songs as images of the Jacksons flashed on giants screens behind them, Foxx opened the event by telling the audience at Los Angeles’ Shrine Auditorium, "We want to celebrate this black man. He belongs to us. We shared him with everybody else."

Foxx also indicated his disdain for so-called experts who had been talking about Jackson’s life since in the mainstream media since Thursday: "It didn’t make no difference to me what his nose looked like… I knew what he sounded like," Foxx said with an edge.

Foxx was clearly inspired by the memory of Jackson on a number of levels. He wore various outfits as homage to the ones worn by Jackson in his most famous music videos, like the black leather of "Billie Jean." He did a moonwalk across the stage – and it wasn’t half bad. And repeatedly, Foxx energized the audience by reminding, cajoling, demanding, "Come on, this is for Michael."

 And it worked – the audience was constantly on its feet and rocking to the music pouring off the stage.

The memory of Michael Jackson was everywhere. Joe Jackson, Michael’s father, sat in the front row flanked by the Rev. Al Sharpton, and two seats down from Beyonce. When Beyonce won the BET Award as best female R & B artist, she said, "I want to thank Michael Jackson for being my teacher and my hero. When Beyonce performed, she included a verse of "In the Arms of an Angel," and it was clear that she was singing about Michael Jackson.

Ne-Yo brought the hall to a reverential hush for his tender rendition of the Jackson ballad, "Lady in My Life."

And then came Keri Hilson dressed in tights and a leather jacket bringing some of Michael Jackson’s most inspired music video dance moves back to life with an androgyny that would have surely met with Michael Jackson’s approval. Get over to YouTube now, and check it out.

"When we heard the news of Michael Jackson’s passing, we knew immediately we were going to have to change the nature of this show," BET president Debra Lee told the Shrine and TV audiences. "It was a labor love. Michael was truly a musical deity."

The closing moments included a tearful message of thanks by Janet Jackson: "To you, Michael is an icon. To us, Michael is family. And he will forever live in all our hearts. Thank you for all your love."

And then, Foxx and Ne-Yo led the hall in singing "I'll Be There" as the cameras showed face after face streaked with tears.

The production was not perfect. Foxx plugged his upcoming tour twice too much, and he told a really stupid joke about unprotected sex.

At times, the telecast had an ad-lib, ragged feel. On one occasion, Foxx clearly did not know that the telecast was back from commercial, and he was on camera. He asked several times if they were back, before the producer got word to him that indeed they were and millions had been listening to him testing the microphone and asking if they were live. There were also a few profanities the censors missed.

But, in the end, who really cares? Such production gaffes only added to the energy of the broadcast.

"There’s a beautiful energy that’s circulating in this room," said Alicia Keys, as she accepted an award as Humanitarian of the Year. "There’s a certain spirit that’s in this room. And I know whose spirit is. I think we all know whose spirit is in this room."

There was a beautiful energy and spirit in Sunday’s telecast, too. BET has often failed its audience in recent years. But Sunday night, Black Entertainment Television responded to a cultural moment that millions of Americans were still feeling intensely, and BET got it right.

Posted by David Zurawik at 11:23 PM | Permalink | Comments (26)
Categories: TV and Pop Culture, TV and race
        

HBO continues on its erratic journey of trying to find winning Sunday-night dramas in the post-Sopranos era with the premiere of Hung Sunday night at 10.

The series is smarter  than its title, but not nearly wise enough to be judged a keeper based on the episodes made available for preview.

Hung is the chronicle of a former high school sports star, Ray Drecker (Thomas Jane), now working as a third-rate high school basketball coach in suburban Detroit. His wife leaves him for a plastic surgeon. His kids move out after a fire that wrecks the house he inherited from his parents. Living in a tent on his front lawn and increasingly losing his grip, he takes the words of a motivational speaker to heart and decides to try and make a new life based on exploiting his "best tool." That asset is the size of a certain body part referenced in the slang title.

The title and the core conceit of the drama is a mistake by the creators and HBO in trying too hard to take advantage of the edge premium cable has over network TV in language and sex.

But this is not a silly or stupid series. From its opening images of an American flag and the wrecking ball slamming into Detroit's once hallowed Tiger Stadium, it wants to be about more than sex. It wants to be about a lost America and the downsizing of the American Dream for middle class characters like Drecker. He is supposed to stand for all the middle-aged Rust Belt men bewildered by the loss of their union jobs, pensions and futures.

That is profound stuff -- if only the series did a better job of capturing it. The idea that all he has to sell is himself is an interesting one intellectually, but it doesn't play very well onscreen.

Jane, who was born in Baltimore, does a nice job in hitting the difficult notes of this comic drama, but the scripts don't succeed in covincing us of his sexual power.

Still, Hung might work as a male fantasy for some viewers as Drecker finds himself on the road of prostitution with a failed-poet-turned-pimp played winningly by Jane Adams as his hapless guide.

It's worth a look, but it is not a series to build your viewing night around.

Posted by David Zurawik at 11:28 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)
Categories: HBO
        

There was big news on Thursday night, and CNN was far and away the cable channel most Americans tuned to.

The 24/7 news channel, which usually trails its opinion-dominated competitors on Fox and MSNBC in weeknight viewing, doubled and tripled MSNBC's audience at times as viewers sought information on the deaths of Michael Jackson and Farrah Fawcett. Just as it was during last fall's election, CNN is still clearly the channel of choice when viewers want reliable, fact-based information on major events.

MSNBC, meanwhile, which no longer bothers to even cover news on the weekends, was the most ignored major news channel from 6 p.m. to 2 a.m., the Nielsen window of measurement. The NBC sister channel also finished a deep last in prime time -- the time period in which it rose and is now starting to fall with a slumping Keith Olbermann.

From 6 p.m. to 2 a.m. Thursday, CNN had an overall audience of 3.16 million, while Fox had 2.34 million, and MSNBC had 1.5 million, according to the Nielsen Media Company.

In prime time (8 to 11 p.m.): CNN had 3.9 million viewers, Fox had 2.9 million, and MSNBC had only 1.1 million.

In addition to highlighting viewer trust in CNN when it comes to news, the ratings on Thursday night also show that viewers clearly prefer Fox as well on major events to MSNBC.

Posted by David Zurawik at 2:06 PM | Permalink | Comments (13)
Categories: Michael Jackson
        

MTV is the place be Friday night if you are looking to make a TV connection to feelings of loss for Michael Jackson. Since the announcement of the singer's death on Thursday, the one-time music video powerhouse has been using its vast archive of Jackson music videos to create a profoudn Tv space of mourning and celebration. Read my review here.

But the Jackson beat will continue throughout the weekend on many channels and networks.

Here are some of the highlights and potential lowlights. That's the way it is with popular culture at moments like this -- not all of it is great.

Friday night at 8, TV one shows Michael Jackson: 30th Anniversary Celebration produced by David Gest. It will replay at 11 p.m.

Friday night at 10, NBC will replay Michael Jackson: King of Pop, the Dateline special it aired Thursday.

Posted by David Zurawik at 5:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (7)
Categories: Michael Jackson
        

MTV is the place to be as the cable channel extends its non-stop, wall-to-wall Michael Jackson tribute with a stunning array of Jackson music videos and music performances though 8 p.m. Friday. What's going on at MTV in the wake of Jackson's death is nothing short of a profound cultural experience.

In addition to the endless stream of music videos, there are cut-ins from mtvnews.com featuring music journalist Kurt Loder who started at the cable channel in the 1980s. He brings instant credibility and history. There is also a Twitter crawl across the bottom of the screen with fan thoughts and tributes for a strong new-media, multi-media thread of consciousness.

But it's the music videos that really resurrect the greatness and spirit of Jackson's work. If you are near a TV and feeling the loss of Jackson, get over to MTV for comfort, solace and, perhaps, even  a melancholy re-connection with your own past. This is televisual collective mourning -- and celebration --at its best.

(Pictured Michael Jackson with his 2006 MTV Award)

As the music video for "You Are Not Alone" played, a tweet just moved across the screen saying, "I feel like part of my childhood died."

That encapsulates exactly what's happening in a shared-history sense on MTV today: A generation that grew up with Jackson and his music videos on MTV returns for this day of remembering and mourning. And the artist's music and performance are at the heart of it as they should be. The synergy and energy on MTV today are awesome.

I cannot praise MTV enough. Like so many one-time media enities, MTV is not what it used to be these days as new technology and changing viewer habits ravage former giants. In fact, the channel had a large layoff of staff this very week.

But the people who are still employed at the downsized MTV understood this profound cultural moment and their channel's inside track to the hearts, minds and memories of fans looking for a place to mourn Jackson. Making the decision Thursday to go wall-to-wall with their vast music video library was brilliant. This was the one place on TV that you could experience the greatness of Jackson rather than hear experts talk about it to TV anchor faces.

The music video, "They Don't Care About Us" is playing onscreen as I write this, a tweet says, "...we are mourning our own generataion's childhood." Jackson is soaring across the screen in this throbbing Third-World vision by director Spike Lee.

All praise to MTV. This is a transcendent TV moment.

Posted by David Zurawik at 1:37 PM | Permalink | Comments (14)
Categories: Michael Jackson
        

The Nielsen Media Company is reporting that online talk about the death Michael Jackson is more intense than it was for the historic inauguration of President Barack Obama.

Here's a link to the actual numbers from the national audience measurement service -- including a list of the Top 10 TV shows involving Michael Jackson. It's a fascinating list topped by an ABC report from Martin Bashir and a 60 Minutes interview by the late Ed Bradley.

http://blog.nielsen.com/nielsenwire/online_mobile/michael-jackson-news-dominates-web-buzz/

Posted by David Zurawik at 12:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (8)
Categories: Michael Jackson
        

The death of Michael Jackson has driven traffic on CNN's iReport site to record levels.

The program set up in 2006 to encourage viewers around the world to become citizen journalists filing videos and reports to CNN received 660 iReports in the 6 and 1/2  or so hours between the announcement of Jackson's death and midnight Thursday (the internal measuring device used by CNN only counts midnight to midnight).

A total of 29 were approved for air on CNN and posting on cnn.com after going through a vetting process that I write about in my column in the arts section of Sunday's Sun. (The Sunday piece focuses on user generated content and Iran.)

One of the most timely pieces received in the immediate wake of Jackson's death was a video of Times Square as the announcement was first posted high above the crowd. It is the only video I have seen so far of that moment in time, and it offers an evocative sense of the stunned reaction. This is exactly the kind of thing citizen journalism can offer -- a record of an important moment captured by someone in the right place at the right time before the mainstream press gets there.

CNN has received more total iReports in response to the inauguration of President Barack Obama  and the contested election in Iran June 12th. But a spokeswoman said the channel is checking to see what kind of traffic those events did in a comparable time period.

Lila King, the senior producer in charge of the iReports operation, said in an email response Friday: "While Michael Jackson's life involved tragedy and controversy as well as success and inspiration, the iReport.com community is expressing its grief through very thoughtful contributions, celebrating his life and impact. With Michael Jackson's death, iReport.com has become a virtual scrapbook of memories from people all around the world."

Many of iReports videos were tributes from from fans. They have been airing Friday on CNN, and have added a sense of authenticity to reports and analysis by correspondents and experts as to how Jackson's audience is processing the news of his death at 50.

This is once place where user generated content via new media has added texture and even depth to traditional reporting on a cultural event.

Posted by David Zurawik at 11:39 AM | Permalink | Comments (4)
Categories: Michael Jackson
        

Actress Farrah Fawcett, who was launched into instant pop culture stardom in 1976 with a best-selling wall poster and a featured role in a new ABC series Charlie's Angels, is dead at 62. She was a TV presence in our lives right to the end.

Fawcett, who battled anal cancer for several years, was seen last month in an NBC documentary that she herself produced and helped tape with a digital camera. The film, Farrah's Story, which chronicled her struggle with the disease, was a ratings success for the network, and she vowed to continue with a second TV documentary.

More than any other actress I knew -- and I first interviewed her in 1976 for a story on that poster -- Fawcett was a creature of the medium. It made her famous, and I was not surprised to see her final days depicted in a self-produced TV special. Nor was it surprising to hear from her longtime companion, Ryan O'Neal, that as sick as she was, the first thing Fawcett asked on the morning after her special aired was how it did in the ratings.

(Pictured: Farrah Fawcett as she appeared in 1977 ABC publicity photo) 

Fawcett's battle with cancer was to be the featured topic Thursday night in a Barbara Walters special on ABC's 20/20. In the report O'Neal tells Walters that Fawcett had finally agreed to marry him after years of declining his proposals and that a wedding was in the works. The two have a grown son. The Barbara Walters special, which had been scheduled for more than a week, will air Thursday at 10 p.m.

The famous poster of Fawcett, showing her in a swimsuit and highlighting her incredibly long blonde hair, set sales records in the fall of 1976, and helped launch an industry of such celebrity posters that the TV networks used to promote their sexiest stars and series. 

At the time, the poster, which made Fawcett an instant pop icon of the decade, was credited with helping Charlie's Angels, a frothy ABC production about three gorgeous women who worked for a mysterious older man, become a ratings hit for ABC. Fawcett dolls and T-shirts followed the posters.

But Fawcett, whose career is defined by a constant strugggle to prove she was as talented as beautiful, walked off the hit series after just one season to make what she described as serious feature films. Lawsuits ensued, and she eventually settled with ABC and producer Aaron Spelling by agreeing to appear on a limited basis in the series over the next two seasons.

Fawcett never did become a major film star. Typical of her feature film career is the first production she did after leaving Charlie's Angels, titled Somebody Killed Her Husband. It was a mildly amusing, but mostly bland comic mystery starring Fawcett and Jeff Bridges.

But she did succeed in the 1983 off-Broadway production of Extremities, and earned a Golden Globe for her performance in the film version.

She also appeared in two high-concept made-for-TV docu-dramas playing Barbara Hutton in Poor, Little Rich Girl, and Beatte Klarfeld in Nazi Hunter, both for NBC. her work in the 1989 mini-series, Small Sacrifices, was rewarded with an Emmy.

The dramatic performance of her life, though, came in the 1984 NBC made-for-TV movie, The Burning Bed, in which she portrayed a victim of domestic abuse. The role was exactly the kind of serious and non-glamorous opportunity she had long sought, and she won an Emmy for her work.

The Burning Bed is still one of the highest-rated and most acclaimed made-for-TV movies in the history of the medium, and it was her presence as star and determination as executive producer that got this socially-conscious film made.

In the end, Fawcett was a person out of her times -- or at least the times Hollywood wanted her to be in.

Born in Corpus Christi, Texas, in 1947, she was a teen beauty queen invited to try her luck in Hollywood. In 1973, she married Lee Majors, then a TV action-adventure star, and was known as Farrah Fawcett-Majors when her career took off in 1976.

The men running Hollywood in those days were of the World War II generation, and despite the women's movement starting to transform American homes and workplaces, they still thought of bathing suits and pin-up girls when they saw a woman of Fawcett's beauty. And she rebelled against it, which led to a career of ups and downs, with many in the industry perfectly willing to write her off as she aged.

But Fawcett fought against normal concepts of aging as well. In her late 40s, she posed for Playboy magazine, and set sales record for that publication -- well past the age of its other models. But it was bittersweet for her to have to use her body instead her talent to capture the popular imagination for another fleeting moment.

The truth is that she was not a great actress -- let's be honest even at this time of death when truth is usually cast aside for inflated praise. But she was better than Hollywood wanted to let her be -- and she achieved the kind of success she did in The Burning Bed because of her refusal to be pigeon-holed and totally defined only by her good looks. There is integrity in that.

Posted by David Zurawik at 12:57 PM | Permalink | Comments (17)
Categories: Network TV
        

Let's make one thing clear right from the start: ABC News did not give President Barack Obama a free pass in its prime-time special Wednesday night to sell his plan for a radical overhaul of the health care system.

There were people in the town hall setting who asked pointed questions, and if you listened very closely, it was obvious after a while that Obama did not have any very good answers when it came to specifics. Furthermore, anchorman Charles Gibson, who moderated the discussion, asked solid follow-up questions of the president.

But, ultimately none of that mattered much, because the majority of viewers can't or don't listen very closely when such vast amounts of information, opinion and statistics are thrown around as they were Wednesday night on ABC. Television does not work like that. In the manner that TV does work, Obama had his way from early morning to latenight on ABC Wednesday to push his agenda for massive social change on healthcare. In short, he owned ABC's airwaves.

The president and his communication experts know that one of TV's deepest truths is to keep it simple. And Wednesday, they followed the same straightforward TV formula they used to sell their plans to radically transform the banking and auto industries earlier in the year.

It started on Good Morning America where Diane Sawyer asked plenty of well-researched and pointed questions ranging from how the government would pay for a new health care plan, to who would determine how care would be allocated. And while Obama's lips moved and sounds came out of his mouth in response, he answered almost none of her questions with hard specifics.

But that's part of his strategy -- few specifics as he creates the appearance of an overwhelming consensus on the need for quick and vast change. He held firm to one set of talking points that he hit over and over in almost every answer.

They go like this: We are in a crisis and the system is on the point of melting down altogether. Big changes have to be made fast or things are going to get much worse. I have a plan. Let's not argue about specifics now -- we'll work that out as we go along with the help and advice of the best experts. And I know who those experts are -- trust me.

That was what he said about the banking and auto industries, and that is he told Sawyer about health care Wednesday morning. It was also his message throughout the town hall special that extended from prime time into Nightline during late night. 

And in that light, ABC News gave away the store in its very first question of the prime time special when Gibson asked all the participants in the so-called town hall meeting: How many of you agree with the president that we need to change our health care system?

When everyone in the room raised their hands, it was  game, set, match to Team Obama. Thank you very much, ABC News, for letting the president use your airwaves to convince millions of American that if you disagree with the president about the need for massive change in our health care system, you are out of it.

How could all these smart people ABC News brought to the East Room of the White House be wrong, and you be right? And by the way, I think that unanimous show of hands says all that needs to be said about how effective ABC News was in bringing a truly diverse group of people to that room.

The TV news industry really does debase the concept of town hall meeting with staged events like the one on ABC Wednesday. At its core, the town hall concept involves citizens coming together, face-to-face discussing issues and making decisions in a democratic manner.

But with ABC's Questions for the President: Prescription for America, what we had was a group of people hand picked by executives from a giant corporation, Disney-ABC, to take part in an event for which hundreds of thousands of dollars of ads were sold.  ABC gets the money, and the White House, which opened its doors for the event, gets to promote its agenda.

All the networks and cable channels do it, not just ABC. But what we saw on ABC last night exploits and debases the notion of town hall democracy. The discussion is driven by the dictates of prime-time television not enlightenment. When it's time to show the ads for shampoo and banks, all discussion stops no matter where it is headed.

One last word on Obama as The New Great Communicator: Even as he sounded an urgent call for collective change, he promised individuals in the audience that they need not worry because they won't necessarily have to be part of the change. "If you like what you have, you can keep it," he said over and over in a talking point that sounded reassuring as he said it, but seemed to defy logic when you thought about it.

There were a couple of Baltimore angles to the town hall telecast, but they were mostly footnotes to the major business being conducted between Obama and the American audience with only minor interference from ABC News.

One involved Hershaw Davis, Jr., a Baltimore nursing student, asking a good question as to how Obama plans to beef up primary care in his new plan. The answer was a vague one about better incentives for those practitioners who choose primary care rather than specialization.

The other local note: There were protesters outside WMAR-TV, the ABC affiliate in Baltimore, according to Channel 2's 11 p.m. newscast. Protesters picketed at ABC affiliates around the country in reaction to what they saw as the exclusion of Republicans and other voices of opposition to Obama's plan.

Posted by David Zurawik at 11:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (22)
Categories: TV and Politics
        

Last week, I wrote about the upcoming ABC News town-hall-style health care special featuring President Barack Obama, and warned about the TV press being used by the White House.

The special, titled Questions for the President: Prescription for America, will air Wednesday night at 10, and I will be here at Z on TV afterward writing about it.

The program broadcast from the White House will feature Obama answering questions on health care posed by audience members selected by ABC News. Republicans have been up in arms about what they see as their exclusion from the conversation.

Tune in Wednesday night after the telecast to Z on TV to see how I thought it played on the screen.

Posted by David Zurawik at 3:49 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)
Categories: TV and Politics
        

In a post Monday night, I suggested that viewers stop watching Jon & Kate Plus 8 if they really want to help the Gosselin kids. With the divorce of these two self-absorbed parents, there is no way for viewers to justify tuning in any longer. It's nothing but debasement and voyeurism from here on out.

But with the show going on hiatus until Aug. 3, let me further suggest that we in the mainstream press also step back, slow down, take stock and try to wean ourselves off the narcotic of Jon & Kate page views unlike anything we've seen since Sarah Palin's vice presidential candidacy.

I say this after the embarrassing story put out by the Associated Press Tuesday that Jon and Kate Gosselin had been living "separate and apart" for the last two years while acting as if they were living together on their TV show. Had that fact been verified and true, it would have been the basis of a very big TV story -- a story just a few of cuts below the quiz scandals of the 1950s in terms of deception on the part of those who make American television.

But it wasn't verified and true, according to a correction the news service sent out later in the evening saying the couple had been apart only a week or two, according to lawyers involved in filing the very papers the AP cited as evidence for its first report. It appears that even AP, one of the bedrocks of mainstream fact-based journalism, was caught up in the Jon & Kate frenzy of getting it out there first before getting it right. Does anyone in the land of new media know what the word gatekeeper means anymore?

Here's the correction as it appeared on MSNBC's website Tuesday night: ALLENTOWN, Pa. - CORRECTION: The Associated Press sent an earlier version of this story that said Kate and Jon Gosselin had been living “separate and apart” for at least two years. The AP later sent a correction saying this was not true and that the couple had been living apart only for a week or two.

National Public Radio's website, on the other hand, was still running the uncorrected story at 11:55 p.m. Tuesday -- as were many other sites. I suspect the original story will even appear uncorrected in some newspapers Wednesday morning.

As of late Tuesday at any rate, what readers were left with thanks largely to AP was confusion. And that is the very opposite of what the press is supposed to create.

So, let's try to steady ourselves and behave like journalists. If we keep acting like crazed Hollywood gossip columnists from the 1930s, Jon and Kate will keep issuing dueling press releases as they did Tuesday with Kate saying Jon did something so bad over the weekend that she can't live with him anymore, and Jon saying he is "hurt" by the allegation. No specifics or facts, just more innuendo and conflict. It's a game for publicists and silly people addicted to fame -- not journalists. But it will go on and on as long as we keep lapping it up like starving kittens.

There is still much news to report and all kinds of enlightening cultural pieces to be written about the sociology of Jon & Kate and the audience of millions that tuned in to watch it for four full seasons and part of fifth.

The audience size alone warrants coverage and can absolutely serve as a barometer of popular taste -- especially given the fact that the audience plunged from 9.8 million for the season opener on May 25th down to 2.9 in recent weeks. And then came 10.6 million viewers for Monday's show when the divorce was announced. Clearly, a mass audience is reacting to this story -- and doing so in illuminating ways.

I have given TLC the benefit of the doubt in several pieces I have written the last four months about the show. But no more. The channel has already earned its place in TV infamy for its part in pushing this family past the breaking point this year. To now act like it is taking the high road with a six week hiatus is laughable. You can't fix what TLC helped break by turning off the cameras for a few weeks in the summer.

I will write about the show and how the audience reacts to it when it returns. To me, that is news in that it tells us something about who we are as viewers and people.

But I am also going to try and hold myself to a tougher standard as to how often and what I write about Jon & Kate -- even if my web numbers suffer. I haven't yet and I am never going to play the games -- and I use that word kindly -- that some show biz tabloid journalists use in publishing unverified information that barely rises to the level of rumor or gossip.

I hope some of my colleagues will do the same, and that collectively we will come to our senses about how we treat the Jon & Kate story from here on out -- and cover this realm of American culture and life online.

And while I'm hoping, maybe AP will fully explain in coming days how it managed to put out a story with such wide-ranging implications without first having the facts on which it was based nailed down.

Posted by David Zurawik at 12:07 AM | Permalink | Comments (20)
Categories: Reality TV
        

Ed McMahon, who for 30 years rode shotgun to Johnny Carson on NBC’s legendary Tonight Show and became the model for a generation of talk show sidekicks, is dead at 86.

Mr. McMahon died at the Ronald Reagan Medical Center in Westwood, Calif., according to NBC, the network for whom he worked more than three decades. The entertainer and TV pitchman had been seriously ill for several years. He had been at the UCLA medical facility for the past three weeks being treated for pneumonia, according to a spokesman. He also had been diagnosed with bone cancer.

With all the change in late night TV theses days, it is hard to remember what a reliable, inviting and reassuring place Mr. McMahon and Mr. Carson made their faux couch and desk set seem like from 1962 to 1992 — one of the longest and most successful runs in TV history. Mr. McMahon played a large role in that popularity with his deep voice, ready laugh and trademark "Heeeeeerrrrrreeee’s Johnny" nightly introduction.

While Mr. Carson was a perfectionist who make life difficult for those who worked with him, Mr. McMahon said in repeated interviews over the years that his job as sidekick was “the world’s greatest job.” “You can’t imagine hooking up with a guy like Carson,” Mr. McMahon said a 1993 Associated Press interview. “There’s the old phrase, hook your wagon to a star. I hitched my wagon to a great star.”

There was nothing flashy about McMahon in his role as second banana on The Tonight Show, but that was just the point — he was supposed to be the Average Joe, looking on with admiration at the wit and dazzle of the star, and occasionally feeding the star a line or two that would make Mr. Carson look ever better.

Make no mistake about it, part of the job was also to be the butt of jokes made by Mr. Carson as he and Mr. McMahon bantered at the desk after the comic’s opening monologue. A recurring line of “comedy” was that Mr. McMahon drank too much. Often when his side kick was talking, Carson would look at the camera and raise an invisible glass to his lips. The gesture always resulted in laughs. Such was the mind set of the late night TV audience — and much of mainstream America — in the 1960s and ’70s heyday of The Tonight Show.

But if the job involved a bit of abuse, it also paid very well. Mr. McMahon was said to be making more than $4 million a year during the last decade on the air with Mr. Carson. Despite such earning power and a post-Tonight-Show pitchman and talent show host that kept Mr. McMahon in America’s living rooms well into the New Millennium, he was deeply in debt and in danger of losing his home in recent years.

Mr. McMahon blamed his debts in part on two divorces, but even that seemed more like recycled Tonight Show couch talk than truth; another of the recurring comic bits at the late night desk was Mr. Carson’s many divorces and the fortune his ex-wives were costing him. Being divorced and supporting ex-wives was part of the code of masculinity they promulgated in latenight TV.

If he embodied some of the less attractive values of his era, he also personified some of the best. The TV persona of Mr. McMahon as an everyday guy was built on some truth — as a person, he was very much a man of his Greatest Generation era.

Born in Detroit in 1923, he was raised in The Great Depression. His father has been variously described as a struggling vaudeville performer, salesman, pitchman and conman. Whatever the truth, Mr. McMahon’s family often moved, and later in life, the performer claimed to have attended 15 different schools as a child.

Mr. McMahon would later work his way through college during the summers as a carnival barker. He graduated from Catholic University in 1949. He served as a Marine flight instructor during World War II, and then re-enlisted and flew 85 combat missions as a pilot during the Korean War.

His big sturdy physique and that military history, which was known to most of The Tonight Show audience, were very much part of his on-air image. He also subscribed to a work ethic that resulted in him rarely being absent from Carson’s couch. It is said he claimed only four sick days in 30 years at NBC.

Mr. McMahon was working in local TV in Philadelphia when Carson summoned him to be second banana on the Who Do You Trust? quiz show in ABC in 1958. When Mr. Carson got the call to host The Tonight Show in 1962, he took Mr. McMahon with him. They would come to rule the late night roost for three decades knocking off challenger after challenger on the other networks.

Testament to Mr. McMahon’s talent, he did find show business life after The Tonight Show. He served as host of Star Search from 1983 to 1995 — a talent show that reached back to the Ted Mack Amateur Hour and anticipated American Idol in its competition, voting, judges and discovery of unknown talent. America’s Got Talent, which begins a new season this week, is a direct descendant.

Mr. McMahon was both genial host and father figure to the contestants. Harking back to his youthful summers as a carnival barker, McMahon during this period, also became one of the most ever-present pitchmen in the history of television. From American Family Publishers Clearinghouse to Budweiser Beer, he seemed to be everywhere on the tube selling everything. As the products became cheaper, so was his image cheapened.

While it was intended to be funny, there was something sad about his appearance in a cash-for-gold advertisement that aired during last year’s Super Bowl. At the end, his financial difficulties were massive. A fall in 2007, led to a broken neck and huge medical expenses, according to McMahon.

 In 2008, he defaulted on mortgage payments for his $4.8 million Beverly Hills home and was on the verge of foreclosure before a group that included Donald Trump bailed him out. Mr. McMahon was also involved in a series of highly publicized lawsuits.

In 2007, he sued Cedars-Sinai Medical Center over his treatment after the fall that resulted in his neck injury. He said the medical facility misdiagnosed the injury and then did two faulty surgeries. He had previously sued various contractors claiming he and family members were sickened by toxic mold in his house.

Near the end, it was more often than not distressing to see Mr. McMahon, the man who had once brought smiles to so many faces, on TV. He appeared usually in diminished circumstances and for the wrong reasons.

Mr. McMahon is survived by his third wife, Pamela Hurn, whom he married in 1992, and by five children. A sixth died in 2005.

Posted by David Zurawik at 11:10 AM | Permalink | Comments (12)
Categories: Network TV
        

Jon and Kate Gosselin, the stars of the TLC reality TV show Jon & Kate Plus 8 made it official Monday night: They are divorcing after 10 years of marriage.

“Kate and I have decided to separate,” Jon said about 40 minutes into the one-hour show. Their eight children will remain living in the mini-mansion in Berks County, PA, where the show is filmed. 

The reality TV series will continue, the two said in making the announcement. But the question is how many viewers will now stick with the show. And what lies will those viewers tell themselves to try and justify their voyeuristic participation in the misery of the children -- misery caused by these two immature, self-absorbed so-called parents and a cable TV channel.

“How does the show go on? The show must go on,” Kate said, sounding more like a show biz monster than a mom. “It’s going to change a lot because there will be time that I will have to be away from them."

The parents will alternate living with the children in an arrangement that will keep both of them in the kids' lives – but not together.

“I’m still in the show, but we’ll interview separately.” Jon said in Monday night's telecast. 

The show has been in a tabloid tailspin since March when Season 4 ended amid reports that the 32-year-old Jon was having an affair with a 23-year-old teacher.

By the time Season 5 started May 25th, interest had reached a fever pitch and the show drew 9.8 million viewers. But it also drew widespread criticism for putting the eight children – twins and sextuplets – through this kind of public trauma. The audience dropped by half from week one to two.

Monday night, the charade ended. And, again, just as I did while watching the season opener, I felt both exploited by the producers and debased for even bearing witness to this carnage.

I can tell myself that it's my job -- I have to watch. And the sociology of seeing an American family melt down before the reality TV cameras does seem worthy of any critic's attention.

But I wonder what viewers who don't have to watch are thinking tonight. I wonder if they feel exploited by TLC selling ads and making millions of dollars out of a show announcing a divorce that will not only leave eight kids with a shattered family -- but a video record of their family coming undone that will define them for the rest of their lives.

I'm done with this sick carnival side show. How about you? It is now clear that the only way to make it stop is to quit watching.

Posted by David Zurawik at 9:55 PM | Permalink | Comments (100)
        

Jon and Kate Gosselin filed for legal separation Monday in their home court dictrict of Bucks County, PA, according to People magazine.

TLC, the cable channel that carries Jon & Kate Plus 8, a hit reality TV show about the family, is airing a special edition Monday night in which the couple promises a major announcement.

Will the announcement of a formal breakup Monday night surprise anyone? Still, if People has it right, it will be a first to see a family that millions came to know and identify with crack up on TV before viewers' eyes.

Here's what People has to say:

After months of speculation, the 10-year marriage of Jon & Kate Plus Eight's stars Kate and Jon Gosselin appears to be coming to an end.

Documents to initiate a legal split were filed at the Bucks County Courthouse in Reading, Pa., Monday afternoon. Fans who have watched the couple's popular TLC show – or read the voluminous coverage of the Gosselin marriage in the press – will hardly be surprised: The duo had long maintained a tense relationship, with Jon recently telling PEOPLE he wanted a less high-profile life, while Kate appeared to remain committed to their TV career.

Here's a link to more: http://www.people.com/people/article/0,,20286254,00.html

 

Posted by David Zurawik at 5:28 PM | Permalink | Comments (6)
        

If you are one of the many hooked on new media coverage of the trumoil in Iran, take my advice and take a break from the computer screen for 90 minutes Monday night at 9 for Iran and the West premiering on the National Geographic cable channel.

Covering more than 30 years of Iranian political history, it offers in one TV stop more background and context on today's tumultuous post-election events than can be found anywhere else in old or new media. I know, background and context is not so valued in the new media ethos, but, believe me, it still matters if you want to try and understand what's happening in Iran today. 

This engrossing and information-packed documentary will also send you back to the digital world after the final credits roll far more capable of making sense out of all the raw and unfiltered images and reports hitting the Web.

The more than 40 interviews in the film range from former U.S. President Jimmy Carter to one-time Iranian President Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, the man now at the very center of the protests and crackdowns in Iran.

In re-telling the story of 30 years ago when Muslim students took 53 Americans hostage for 15 months in the U.S. Embassy in Tehran, the filmmakers interview Ibrahim Asghharzadeh, one of the leaders. He not only offers a reviting description of events from a point of view most Americans have never heard, he also fingers one of the other student leaders who refused to take part in the protests over ideological differences: Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the man whose dubious re-election set off the current protests.

The interviews with Carter and Madeleine Albright, President Bill Clinton's secretary of state, are also revelatory in how much they reveal about America's ignorance about Iran -- and at our government's highest levels.

Timely hardly starts to describe this documentary. Three cheers for National Geographic. Don't miss it.

Posted by David Zurawik at 9:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)
        

David Suchet returns to Masterpiece Mystery Sunday at 9 p.m. in what may turn out to be the longest running performance by an actor in a single role ever.

This is the 20th year he's been doing Agatha Christie's Hercule Poirot, and he is, again, flawless.

There are only two books being done--Mrs. McGinty's Dead and tonight's offering, Cat Among the Pigeons-- this season. If you can only catch one, make it tonight's.

If you remember your Christie--and who doesn't--this one takes place at a ritzy boarding school for young ladies and the staff starts dropping dead. (The gym teacher, known in Christie land as the "games mistress," goes first. She more than deserved it.)

This TV version is actually an improvement on the book--there's a subplot about revolution in a made-up Middle Eastern country in the book, it comes off as wooden and far-fetched. Here, it's given the once-over lightly treatment and we can concentrate on the superb supporting performances of Harriet Walter and Susan Wooldridge.

Posted by David Zurawik at 7:36 PM | Permalink | Comments (9)
Categories: PBS
        

Jason Jones and Tim Greenberg, the correspondent and producer responsible for the smart, funny and incredibly timely Iran segments airing on Comedy Central's The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, say they have been working around the clock for the last six weeks on the pieces -- and there is no end in sight.

"Actually, while you were asking the question about the kind of hours we've been putting in, Tim fell asleep," Jones said during a phone interview Thursday that will be part of my ZonTV column in Sunday's Sun.

The team was in Iran for 10 days ending on June 6th, Greenberg says. And while they started editing as soon as they got back to New York, the pace has quickened tremendously since the election and the large-scale protests that have followed.

"With everything happening, they decided to put the pieces on the air," Greenberg says. "It's pretty much going to be as things unfold."

While the overall goal of all their work is mostly "to make jokes," according to Jones, this story has taken a different turn as authorities have cracked down on protesters, journalists and others in Iran.

"The stories we did before the election were intended to be more background as to who the Iranian people are and how that differs from some of the ways they have been characterized," Greenberg says. "But in the past few days, two of our interview subjects have been arrested."

For all their quips on other matters, Greenberg and Jones sound very serious when talking about the interviews they did with Islamic cleric Hojjatoleslam Mohammaad Ali Abtahi, a former vice president of the republic, and Dr. Ebrahim Yazdi, a former foreign minister.

"If we can raise awareness in a way that helps their situation, that would be great," says Greenberg.

Posted by David Zurawik at 1:49 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)
        

As Baltimore braces for a major change next month in the way audiences for news programs are measured, here's an item that should cause some pause: Nielsen Media Research last week undercounted viewers for ABC World News by an average of 800,000 viewers a night.

In response to ABC's call for a recount, the ratings service Wednesday adjusted the average nightly audience last week for ABC's newscast from 6.2 million to 6.99 million viewers. That's a big difference.

The switch from analog to digital on Friday was blamed for the mistaken numbers, but what if ABC hadn't complained? And why didn't Nielsen think there might be some extra difficulties in their count given such a big change?

Here's the AP story of what Nielsen found in its recount. Here's hoping Nielsen has its act together on Local People Meters when they start in Baltimore.

Posted by David Zurawik at 10:13 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
        

Look at this from RadarOnline: The first report that all four American Idol judges are going to be back next year.

Are you surprised after all those cover stories in April and May on publications like TV Guide about how Simon Cowell says he's leaving? No wait, it's Paul Abdul who is leaving. No, fool, it's Kara DioGaurdi who is getting dumped.

Well, you shouldn't be surprised. Here's the lead of a column I wrote in April trying to debunk the daily headlines at the time that Cowell was leaving by pointing out that there is some sort of phony judges' controversy or rumors of leaving or firing every April and May to pump up ratings. And this year, the ratings needed more pumping than ever, and the rumors seemed even more fabricated by the producers and Fox.

Here's the way I saw it on April 19th in Sun:

I would hate to think that the producers of American Idol are playing us like suckers again, trying to drum up some kind of judges' controversy for better ratings. But you have to admit that the judges have been in the news a lot lately, particularly Simon Cowell - and this is the time of year when there is almost always a flap, fight or faux pas involving the judges that adds drama and controversy down the home stretch of the Idol season.

Here's the full piece. But you know what, Fox and the producers will play the same game next year, and almost everybody will fall for it again quoting Cowell's every word about he is thinking of quitting like they are hearing an Old Testament prophet speaking straight from the pages of the Bible. And everybody will somehow forget how they were hustled the year before by this con game.

Posted by David Zurawik at 9:43 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)
        

As we approach another version of what I have come to think of as network-White House co-productions,  the TV press desperately needs to step back and question how it is covering President Barack Obama.

Next Wednesday night at 10, ABC News will offer the president an hour of prime time -- as well as prime real estate on all its newscasts throughout the day -- to sell his landmark health care plan.

The need for such self-scrutiny should be all the more apparent in light of the president's complaint Tuesday about one media outlet (read: Fox News) "attacking" his administration. I am no less troubled than I ever was about the way Fox and MSNBC have turned all-news into all-partisan opinion TV in prime time, but thank goodness at least one TV outlet, Fox, is questioning Team Obama as it pushes for the kind of massive change in American life not seen since the era of Franklin Roosevelt.

I have been saying since before the Obama administration took office that it is better at manipulating the medium of TV than any White House team since that of John Kennedy, and that was a media universe so different in the early 1960s as to make comparisons almost meaningless. Here are my latest two posts on the matter, the first one coming after the first of two recent anchorman-bowing-to-the-president sessions by Brian Williams an NBC. What surprised me was how little interest readers had in discussing it -- as opposed to, say, Jon & Kate or Dave & Sarah. The passive acceptance of a servile press was shocking to me.

After 24 years of reporting and writing about TV and media on a daily basis, I have to say in fairness that I do not believe ABC, NBC, MSNBC, CNBC and the others allow their news operations to be used by the White House for partisan political reasons. Based on my experience, I believe it is more a matter of business: Obama means strong ratings, and they will do almost anything to get him on their channel or network given the business he brings with him.

NBC's special really did look and feel like a campaign commercial for Obama, especially when he took Williams out for mid-day hamburgers, but any embarassment the network felt was probably forgotten once the ratings came in showing that more than 9 million people watched each of the two nights.

ABC will be using its White House exclusivity next Wednesday to try and boost all its broadcasts -- from Good Morning America to Nightline. From the network's point of view, why not? NBC News cashed in, why not ABC? And is it payday for CBS the week after that when Obama wants to sell another nation-changing proposal?

It really is a cozy game that the White House is playing with the TV news industry, and it will be too late for us as citizens when some enterprising journalist (are there any left?) chronicles it in a book that is published two years from now. But wait, she or he will have to have access to the White House to get a decent advance, which demands its own kind of getting into bed with the administration.

Perhaps, the best measure of how compliant the mainstream TV press has become is Obama's complaint Tuesday about having "one television station that is entirely devoted to attacking" his administration. Obama declined to name the "station" when asked by CNBC interviewer John Harwood -- what a childish, silly bit of gamemanship by a president. How could anyone not think it is Fox?

When Harwood said he assumed Obama was speaking of Fox, the president replied, ""That’s a pretty big megaphone. You’d be hard pressed if you watched the entire day to find a positive story about me on that front."

Given all the reckless and irresponsible words uttered by the likes Bill O'Reilly and Sean Hannity, I hesitate to write these words, but good for Fox. It must be doing something right, if it has the president complaining about the tiny bit of scrutiny he gets on TV. 

On the other hand, if Fox News is our last, best TV watchdog on the White House, then the TV press, as well as media critics like me, should be profoundly embarassed, and vow to start doing a better job -- immediately.

Posted by David Zurawik at 9:24 AM | Permalink | Comments (58)
Categories: Network TV
        

Faced with the threat of an advertiser boycott and protests outside the theater where he tapes his show, CBS comedian David Letterman Monday night aplogized to Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin and her daughters for a crude joke he made about one of the teenager during his monologue on June 8. And this time, he seemed to mean it. Read my previous reporting on the controversy here and here and here.

Refererring specifically to a coarse quip he made suggesting that one of Palin's daughters had a sexual encounter with New York Yankees third baseman Alex Rodriguez while she and her mother attended a Yankees' game during a recent trip to New York, Letterman said, "It wasa kind of a coarse joke -- there's no getting around it. The joke in and of itself cannot be defended... I told a joke that was beyond flawed, and my intent is completely meaningless compared to the perception."

The tone of his comments, which came as he sat down at his desk after the monologue, was in direct contrast to his remarks about the joke that he made last Wednesday as he took what sounded like it was going to be an apology and then turned it into a comedic bit that further insulted Palin, her daughters and followers. Some reported it as apology, but it wasn't.

Monday night's apology, the 62-year-old comic said, was directed to Palin's two daughters: "I would like to apologize especially to the two daughters involved... and to the governor and her family and everybody else who was outraged by my joke... I am sorry for it, and I will try to do better."

While Letterman again insisted he was joking about the 18-year-old, Bristol, rather than the 14-year-old, Willow, who was the daughter actually at the game with Palin, Letterman offered exactly the kind of act of contrition I suggested he make last week in an effort to put the matter behind him. Hopefully, his words Monday night will help do that.

The one good thing to come out of the controversy is that it has brought into sharp focus what is and is not acceptable in terms of network talk.

Thankfully, when it comes to personal and political attack speech, it appears that network latenight still has a higher standard than cable prime time where talk show hosts like MSNBC's Keith Olbermann and Fox's Bill O'Reilly regularly mount vicious verbal attacks on their opponents. Letterman crossed that line with his jokes on Palin's teen daughters.

Posted by David Zurawik at 9:57 PM | Permalink | Comments (34)
Categories: Network TV, Talk Shows
        

It looks as if the controversy surrounding comedian David Letterman's crude jokes about Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin's daughters is not going away any time soon.

A new website, firedavidletterman.com, has sprung as a conduit for anti-Letterman feelings and a protest is planned for Tuesday outside the Manhattan theater where his show is taped.

Political and partisan? Sure. But so were his jokes.

Here's the New York Daily News report on the spreading campaign.

It is highly unlikely that Letterman is going to get fired -- in fact, it is more likely that he will soon be signing a contract extension. But the controversy is providing an illuminating look as to what is acceptable and unacceptable on mainstream network TV when it comes to partisan attack political speech.

Hopefully, there is a higher standard than that of cable TV talk with the likes of MSNBC's Keith Olbermann and Fox's Bill O'Reilly and Sean Hannity.  

Posted by David Zurawik at 1:49 PM | Permalink | Comments (55)
        

The trade publication TV Week reports that conservatives groups are calling for a boycott of the Late Show with David Letterman over crude remarks Letterman made last Monday about the daughters of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin. The remarks came in a Monday night monologue. Read my take here.

One of the more intriguing aspects of the report is the alleged email a blogger received from a major advertiser seeking to distance the product from Letterman. This is where the rubber meets to the road in television, and it is surprisning that CBS has yet to comment on the matter given the coarse nature of Letterman's word and the fact that they were directed at the child of a public figure, a category of people considered to be out of bounds for such attacks.

Here is part of what TV Week says:

Some conservatives and conservative groups are calling for a boycott of marketers who advertise on David Letterman’s late-night talk show on CBS because of the jokes he told about Sarah Palin and her family last week.

One of the advertisers targeted last week was Hilton Hotel Corp's Embassy Suites, because its ads appeared on the page for "Late Show with David Letterman” at cbs.com. Conservative Blogger Chris Wysocki says he contacted Embassy Suites and received this email reply:

Posted by David Zurawik at 10:37 AM | Permalink | Comments (16)
        

For all the talk of Barack Obama as the first digital president, he sure seems to use that old medium of television a lot.

From taking Brian Williams out for hamburgers on NBC, to popping up onscreen for Stephen Colbert during the cable channel host's Comedy Central stay in Iraq, Obama seems to be onscreen almost as much as Wolf Blitzer on weekdays.

Here's the next big prime-time mission for the president. With the White House revving up its campaign for new health care legislation, ABC News will be offering a prime-time special June 24 on the issue featuring an "exclusive" interview with Obama by Diane Sawyer. I don't know how the White House convinces any network or cable channel that Obama is "exclusive" to them, but more power to the image-makers for selling it.

It looks like ABC News will be pulling out all the TV bells and whistles to make health care look like the most important issue in the world. Here's part of the network press release:

As the nation debates sweeping changes in healthcare, ABC News’ Charles Gibson and Diane Sawyer will moderate a conversation with President Obama about this critical issue on the nation’s agenda.  A special edition of Primetime “Questions for the President: Prescription for America” will air on Wednesday, June 24th from 10:00-11:00 PM ET on the ABC Television Network.

During the discussion from the East Room of the White House, President Obama will answer questions from an audience made up of Americans selected by ABC News who have divergent opinions in this historic debate. ABC News’ Medical Editor Dr. Timothy Johnson will also take part in the conversation which will focus on different ideas for how to fix the system and how proposed changes will impact our already fragile economy.

The health care conversation will continue on “Nightline” at 11:35pm ET.

Wednesday morning’s “Good Morning America” will originate from the South Lawn of the White House and will include an exclusive interview with President Obama. He sits down with Diane Sawyer to discuss healthcare and other issues on the nation’s agenda. Wednesday’s program will also feature portions of Robin Roberts’ exclusive interview with First Lady Michelle Obama.

Charles Gibson will anchor “World News” from the Blue Room of the White House on Wednesday....

Posted by David Zurawik at 9:19 AM | Permalink | Comments (15)
        

Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin was up bright and early Friday blasting away at David Letterman for crude jokes that the comedian made about her daughters on his Monday show. This is now a culture war, and it appears that Letterman is losing. (Read about the jokes and the issues involved here in my Thursday post.)

While Letterman looked like he was trying to move past the controversy on Thursday night's show, Palin's appearance on TV's highest rated morning show Friday and her escalating rhetoric make it clear that putting the jokes behind him is not going to be that easy.

When asked Friday if she thought Letterman owed her an apology, Palin told Today, "I would like to see him apologize to young women" across the nation. Calling Letterman's jokes "degrading" to young women and describing them as the kind of hateful words that rob girls of their "self-esteem," Palin read what she said was a message sent to her that called not just for women's groups to join in criticism of Lettermen, but for men also "to rise up" against him.

Palin says Letterman has contributed to a  "thread in our country that it is okay" to joke about "statutory rape."

Commenting on Palin's trip to New York last weekend with one of her daughter's, Letterman made a coarse quip on Monday's show about the teenager "getting knocked up" by Alex Rodrigeuz during the seventh inning of a New York Yankees game.

Wednesday night, Letterman said he was referring to Palin's 18-year-old daughter, Bristol, not 14-year-old Willow, with whom Palin attended the game.

Telling Today show host Matt Lauer that he and anyone else who accepts Letterman's explanation "extremely naive," Palin called the distinction Letterman is trying to make between the daughters a "weak excuse" on the part of the comedian.

When words catch this kind of cultural fire and a performer is up against someone who can be as verbally calculating and clever as Palin, it is time to stop thinking it will go away.

Maybe, the performer doesn't want it to go away if it will mean higher ratings. But it has already reached the point where Letterman is playing with cultural fire. If advertisers start pulling away, he could be headed for the kind of trouble radio show host Don Imus encountered.

And Palin did not sound like someone Friday who was ready to let the controversy go. She sounded like someone who feels as if for once she has the moral high ground and is enjoying the view.

By the way, I have criticized Lauer in the past for his softball interview with Palin during the election. But I thought he did a very good job of challenging her on the innuendo and smear of her earlier remarks about Letterman and young girls. Nevertheless, Palin hit all her talking points Friday, and that is not good news for Letterman.

I can't wait to hear what Leslie Moonves, Letterman's boss and the man who ultimately fired Don Imus, has to say on the matter.

Posted by David Zurawik at 8:09 AM | Permalink | Comments (107)
Categories: Talk Shows
        

As the highly-politicized and angry debate over David Letterman's unfortunate joke about the daughter of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin rages, I am thinking maybe some good can actually come from it. Both sides are already acting stupid and crazy for the sake of their own TV and political careers, but maybe some of us in the audience can be smarter about free speech, mean speech and the state of TV talk today as a result.

For the two people in the world who might not yet be briefed on the matter, at the heart of the controversay are two jokes Letterman made earlier in the week regarding a trip Palin made with her 14-year-old daughter to New York over the weekend.

In one joke, Letterman said that during the seventh inning of a New York Yankees game, Palin's daughter was "knocked up by Alex Rodriguez." In another quip, he said, the "toughest part" of Palin's visit "was keeping former New York Governor Eliot Spitzer away from her daughter."  Both Rodriguez and Spitzer have been involved in highly-publicized extra-marital affairs.

Wednesday, Palin fired back, saying, "Laughter incited by sexually perverted comments made by a 62-year-old male celebrity aimed at a 14-year-old girl is not only disgusting, but it reminds us that some Hollywood-New York entertainers have a long way to go in understanding what the rest of America understands."

Palin continued, "That acceptance of inappropriate sexual comments about an underage girl, who could be anyone’s daughter, contributes to the atrociously high rate of sexual exploitation of minors by older men who use and abuse others."

Letterman responded for 7 minutes and 54 seconds Wednesday night -- that's a long time in TV terms. But, as those who saw it know, he didn't really apologize. In fact, he turned the controversy into a comedic bit.

He did issue what would be called a "clarification" in the newspaper business. He said he wasn't referring to Palin's 14-year-old daughter in the joke, he was referring to her 18-year-old daughter, Bristol, whom he then went on to describe as "the girl ... who was knocked up."

I wish he had just issued a straightforward apology for offense given with the seventh-inning joke. I am not talking about an "if I offended one" smarmy-mouthed, so-called apology. I mean, a carefully worded, "Clearly, I offended people with this joke. For that, I apologize. it was a careless remark."

Look, Letterman signed a contract with CBS that allows the company to punish or fire the comedian for certain actions. That's a matter of contract. But, at another level, this is a complicated free speech issue.

As a democracy we need to let our comedians have full rein to push the envelope of what society considers acceptable. Remember how valuable comedians like Letterman and the cast of  Saturday Night Live were during the election last fall in saying what we all knew to be true about President Bush and some of the candidates -- things journalists couldn't find a way to say within the strictures of mainstream journalism?

Censor the comedians, threaten to fire them for crossing the line from time to time, and you lose part of what makes America such a grand and special experiment in democracy. And by the way, don't think for a second that some of Palin's outrage isn't the result of what happened to her false frontierswoman image last year at the hands of comic performers like Tina Fey and Letterman.

Ever the craven politician, Palin can't limit herself to criticizing Letterman for what he implied about her daughter, she tries to indict other "Hollywood-New York entertainers" who she claims don't understand what "the rest of America understands" -- once again, as if she is the spokewoman for mainstream American values. Palin could have spared her daughter, Bristol, any public embarrassment long ago by either rejecting the GOP vice presidential nomination or by not bringing the pregnant teenager to the convention and putting her in the middle of the media spotlight. And what about the ugly innuendo in her remarks about Letterman?

But there is also a show business aspect to this story, I believe. Letterman, as driven a TV personality as you will find, sees an opening to get back on top of the latenight heap with the monologue-challenged Conan O'Brien taking over The Tonight Show. Letterman has turned up the heat on his monologues and made them edgier in recent nights.

But, sad to say, he appears to have come to equate edgy with partisan and mean. I think that is partly the result of the TV climate in which he finds himself today. Cable talk show hosts like Keith Olbermann and Bill O'Reilly have shown that one fast road to ratings success is through mean, partisan and ugly talk that relies on the nasty remark -- and often innuendo and smear.

And who was it that Letterman invited on his show to ride shotgun the night he ripped then GOP presidential candidate John McCain for cancelling an appearance except Olbermann, who he described as a friend? I have decried in any forum I can find the effects that folks like Olbermann and O'Reilly are having on our national discourse, and I believe we saw some of it spill over into comedy with Letterman's crude seventh inning joke this week.

I'd like to believe that Letterman is better than that, but maybe I'm wrong. His unwillingness so far to acknowledge how ugly the remark was suggests he might be just as bad an attack dog as the other three. And his ratings are up. For the first time in years, he in neck-and-neck with NBC -- beating O'Brien one night and finishing second by only one-tenth of a ratings point on two other nights this week.

Maybe Letterman, Palin, Olbermann and O'Reilly all deserve each other. And instead of looking for a moral in this ugly spat, I should just sit back and enjoy the spectacle of them savaging each other -- as the ratings rise.

Posted by David Zurawik at 10:32 AM | Permalink | Comments (77)
Categories: Talk Shows
        

MTV is not the first channel that comes to mind when you think of great documentaries. But the the original teen music channel has an outstanding one that starts Thursday at 10 p.m. in 16 & Pregnant.

Parents who don't go out of their way to see or record this six-week series of profiles of pregnant teenagers are making a big mistake. If you have no other involvement in your kids' media lives, make them see this. 

We live in a time of a particularly empty-headed popular culture that is filled with images and narratives that tell teen girls that a sure way to suddenly become the center of attention from friends and family is to get pregnant. Think of the feature film, Juno, and The Secret Life of the American Teenager, the hit cable series on the ABC Family Channel. Or, consider the way Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin's pregnant teen daughter, Bristol, and the girl's boyfriend were characterized as role models by some speakers at last year's Republican National Convention.

Well, finally, someone in the media is offering a no-holds-barred, documentary look at what it is like for a teen couple when they are going to have a baby. Each Thursday, for six weeks, MTV will profile a different pregnancy.

Thursday's opening profile looks at Maci and Ryan, a couple from Chattanooga, TN. He's a diesel mechanic working the night shift, while she's an overachieving high school senior who plays softball, is a member of the cheerleading squad and loves to ride dirt bikes. She met Ryan on a dirt bike track -- he is into four-wheelers -- and before she knew it, found herself pregnant.

Goodbye softball team, cheerleading squad and overachieving. In fact, she is going to finish her senior year at a different high school.

The parents of the teen couple appear in the documentary, and both sets seem to be solidly middle-class, if not upper middle class. There is enough money here to set Maci and Ryan, who are not married, up in a nice apartment. But as we follow the couple through the final weeks of her pregnancy, the birth of a baby boy named Bentley, and the first four months with a new infant in their lives, the problems extend beyond money.

Maci says, "I always said we'd know what to do once Bentley came, but now I'm not so sure."

That's the understatement of her life. Ryan hasn't got a clue, except he wants to continue to lead his self-centered adolesecent, slacker life. As Maci tries to go to school, care for the kid (with lots of help from her mother), and work part-time at her father's auto repair shop, Ryan essentially refuses to help with child care. His girlfriend's birth of a child gets him on the day shift at the shop, but instead of coming home from work and helping Maci cope, he goes to the health club, out to dinner with his friends, followed by nightclubs, karaoke bars and pool rooms.

The power of this documentary comes from MTV's commitment to having the filmmakers live with these kids to show us their world from the inside-out -- cinema verite style. We see and hear Maci alone in the apartment late at night while her boyfriend is out playing around. She's on the phone with her mother asking if she and her baby could "come home." She silently clicks off the phone after her mother, who seems very supportive, tells her she doesn't think that would be such a good idea. It is a devastating image of loneliness, fear and isolation.

The film is filled with moments like that.

Viewers will see Maci and Ryan exchange heated words when she asks her boyfriend to pick up their crying baby. Maci wants Ryan to rock the child back to sleep so that she can do homework. Ryan does pick up the child, but he lays the kid in his bed, and falls back asleep. The heated words come after Maci walks upstairs to quell the child's crying and sees what her boyfriend's idea of child care amounts to.

You will also see Ryan tell Maci he doesn't want to live with her anymore, because she's too unhappy and nagging. She is shredded by his words, and the arc of the documentary is completed. The filmmakers show Maci's decline from a happy, bright, popular, talented, athletic teen with the world spread out before her, to this weary, depressed, scared, confused and rejected girl with an infant demanding every bit of energy she has to give.

Maci and Ryan are still together at the end of tonight's hour -- but just barely. And it mainly seems to be the result of her grit and the involvement of the parents.

Here's an idea, if you need a TV relationship to worry about, forget Jon & Kate and their silly encounter with the family from American Chopper tonight on TLC. Pay attention to Maci and Ryan.

Here's hoping lots of teens and parents see this film -- and that MTV gets the Peabody Award it deserves for such a socially responsible documentary series.

Posted by David Zurawik at 8:19 AM | Permalink | Comments (15)
Categories: Documentaries
        

One doesn't have to watch much of Rachel Maddow's MSNBC show to note the lack of guests and experts who might disagree with her. Last week, she offered viewers a glimpse into the reasons behind that void.

Folks on the right, like Jack Coleman, at newsbusters.org., not surprisingly, were among the first to take notice of Maddow's explanation. But I think it is important for viewers of all political stripes who care about the kind of information TV provides to see and hear what Maddow said.

What's fascinating to me is the peek Maddow's words might offer inside the thinking and culture of her show at MSNBC -- particularly her apparent dismissal of "people who don't have jobs" and what she believes she should or shouldn't feel "obligated" to do in the interest of balance and fairness.

Here is some of what she said in an exchange with Ana Marie Cox, of Air America Radio, a liberal talk radio outlet.

MADDOW: I mean, there's this issue of all the face time that Liz Cheney is getting, all the discussion time that Rush Limbaugh gets, that Newt Gingrich gets, that Mitt Romney gets, that Mike Huckabee gets. I mean, these people don't have jobs ....

COX: Let's, don't put them on the TV, Rachel. Like, ... I don't want to tell you how to do your job but, like, come on.

MADDOW: ... I mean, the Rachel Maddow show staff, many of whom you know, we sit around all day and talk about whether or not we should put folks on the air. But in terms of the political debate that's happening in the country, it's just not being engaged in by elected Republicans. The only people who are talking from the right are these folks who I prefer not to put on TV 'cause they don't have jobs and I shouldn't feel obligated.

I will let the words speak for themselves. And I am open to the argument that this is no worse than Bill O'Reilly, at Fox, who brings on the weakest liberal opposition he can find and then verbally pounds that person into sawdust.  In fact, "savages" wouldn't be too strong a verb for what O'Reilly does to his liberal guests when he is in a particularly nasty mood.

So, maybe, it is more humane simply not to have opposition guests. But you tell me, is either side advancing the cause of a more informed viewership and citizenry with their attitude toward fair debate? Is either one better than the other?

Posted by David Zurawik at 8:11 AM | Permalink | Comments (28)
        

As I watched Stephen Colbert's first show from Iraq Monday night, here are some of the thoughts that ran through my head and found their way onto a notepad:

We in the media don't cover the real war any more, but we will cover this fake news talkshow host going to Iraq like it's the second coming. Is this more of us amusing ourselves to death? Exhibit A: Newsweek doing a cover on Colbert When was the last cover written by a full time Newsweek staffer in Iraq about the real war?

With the golf club and all the jokes about being a coward in his opening monologue, Colbert's offering a post-post-post modern take on Bob Hope. But most of the jokes do not have a real point of view, because this gung-ho makebelieve character Colbert plays lacks a moral or emotional center. Are we ironic-izing (through a post-modern humor that is 99 percent irnony) ourselves into a kind of emotional death in which we can no longer feel the horror of war?

I wonder how bad Conan O'Brien's ratings are going to be this week -- up against the likes of this public relations juggernaut.

I will say this, the premise of this series of four shows that will air under the banner of "Operation Iraqi Stpehen: Going Commando" this week, is clever, if not brilliant. In his first verbal bit after the monologue, the gung-ho, cable-clown, talkshow character Colbert plays says he thought the war was over because he hasn't seen any stories on it recently.

"I thought the war was over, because I haven't seen any stories about it in a month," he says sitting at a desk made of sandbags and an American flag.

"So why isn't it over?" he asks his in-person audience, a  sea of servicewomen and servicemen sitting in a palace that belonged to the late Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein. "Because it's not over until someone declares victory."

And that's what he proceeds to do: "I, Stephen Colbert, by the power invested in me by basic cable, declare that we won the war in Iraq."

Even though Gen. Ray Odierno, the commander of U.S. troops in Iraq, will be on later as a guest to correct Colbert with a politically correct explanation of how we still have work to do in making the country more secure, the crowd whoops its approval at Colbert's declaration as it is made.

And I have to say that the "power invested in my by basic cable" line is wickedly dead-on and righteous satire, mocking the inflated self-importance of cable talkshow hosts like Fox's  Bill O'Reilly on the right (who Colbert is often described as a mock version of) and MSNBC's Keith Olbermann on the left.

Still, such praise asisde, night one of Colbert's USO-sponsored tour left me troubled. Here are some notepad thoughts on that:

I am concerned about turning the palace of a former ruler who we conquered, captured and handed over for execution (no matter how odious he might have been) into what is essentially a comedy club on a cable TV channel. It seems arrogant and at odds with the kind of care we took with buildings and cultures in Europe after World War II. And in that case, we had stopped a real monster who had transgressed practically every border in the western world.

I am also concerened about President Barack Obama getting involved with the faux show and taping a message to Colbert and Odierno that was played on the show. In the message, Obama ordered Odierno to cut Colbert's hair. Does the president's involvement in the shtick not undercut the life and death seriousness of war? And is there any latenight show the president doesn't have time for?

I am troubled that so many websites and newspapers carried the "news" of Colbert's hair getting cut on Monday (the show was taped in Iraq on Sunday.) Like I said, we don't cover the war anymore, just a fake talkshow host making jokes about the war and getting his hair cut.

By the way, it did not appear to me that Odierno actually cut Colbert's hair. He passed an electric razor over it a couple of times as the show went to commercial, but the short cut that Colbert sported at the close of the show looked to be professionally done. It did, though, make a nice metaphor for a subservient press.

And why shouldn't a fake talkshow host have a fake on-air haircut? And why would anyone think it whouldn't be bigger news than the real life and death stories in Iraq? Silly me, for even raising asking the questions.

Posted by David Zurawik at 7:19 AM | Permalink | Comments (25)
Categories: Talk Shows
        

Former WJZ newsman Richard Sher's lifetime achievement honor at the area Emmy Awards dinner in Washington Saturday night brought a surprise visitor: Oprah Winfrey.

Winfrey, who once worked at WJZ-TV in Baltimore as co-host with Sher of a local talk show, arrived at Washington's Ritz-Carlton Hotel Saturday night to help present the award to Sher.

Here's how Sher described the moment in an e-mail Monday: "David, since it's a lifetime achievement award and working with and being good friends with Oprah is certainly one of my lifetime achievements, I asked Oprah if she'd like to fly to DC to surprise the crowd and present the Emmy to me." 

Sher's e-mail continues: "She said she'd love to ... postponed a trip to Africa so she could do this for me ... only a few had to know in advance... Another close friend, Jennifer Gilbert, from Fox 45, one of the hosts, read something about the Ted Yates Award, then talked about me for a few minutes, then introduced a DVD about me. At the end of it, which included stuff about Oprah and me, Oprah came out of a side curtain ... and the place erupted."

Photo of Oprah Winfrey and Richard Sher on the set of "People Are Talking" in the 1970s from Sun Files; Photo of Winfrey and Sher on Saturday by Joel Eagle

Posted by David Zurawik at 9:53 AM | Permalink | Comments (8)
Categories: Baltimore Television
        

Baltimore's WBFF-TV was the most honored station Saturday night at the 51st annual National Capital Chesapeake Bay Chapter Emmy Awards.

WBFF, Baltimore's Fox affiliate, won 14 local Emmys, topping Washington's WJLA-TV and WTTG-TV, which took home 8 and 6, respectively, as the two closest competitors.

It should be noted, however, that in the major news categories for best newscasts, Baltimore stations, like WBFF, competed in the "medium market" category, while the Washington stations were judged in the "larger market" category because of the difference in the size of the TV markets in which the stations are located.

Nevertheless, WBFF's dominance when it came to Emmys for news excellence is impressive.

Among the Emmys WBFF won Saturday night were those for: Best Evening News, Best Weekend News, Best General Assignment Report Within 24 Hours, Best General Assignment Report With No Time Limit and Spot News.

The WBFF reporters, producers and photographers honored included: Kathleen Cairns, Stanley Heist, Joy Lepola-Stewart, Darren Durlach and Jeff Abell.

Other area broadcasters who won Emmys Saturday night include: WUSA-TV (6), Comcast SportsNet (5), Retirement Living TV (5), MPT (4), WETA (3), WBAL (2) and WMAR (2).

Richard Sher, who retired earlier this year from WJZ-TV, received the Ted Yates Award for lifetime achievement in TV news and public affairs. Sher, who was on the air in Baltimore for more than 33 years, is launching a Sunday morning talk show on WMAR in September.

Among the five guests hosts at the dinner at Washington's Ritz-Carlton Hotel where the winners were announced were WBFF's Jennifer Gilbert and MPT's Bob Heck.

Posted by David Zurawik at 12:01 AM | Permalink | Comments (11)
Categories: Baltimore Television
        

You have to hand it to the folks at TLC, they are not afraid to push the envelope to keep people watching their shows. Previously, I thought things could not get stranger on reality TV than the episode of American Chopper a couple of months back in which the motorcycle-making family from that series, the Teutuls, visited Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin. What we saw were two shamelessly self-promoting entities getting their on-screen PR motors running for a ridiculous TV meeting.

But that was nothing compared to what TLC has in store for viewers June 11 and 15 when the Teutuls -- Senior, Junior and Mikey -- arrive in Pennsylvania to visit, you guessed it, the Gosselins. I swear, I had to read the email about 50 times to makes sure there wasn't a mistake or I wasn't having some kind of TV nightmare as a result of wires in my brain melting or getting crossed after 24 years of writing about the medium on a daily basis. 

At the top of this blog where I say in my mission statement that I am going to write about the business, culture and craziness of television, this is the "craziness" part. The only things missing are Sarah Palin, Rod Blagojevich and a couple of freakshow contestants from America's Got Talent, like the guy in angel wings, chains and a Roman centurian helmet who told the judges, "go to hell."

The irony of this appearing on an outlet once known as The Learning Channel bears at least a footnote, don't you think? As you read, check out the way in which the producers are playing with notions of family, gender, power, female and male bodies and the ways in which people who have too much money (like the Gosselins) amuse and pleasure themselves. This is fairly profound stuff, even if it is being exploited rather than illuminated for viewers. Or, maybe this is illuminating -- who knows?

This is the new TV crossover, I guess. Does anyone remember when a TV crossover used to involve characters from, say, NBC's Law and Order appearing on an episode of NBC's Homicide: Life on the Street? I don't think we'll ever see the likes of Frank Pembleton or Lennie Briscoe again on network TV. They have been replaced by Mikey Teutul and Jon Gosselin. You can't tell me we are not the poorer for it as a culture.

On the other hand, given TLC's uncanny skill at promotion, I am expecting a release any day now saying the next epsiode of American Chopper will have Senior and his clan "stopping off" at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue to go over the specs for his and her cycles for Barack and Michelle Obama.

Here are the show descriptions from TLC. I am just going to reproduce them. They speak for themselves Boy, do they ever.

AMERICAN CHOPPER: JON & KATE PLUS 8 BIKE - Premieres Thursday, June 11 at 9 PM (ET/PT)
Two very different families are meeting for the first time when the guys from Orange County Chopper arrive at the Gosselin home. How will the kids react when the gruff motorcycle moguls - Senior, Junior and Mikey - stop by to hang out with the family and plan the design for Jon's custom chopper.  Kate and Mikey share some special bonding time with a pedicure, but it's Jon who gets to spend some gritty and masculine quality time with the OCC guys when he visits the shop to help build his own bike.   But the guys of Orange County Chopper have a surprise for Kate up their sleeves!   What could it be?

JON & KATE PLUS 8: BIKES AND TRIKES - Premieres Monday, June 15 at 9 PM (ET/PT)
Jon Gosselin has commissioned the guys at Orange County Choppers to build him a bike. To get a better idea of how the father of eight wants his bike to look, the three Teutuls take a trip to Jon and Kate’s house to see how the family of ten live. The guys are used to turning wrenches, and bending steel, so baking cookies, and babysitting children is a brand new challenge for them. With a little time off from the family, Jon makes the trip out to New York to help build his bike and gets in a little male bonding.

Posted by David Zurawik at 9:41 AM | Permalink | Comments (11)
        

A local casting director is looking for single women in the Baltimore/Washington area who want to be on reality TV.

Elena Moscatt, who I wrote about in November as she started filming Web episodes of her serial, Life After Lisa, has been hired as a casting director to find single women between the ages of 25 and 44 to star in a new reality show based on the film The Holiday in which two women switch lives. So far, she hasn't had much luck. In fact, the producers and Soapnet, the cable channel that will air the new series, have put a Baltimore episode on hold and moved onto Dallas until Moscatt can find some candidates here.

So here is your chance to be on reality TV. I'll let Moscatt describe the show and tell you how to apply herself.

Holidate is a new reality dating series just bought by the Soapnet channel to be the first reality series for the soap channel.  It will be produced by ABC Media.  In each episode the producers take two women from two different cities and have them switch lives for three days, while dating their "guy" friends, socializing with their "social" network, and going on a series of dates with new "dream" guys from the new cities.  Essentially- it will be the real life version of the movie "The Holiday" starring Cameron Diaz, Kate Winslet, and Jack Black.  

The producers are looking for the girl who already has everything- the looks, the job, the social network, etc.  The only thing she doesn't have is the right guy. Hmm.  Maybe he's in another city?  For five days (two days of travel, and three days of filming) the producers will treat these two girls (per episode) to that perfect "Holidate".  The girls just have to believe in love.  

I have walked the streets of Baltimore, and Washington DC looking for the perfect candidates for this series for two weeks.  I searched the malls, restaurants, gyms, and night clubs searching for beautiful candidates. I found a few viable candidates- gave them the information and hoped they'd apply.  The problem? Everyone seemed interested in person but only a few actually applied.  

So the producers put the Baltimore/DC episode on hold, and moved on to Dallas, Texas.  Is it true that there are more "viable candidates" in Dallas Texas?  It certainly seems that the Texas women want to be "Reality" super stars more then the Baltimore and Washington DC girls.  

A show like Holidate could be a lot of fun to film in the Baltimore/ Washington area.  We have a lot of places to see here, and a lot of fun tourist attractions, bars, and nightclubs that would love the national exposure.   So let's see if we really do have those "viable candidates" here..  

If you would like to be on an episode of Holidate, send a few pictures and a paragraph about yourself to Elena at castinglane@gmail.com   

Check out Holidate's official website here: 

 http://soapnet.go.com/soapnet/article/path-articleNum_19113/category_stars

One more note- they are casting handsome single men as well to be the dates of the two women chosen per episode.  So single men in the Baltimore/DC areas may apply as well!

Moscatt in her own words: Elena Moscatt has been in the film industry in the Maryland/DC areas for over 16 years.  Her first film was "Hairspray" John Water's original film made in 1987. Elena was a wardrobe intern while attending Goucher College.  In 1990 she worked as Kevin Bacon's personal assistant for the summer while he filmed "He Said, She Said".  She has since freelanced in craft services, and wardrobe working on "The Wire" all five seasons, as well as other films such as "12 Monkey's", "Body of Lies", and "Burn After Reading".  She is new to casting, though she has cast her two web serials,  Jamie's Way (1998) and Life After Lisa, her current project.  She also wrote, and produced her web serials.   She hosts a screenwriter's club which meets at the Creative Alliance once a month.   

Posted by David Zurawik at 4:19 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)
Categories: Reality TV
        

Tuesday's edition of Inside the Obama White House was presented as production of NBC News. But I think a more apt description would be a co-production of NBC News and the White House image makers.

Don't get me wrong. I enjoyed the hourlong prime-time report that continues Wednesday night with NBC anchorman Brian Williams and a large crew getting some backstage access to President Barack Obama's White House. It looked just hand-held messy enough, with viewers seeing repeated shots by one NBC camera of other NBC cameras filming Obama and Williams, to feel like you were watching honest-to-god, on-the-run journalism.

And to his credit, Williams did say during the report that his team is trying to see as much as it can, while the White House wants them to see only so much.

But please understand that this is a very savvy White House that is not all that in love with the press, and is only letting NBC News see what it wants the network to see. The White House is staging this special -- as much as NBC News is producing it. This is a political and journalistic marriage as much as it is a tug of war. 

An off-the-books, unplanned, mid-day trip by Obama to get hamburgers was the scene that seemed most artificial. With Obama bouncing out of the limo in shirtsleeves and shaking hands with folks lined up for burgers, it looked and felt like a campaign commercial.

NBC did include a fast off-camera comment by someone in the White House press room wondering whether the seemingly spontaneous trip was made only because NBC was there with an army of cameras, but Williams looked like he was going to faint he was so excited to be riding with Obama in the back of his limo.  

The thing that most troubled me about the report was how eagerly Williams seemed to drop any critical distance between him and the scenes he was allowed into. But maybe that is just a matter of style -- it is good TV for the anchorman to appear to be a participant rather than an observer.

I like Williams, and I suspect some viewers are enjoying his enthusiam and seemingly uncritical embrace of all things Obama in this special. And I like the tradition of networks getting inside the White House -- even if their every move has been scripted in advance.

And I will be back Wednesday night for more.

Posted by David Zurawik at 8:39 AM | Permalink | Comments (10)
Categories: TV and Politics
        

Conan O'Brien swamped the competition in Baltimore on his first night as host of The Tonight Show. O'Brien doubled his nearest competition The Late Show with David Letterman, earning a 8.9 rating to a 4.1 for Letterman on CBS.

The 8.9 rating translates to about 98,000 TV homes. While ABC's Nightline has been making gains nationally in the ratings, it wasn't happening in Baltimore Monday. The news program did only a 2.0 rating.

Posted by David Zurawik at 1:09 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)
        

The only good news in reports that a UK company is going into production on a reality TV series about Octomom and her brood is that no American networks have shown interest -- so far.

Do you really think no cable channel will rise to the bait thinking it might have it's very own Kate Gosselin that some viewers will love to judge and hate?

 Here's what the BBC has to say on the status of Octomom, the future TV star:

The Californian woman who gave birth to octuplets this year has signed a deal to star in a reality TV series. Nadya Suleman, dubbed "Octo-Mom" by the media, has agreed to be filmed for a proposed television show by production company Eyeworks.

Her lawyer said it would be "less intrusive" than other reality shows. Film crews will not follow Suleman and her children 24 hours a day but will document certain milestones, such as birthdays and special events.

Posted by David Zurawik at 8:47 AM | Permalink | Comments (6)
        

Conan O'Brien's first Tonight Show was a good one -- if you like canned video clips rather than topical humor. Otherwise, there wasn't much to get excited about.

Come on, for the first 35 minutes of O'Brien's first night in Jay Leno's old chair, the new host did little more than introduce one video after another. You might think on the night that the company that defined corporate America declared bankruptcy, the host of The Tonight Show could manage more than one GM joke no matter how short his monologue, but not O'Brien.

He had to introduce videos that his staff produced, like the one that featured him leading a tram tour at Universal Studios, where his show is housed. The tour looked like it might have been fun in person. But on tape, it seemed mostly silly -- and went on forever.

O'Brien promised more of a monologue in coming nights, saying he had so many things he wanted to deal with in the first show that he didn't really have time for a proper one Monday. But the monologue is not where you make your first big cut. The monologue defines The Tonight Show to large extent.

My guess as to why he went with canned videos rather than a monologue is because the pre-produced tape is far safer. But a host who launches his new career by opting for the safe, is not someone I'm going to praise. The tightrope act of that opening monologue was one of the great joys of watching Johnny Carson.

O'Brien left himself only about 20 minutes for guests Will Ferrell and Pearl Jam. Neither seemed to have brought their A-games, but B or C is good enough with talent like that.

I think O'Brien will utlimately be fine as the new host. I just wish he had shown more nerve on his opening night.

Posted by David Zurawik at 12:39 AM | Permalink | Comments (35)
        

Jon's in Utah, and Kate's in Baltimore. Then, Kate's in San Diego, and Jon's in Pennsylvania. What a great family show -- if you don't mind the niggling little fact that the parents were generally a continent apart throughout the two episodes that aired Monday night.

As if that weren't enough, the producers have to go and insult our intelligence about what our eyes are seeing with Jon telling us that he and Kate are apart so much in part because their "schedules are so busy."

Going to Utah for snowboarding, as Jon did in the first episode, or going to San Diego to a spa, as Kate did in the second episode, does not exactly support your case for having a busy a schedule. This is what most people -- at least those lucky enough to have any disposable income these days -- do for pleasure or rest and relaxation.

I've had it, really. Unless they come to Baltimore again as they did Monday night to visit Charm City Cakes, count me out of the record-setting TV audience. (My editors will make me write about the show if they are back in Baltimore.) I can't take the brittle artifice any more. This show is cracking up under its hypocrisy, and I don't want to see it.

I will say this, at least the kids seemed to have some fun at Duff Goldman's Charm City Cakes. And I loved it when Goldman yelled over the din of all those screaming kids for silence, and they actually quit yelling.

See Kate, all it takes is an adult acting like an adult and setting limits.

The kids are looking for a voice of authority, and between Kate's kvetching and Jon's self-indulgent slacking off, they rarely find any constructive model of behavior to follow.

I did also love Jon saying how he needs snowboarding getaways like the one to Utah to escape "reality and the TV world." As he put it, the five day trip he took, "just happened to fall across Kate's birthday." Is this guy a self-absorbed adolesecent or what? As they used to say about Hollywood, Jon & Kate has become high school with money.

Of course, you didn't think Kate was going to let us forget that she was "alone" on her birthday, and how truly "sad" it was. Not our Kate.

But then, the kids and their bus driver (the bus that magically showed up in their driveway) brought her to Baltimore,  and Goldman made what Kate called a "fluffily" lemon cake, and all was well  in the kingdom of Kate.

One last short memo to the producers: In these really hard economic times when many members of your audience go to bed each night worrying if they'll have a job at the end of the week, you might want to cut back on the scenes that show Kate getting pedicures at a spa or indulging her eight-year-old daughter on a shopping spree. Just a suggestion.

Oh yeah, you might also want to work on a more plausible explanation as to why Jon and Kate are barely on the same continent.

Posted by David Zurawik at 10:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (22)
Categories: Reality TV
        

Jay Leno's farewell latenight show Friday scored big numbers nationally, but nowhere was the audience larger in percentage of viewers than Baltimore.

Leno earned a 15.4 rating in Baltimore Friday night, which translates to 170,000 TV homes or 214,000 viewers.

The four closest cities were: Pittsburgh (15.3 rating), Nashville (13.8), Milwaukee (13.8) and Providence-New Bedford (13.5).

" I think we were number one for a number of reasons," said Jordan Wertlieb, general manager of WBAL, the NBC affiliate in Baltimore. "Strength of our late news lead-in, but more importantly, the Tonight Show with Jay Leno has always performed well above the national average in Baltimore."

Posted by David Zurawik at 3:41 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)
Categories: Ratings
        

Remember the old conventional wisdom about summertime as a time of reruns -- "doldrums" of the TV season, as the cliche-gang used to say?

In today's era of tumultuous media change, that thinking is about three cycles behind reality. The most recent cycle found top cable channels like TNT taking advantage of network dinosaur-think to counterprogram with many of its best series like The Closer in the summer. 

And now with their reality changed, the networks are back in the summertime game. As Jeff Zucker, the CEO of NBC Universal said last week, with 60 percent of his company's profits coming from cable, he now thinks of NBC at its "core" as a cable company, not a network. And so, NBC is programming the summer with gusto, starting tonight at 8 with a two-hour premiere of I'm a Celebrity...Get Me Out of Here.

At 9, TLC offers a double dip of Jon & Kate Plus 8 -- including a trip to Baltimore's Charm City Cakes. I'll be reviewing those episodes right here.

I'll also review Conan O'Brien's first edition of The Tonight Show right after that program ends. Busy night for the doldrums of summer, huh?

And it doesn't slow down in coming days. Next Monday brings new seasons of Weeds (Showtime) and The Closer (TNT), plus the launch of Edie Falco's new medical drama, Nurse Jackie (Showtime).

 I screened all three. As always, I love The Closer and I'm not that crazy about Weeds. I am intrigued by Nurse Jackie, even though I am a little disappointed that the series seems so much like a female version of House, with Falco's character hooked on pain killers and a dark view of life. I like the world view, not the meds.

On June 14th, HBO starts a new season of the only Sunday night drama since The Sopranos to find solid ratings traction, True Blood. On June 16, TNT debuts Jada Pinkett Smith's new medical drama, Hawthorne, starring Smith as a hard-driving nursing supervisor. I saw the pilot, and I am thinking Grey's Anatomy.

You'll find previews of the scripted series and reviews of some of the reality series here. And always, lots of commentary as to what I think TV is telling us about who we are and where we seem headed in this summer of unemployment, economic anxiety and vast social change.

Posted by David Zurawik at 10:55 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)
Categories: Coming Soon to TV
        

As we read this morning about Scottish singer Susan Boyle being hospitalized under the UK's Mental Health Act for what is being described as "emotional and mental exhaustion," I am reminded of questions I once asked about the ethics and morality of reality TV.

Back in 2000 as the genre started to get prime-time traction, I wondered about the people who signed up to be on reality TV without really understanding the way that TV cameras and instant celebrity can knock you off center -- if not shred your life. Like many critics, I have stopped asking in recent years for a variety of reasons.

But between Boyle's troubles and the sorry spectacle of Jon and Kate Gosselin and the crackup of their marriage before the eyes of their eight kids and the nation, I am thinking maybe we should be asking if we who watch bear any guilt for what's happening on screen.

I know there isn't much sympathy from viewers. Many of us want fame and money, and are sure we would handle it well -- or at least much better than Jon and Kate -- if it came our way. And you always have to sign on the dotted line to be on camera.

But still, seeing Boyle hit this wall right after the producers of the talent show got every ratings point out of her that they could, certainly drives me back to all the questions I had about reality TV and the lives it enters, disrupts and sometimes seems to destroy.

 I know I'll be thinking about that tonight as I watch Jon & Kate Plus 8.

Posted by David Zurawik at 8:55 AM | Permalink | Comments (7)
Categories: Reality TV