While all the general managers at all the stations in Baltimore warn about making too much of the July sweeps ratings period with the new Local People Meters, there is one local race that is sure to cause some eyebrows to be raised: weekdays at 4 p.m. -- the Oprah Winfrey time period.

Forget years, for decades, it seemed Oprah dominated. But not in July where WJZ's Eyewitness News beat Winfrey's show on WBAL both in households and in adults 25-to-54 years of age, the key sales demographic in news.

And worse news yet for Oprah, it looks like Baltimore could be part of national pattern of possible decline for Oprah.

During the first week of the month, Winfrey scored her lowest ratings nationally in 23 years, according to Media Life magazine.

There are two pieces of background that make this news even more interesting. First, the irony of Winfrey getting beat by WJZ, the Baltimore station at which she worked as an anchorwoman and co-host of a talk show from 1976 to 1983.

And second, because of her early career here, Baltimore has remained one of her strongest bases of loyalty and support. To lose Baltimore is not a good sign for Winfrey.

"Our people have worked very hard, and it's gratifying to see the progress we have made in generating viewership in that time period," Jay Newman, general manager of WJZ said Friday.

But again, let's not make too much of one sweeps period in July with brand new People Meters from Nielsen measuring the audience.

What are you watching, news or Oprah?

Posted by David Zurawik at 2:58 PM | Permalink | Comments (16)
Categories: Baltimore Television
        

Remember back to May sweeps when Fox was trying to hype the ratings for American Idol and it seemed like every day the Web was abuzz with "news" of another judge said to be leaving the show?

Remember how I said it was all hype and they would all be back?

Well, check off another. Kara DioGuardi has already been re-signed for another season of the hit contest show.

(UPDATE: On Monday, Fox confirmed DioGuardi's return.)

That leaves only Paula Abdul. And, oh shock of shocks, Paula's making news again today saying the negotiations are ongoing and she will be back, but only if she gets a "fair deal."

Gee, do you think Abdul is using the press to re-negotiate her contract? She will be back, and the deal will be announced by next week.

Read more about DioGuardi's new deal here at People.com.

Posted by David Zurawik at 10:26 AM | Permalink | Comments (8)
Categories: Fox
        

The Friday edition of NBC Nightly News with Brain Williams is scheduled to air a report on the "Horses for Heroes" program at Maryland Therapeutic Riding in Crowsville.

Reported by Nora O'Donnell for the broadcast's weekly "Making a Difference" segment, the feature looks at soldiers from Fort Meade's Warriors in Transition unit who have returned with serious injuries from the battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan. This week, seven of the soldiers graduated from an eight-week therapeutic riding program at the Crowsville center.

NBC Nightly News, network TV's highest-rated evening newscast, airs at 6:30 p.m. on WBAL (Channel 11).

Posted by David Zurawik at 6:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
        

The return of Jon & Kate is still five days away, and already the media circus is back in town and going 24/7 in all three rings. 

The tabloids are lit up with cover stories, and the TV morning shows are interviewing anyone remotely connected with the show. Thursday morning the CBS Early Show had Kate Gosselin's brother and sister-in-law on saying how troubled they are by the way the kids are allegedly suffering -- again.

But before you despair over what a hopped-up, superficial, tabloid-crazed society we've become, think about this: Maybe our strange obsession with the Gosselins isn't such a bad thing. Maybe it is based, in fact, on a positive media development.

In reading through some of the hundreds of comments this blog has received in recent months about the Gosselins last night, I was struck by a palpable undercurrent that I hadn't noticed before. One of the pleasures some viewers get in writing and talking about the Gosselins is connected to the fact that the TV image of Jon and Kate as exemplary parents of a happy family has been exposed as a lie in recent months.

And here's the real pleasure for some of the commenters: The expose didn't come from the mainstream press. It came from tabloids, bloggers and online commenters -- a collection of voices much closer to vox populi than the old authoritative voices of the mainstream press.

So, of course, many viewers are interested in stories about how Jon and Kate and their kids are living now that the white-picket-fence veneer has been removed. They helped strip the false image away.

If that is true, I don't think it's a bad thing. In a new media sense, in fact, it might be a very good thing. It isn't so much wanting to see someone famous torn down, it's more about wanting to see a fake media-constructed ideal deconstructed.

What do you think?

Posted by David Zurawik at 9:42 AM | Permalink | Comments (26)
        

No major personnel changes are planned, but WBAL radio is going to shift to a harder news format from 5 to 9 a.m. weekdays starting Aug. 31, station mananger Jeff Beauchamp said Wednesday.

Long-time morning show host Dave Durian, a former TV anchorman, will stay in the anchor seat, but the station will focus on "what it is known for -- news and information," Beauchamp said.

"This is something that has been in the works for months," Beauchamp explained. "When Mark Miller [news director] and I talked about this, we asked ourselves, 'What do listeners come to WBAL radio for?' They come for news and information, and that's what the station will offer."

(Dave Durian: WBAL photo)

Beauchamp outlined the differences between morning drivetime as it stands now and what it will sound like come Aug. 31: "This will be totally driven by a news clock. Hard news and information...We'll be getting rid of the little features we have on pop culture and stuff like that."

"We're making room for more timely topics elements, which will replace some of the lighter stuff," said Mark Miller, WBAL's news director.

Explaining that there will be more financial and business reports in reaction to the harsh economic times, Miller said, "Much as our listeners have had to adapt, we have to change as well."

As reported here last week, Beauchamp is leaving after 34 years at WBAL. His last day is Friday.

Posted by David Zurawik at 12:19 PM | Permalink | Comments (36)
Categories: Radio
        

Last week, I asked if Kate Gosselin was moving to Maryland based on reports of her looking at condos in Rockville near her bodyguard, Steve Neild. 

Today, the reports say it's a done deal -- the mom in TLC's troubled reality show Jon and Kate Plus 8 is moving to this very upscale stretch of Montgomery County in Maryland.

It appears that the kids will stay at the family home in Pennsylvania. When Jon has the kids there, she has Rockville.

When she has the kids in Pennsylvania, Jon has Manhattan, the French Riviera and the world.

Call it D-I-V-O-R-C-E -- reality TV style.

Read it here at Radaronline.com.

Will you watch the show when it returns Monday?

Posted by David Zurawik at 9:27 AM | Permalink | Comments (42)
Categories: Reality TV
        

I did not think things could get worse for The Wanted, the dreadful newsmagazine program NBC introduced last week.

I hated it, and you can read how much I hated it here. You can also read how much viewers in the U.S. and Norway hated it here. And the Nielsen ratings hated it, too. Read that here.

Yes, I hated it. I wrote three posts in one day, saying I thought it was the poster show for everything that was wrong with network TV news today in its so-called hunt for terrorists "living among us."

Last Monday, it was the lowest rated show of the night on network  prime time with only 2.99 million viewers. This Monday, it failed to hit even that low-water mark with only 2.17 million viewers. Tuesday afternoon, after only two epsiodes had aired, Lauren Kapp, a spokeswoman for NBC News, said that the network had no more episodes of The Wanted scheduled.

(Photo courtesy of NBC shows three members of The Wanted team.)

In answer to a follow-up email whether that meant it was cancelled, Kapp wrote, "As of now, NBC doesn't have any future episodes on our schedule."

I won't try to read between her words. One can only hope The Wanted is gone for good.

But before leaving this series to the ash heap of its misery, I have to say Monday night's show actually was worse than the premiere. The first episode was so ridiculous in its search for a mullah living in Oslo, Norway, that I compared it to the children's action show from Haim Saban, V.R. Troopers. Dozens of Norwegian viewers thought it even sillier than I did.

But at least in that episode, the actions of the terrorist-hunting "ops" team (ha-ha) didn't endanger anyone.

Monday night as they tried to track Mamoun Darkazanli, another person they identified as a "bad guy" and a terrorist, in Hamburg, Germany, the team got involved in a high-speed car chase in a residential neighborhood. The chase was meaningless to the outcome of the show, but it certainly seemed to put people on the street in danger. I wonder if any German viewers have seen the episode online yet, and what they think.

I think it is time for NBC News to pull the plug for good on this misadventure in TV news before someone gets hurt. Really.

(Full disclosure for the third time in the three days I have written about The Wanted: I teach part time at Goucher College. That potentially might matter because NBC News cameras last year came to Goucher to tape a segment on a visiting professor who was allegedly a Rwandan war criminal, according to NBC News. The producers said the interview was for a Dateline segment -- they did not say it was for The Wanted. Still, for the third time, I disclose however slight and improbable any potential conflict might be. The college said at the time that the case was "murky," and that there was not enough evidence to "exonerate or convict." The visiting professor was suspended. Read the Sun story here. )   

Posted by David Zurawik at 4:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (15)
Categories: NBC
        

WBAL weathercaster Sandra Shaw is one of 20 finalists in a contest run by Disney-ABC to select  local broadcasters from 10 of the stations that carry its syndicated show, Live with Regis and Kelly, to be co-hosts for a day.

Viewers can vote online through 10 p.m. Tuesday for any one of the 20, and the 10 who get the most votes will be announced Wednesday on the show. Five men and five women will be selected. To vote, go here.

Each of the 10 will co-host with Regis Philbin or Kelly Ripa for a day during the weeks of Aug. 3-7 and 17-21. 

Live with Regis and Kelly airs at 10 a.m. weekdays on WBAL (Channel 11).

UPDATE: Wednesday 11 a.m. -- Shaw was selected as one of the 10 broadcasters to co-host for a day in August on Live with Regis and Kelly, according to a WBAL spokeswoman.

Posted by David Zurawik at 10:57 AM | Permalink | Comments (16)
Categories: Baltimore Television
        

If you read my Monday morning post, you know I wasn't too excited about Anthony Bourdain's trip to Baltimore for his No Reservations show on the Travel Channel Monday night.

For one thing, I was troubled by him lumping Baltimore in with Detroit and Buffalo and calling the episode "Rust Belt." I lived in Detroit for eight years when I worked for the Detroit Free Press, and I can tell you that's the Rust Belt -- not Baltimore.

I also feared Bourdain was going to look at Baltimore only through the prism of HBO's The Wire, a fictional TV show.

Now that I have seen the whole Baltimore segment, forget being fearful and troubled, I absolutely hate what Bourdain did. He ignored any sense of the real diversity of Baltimore's rich ethnic mix to try and imitate a narrow slice of it found in a TV show.

What viewers were left with was TV imitating TV and a hot dog host acting like he was getting down with the nitty-gritty, hardcore reality of urban America.

Trying to match the profanity and hard-edged cynicism of the sensibility that permeated The Wire, Bourdain contextualizes his visit here several times by characterizing Baltimore as "one seriously expletived-up city." He actually only lived here a short time in the 1980s, he says. But he seems to know how expletived-up the city is from watching The Wire -- so that is what he makes sure his cameras find.

As I said in Monday's post, his three restaurant visits are to The Roost, Chaps Pit Beef and Mo's Seafood. He visits Chaps with Jay Landsman, an actor from The Wire. He is accompanied on his trip to Mo's by Felicia "Snoop" Pearson, an actress on The Wire.

He nods and agrees with whatever they say as if it is the wisest thing he ever heard. Pearson tells him during the course of their visit that she has homes in New York, Miami and Baltimore and that she has a movie, a reality TV show and various music ventures -- all in the works. She is a little vague on the details -- or maybe it is just his lack of follow-up questions.

In his blog post  Monday, Bourdain tried to suggest that criticism like this is chamber of commerce backlash. Not so.

My distaste for this production has nothing to do with boosterism or not liking The Wire's portrayal  of the city -- a depiction, by the way, that I defended and even celebrated at a time when doing so was a lonely enterprise. Instead it has to do with using the great power of television to perpetuate stereotypes. 

Journalist Walter Lippmann defined stereotypes as "pictures in our heads" -- pictures that become so rooted that after a while, we seek out only that reality which matches the pictures. That's what it appears Bourdain came to Baltimore to do: Find people and places that matched the pictures in his mind that were put there by The Wire.

That is not good television. Nor is that socially responsible. That's the kind of TV that makes us more divided, confused and ignorant as a nation.

Posted by David Zurawik at 12:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (57)
Categories: Baltimore Television
        

Now Here's some good TV news for local viewers: Baltimore is featured prominently in the premiere episode of Season 3 of AMC's Mad Men, last year's winner of the Emmy as the best drama on television. Mark your calendars for 10 p.m. Aug. 16.

In sending out the screener, the producers asked that plot points not be revealed. With the web being the web someone is sure to violate that request. But it won't be me. I love the series and like the writer-prooducers too much. This is one of the few dramatically rich viewing experiences left on TV, and I don't want to spoil one bit of viewer pleasure.

But I can talk a bit about the Baltimore stuff. At the heart of the season opener is a business trip Don Draper (Jon Hamm) and Salvatore Romano (Bryan Batt) take to Baltimore to do a little hand holding with one of their clients, the father and son running London Fog. The episode is titled "Out of Town," and it is written by series creator Matthew Weiner, who spent part of his childhood in Baltimore and attended Park School. (Robin Veith, an Emmy-nominated writer on the series, was promoted this season to executive story editor. She grew up in Baltimore.) Photo courtesy of AMC

As the title suggests, the trip to Baltimore dominates the episode with Draper and Romano eating dinner at Haussner's, spending a night at the Belvedere Hotel and the next day at the London Fog factory.

I will say nothing about what happens at any of their stops. But it is sexy, deep, complicated and fabulous. I loved this show from the first five minutes of the pilot, and I was infatuated all over again 30 seconds into the opener of Season 3.

While it is set on Madison Avenue in the 1960s and absolutely steeped in authentic period detail, Weiner and his staff of writers like Veith have managed to make Mad Men speak more eloquently than any other TV drama to America today.

Season 2 ended with the Sterling Cooper advertising agency being taken over by the British firm of Putnam, Powell and Lowe. And now the downsizing begins. The level or anxiety, fear and anger at Sterling Cooper will seem all too familiar to many viewers today.

Posted by David Zurawik at 9:12 AM | Permalink | Comments (16)
Categories: Coming Soon to TV
        

Anthony Bourdain's Emmy-nominated No Reservations cable TV show features Baltimore Monday night at 10 on the Travel Channel.

Before you get too excited about that, though, you should consider the context in which Baltimore eateries are being presented to a national and global audience. The title of the episode is "Rust Belt" and along with the magical cities of Buffalo and Detroit, Baltimore is described on the show's website as the "heart of the Rust Belt."

You should also be warned that it appears Bourdain and his producers view Baltimore mostly through the prism of HBO's The Wire -- with all too familiar images of boarded-up rowhouses in the background of promotional shots and Bourdain visiting the favorite eating spots of actress Felicia "Snoop" Pearson and actor Jay Landsman. The episode features Bourdain dining at The Roost, Mo's Seafood and Chap's Pit Beef.

Here's the online set-up for tonight: "In the bleak, cold winter, Tony meets up with his good friend Zamir, and they travel to the heart of America's Rust Belt with stops in Baltimore, Detroit and Buffalo."

After "visiting the misunderstood region," the online episode description says, Tony and Zamir come to understand that "it's not just about aging factories and cold weather, but it's also full of kind people and delicious food."

Beyond the patronizing tone, whether or not anyone at the Travel Channel cares about presenting a representative and accurate sense of Baltimore, it should be noted that the weather here is considerably warmer than it is in Buffalo and Detoit, two of the colder cities in the country. And this is a show that has just been nominated for Best Non-Fiction Program.

Here's the desription of the visit to The Roost: "Tony and Zamir enjoy one of Baltimore's specialties, lake trout. But there's a catch -- it's not trout and it's not from a lake."

On the promotional video trailer of their visit to The Roost, Bourdain orders a tray of food worth $7.95. Food at The Roost is described as: "tasty... and cheap... a meal for increasingly hard times."

As for Mo's Seafood: Tony eats here with Felicia 'Snoop' Pearson from The Wire. This is one of her favorite restaurants.

Chap's Pit Beef: Tony eats pit beef with The Wire's Jay Landsman.

Posted by David Zurawik at 6:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (28)
Categories: Baltimore Television
        

Jeff Beauchamp, vice president and station manager at long-time powerhouse WBAL radio, is leaving the station after almost 34 years on the job, he said Thursday in a Sun interview. His last day at the 50,000-watt station he that he transformed from an adult contemporary music operation into one of the most honored news-talk stations in the country, will be next Friday.

"The company presented me with a package that is fair, and I'll be doing some consulting work for WBAL radio in the months and year ahead," the 58-year-old Beauchamp said.

"This is a great company to work for, and the proof of that is that they put up with me for 34 years -- but I wanted to be here every day for 34 years. This place is like a part of me... I've been here over half my life, so I have a lot of emotions right now."

Beauchamp, who joined the station as a news anchor in 1976, said, "The thing I think I'm most proud of is being part of the transition of WBAL from a station that played music and had a lot of other kinds of programming that they called Adult Contemporary to a news-talk station."

During Beauchamp's tenure, WBAL radio won 19 national Edward R. Murrow Awards -- more than any other local station in the country. The Murrow Awards for news, information and public affairs programming are among the most prestigious in broadcasting.

"The change to news-talk was an evolutionary process, and it wasn't always easy," Beauchamp said. "But aong the way, I was able to work with people and hire people like Dave Durian and Ron Smith. They have become in my mind huge radio personalities in this market, if not among the biggest nationally. That's been fun and an honor to work with people like that."

Describing Beauchamp who hired him in 1984 as "one of the most widely respected broadcast executives" in the country, Ron Smith said, "Jeff Beauchamp, in a very real sense, made my career possible."

"This truly is the end of era," Smith said Thursday. "Personally, I’m losing a manager, a mentor and friend from our work family. Our family is grieving."

Calling Beauchamp a "guardian of free speech," the conservative host said coming out against the war in Iraq "cost" the station 30 percent of Smith’s audience.

"Never did Jeff presume to tell me to rethink my position — never did he tell me what to say, or what not to say."

No one has worked closer with Beauchamp than executive producer Mike Wellbrock, who has been at the station 26 years.

"Jeff is a natural leader," Wellbrock said. "He’s the type of boss who would run interference and block so other’s could score touchdowns. And then he wouldn’t take any credit. "There are countless numbers of broadcasters whose careers he helped develop. He would challenge them to reach their potential, and then celebrate their success."

"Jeff has been a terrific partner of WBAL TV," Jordan Wertlieb, the general manager of WBAL-TV (Channel 11) said. "His leadership at the radio station is unprecedented, and we wish him well."

Both WBAL Radio and TV are owned by the Hearst Television, Inc., which consists of 26 TV stations and 2 radio stations. The company’s two radio outlets are both in Baltimore — WBAL-AM and WIYY-FM.

It is no secret that WBAL radio, like many media outlets, has felt the effects of a terrible economy and vast technological change in listener habits — especially during the last year.

In January, the station laid off sports talk show host Steve Davis to shed his six-figure contract. "It was an economic move," Beauchamp said at the time. "We’ve been doing some realigning because of the economy."

WBAL has been buying out employees in what one industry analyst described as "dribs and drabs" during the last year.

Beauchamp’s separation package was not a part of any widespread buyout at the station.

Ed Kiernan, WBAL’s general manager and the person to whom Hearst Television, Inc., referred calls yesterday did not return calls from The Sun.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Posted by David Zurawik at 3:38 PM | Permalink | Comments (12)
Categories: Radio
        

Is Kate Gosselin headed for Maryland?

That's what US magazine says in its latest cover story extravaganza on the implosion of the Gosselin marriage and TLC's Jon & Kate Plus 8.

Kate toured condos in Rockville that go for $1,600 to $3,200 a month, according to the magazine. Funny, she never struck me as the Washington type.

Actually, one of her bodyguards, the one she was rumored to be having an affair with, lives in Rockville with his wife. What a crew!

TLC seems determined to get this catastrophe back on the air by Aug. 3, but I can't imagine many of the advertisers who sell family-oriented products wanting to be associated with it.

The parents are out of control (especially Jon), and the kids are suffering. Oh yeah, that's just the kind of show I would want to pay top dollar to in trying to sell Cheerios and Pampers.

It's time for TLC to do the right thing and put this show out of misery.

Posted by David Zurawik at 12:55 PM | Permalink | Comments (46)
Categories: Reality TV
        

Three cheers to CNN, Soledad O'Brien and the producers of the cable channel's Black in America 2 series for Wednesday night's "kickoff" interview with Harvard University professor Henry Louis Gates.

If there was anyone who doubted whether or not CNN's Black in America series was really wired into the nation's discussion about race, they couldn't help but believe it truly was after seeing O'Brien's skilled interview with Gates. The interview preceded CNN's coverage of President Barack Obama's prime-time press conference, and by the time the president started talking about Gates' controversial arrest at his home in Cambridge, CNN viewers had to realize they knew more than the president thanks to O'Brien's interview.

Timely, focused and clear-headed, the interview was the first opportunity I had to hear Gates' account of events, and as I said in my preview of Black in American 2 Wednesday, I got up from the TV more informed about race than I was when I turned it on.

Here is part of the transcript of the interview between O'Brien and Gates in which he recounts how officers from the Cambridge Police Department arrested him even after he showed the idenitification proving he was in his own home -- and was not an intruder.

On a personal level, I wish this had not happened to Professor Gates. But it did, and what a wise and illuminating choice the producers at CNN made in using it to launch their second year of Black in America.

Radio personality Tom Joyner was also on the Times Square set with O'Brien and Gates, because of the role Gates played in his search for identity and the huge role Joyner plays in American life with his morning radio show.

Here's part of the interview:

SOLEDAD O'BRIEN, HOST:  And welcome to New York City's Times Square,
everybody. As you can see, we're in front of a live audience literally
smack-dab in the middle of Times Square. We have brought together this
evening some of the most influential radio talk show hosts in the country.

And in turn, we have asked them to invite the most influential people
who brought them to a life-changing moment of truth, is what we're
calling it. It is just the beginning of a momentous night right here on
CNN.

We're premiering CNN PRESENTS: "Black in America 2," which is a look at
the most challenging issues facing African-Americans, and also the
solutions to those issues. Of course we're counting down to President
Obama's prime time news conference. We could not have picked a more
timely night to begin our discussion.

But here to get us started is Tom Joyner, his nationally syndicated --
welcome, syndicated radio program, "The Tom Joyner Morning Show," of
course, heard by millions of folks every day.

Now the past few days, one story has really dominated the conversation
on his program. Take a listen to a little bit of what they were talking
about.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TOM JOYNER, HOST, "THE TOM JOYNER MORNING SHOW": So, the professor of
African-American studies at Harvard University was arrested because a
neighbor…

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Really truly arrested?

JOYNER: Arrested.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Handcuffed.

JOYNER: The Cambridge police came to the door and said, identify
yourself. And he said, why? Because I'm a black man in America?

(END VIDEO CLIP)

O'BRIEN: The man they're talking about also happens to be the most
influential person in Tom Joyner's life. So please welcome in his first
TV appearance since the arrest, Professor Henry Louis Gates joining us.

(CHEERING AND APPLAUSE)

O'BRIEN: Tom and Professor Gates, nice to have you both.

HENRY LOUIS GATES JR., ALPHONSE FLETCHER UNIVERSITY PROFESSOR, HARVARD
UNIVERSITY: Thanks, Soledad.

O'BRIEN: You sort of had your own moment of truth over recent days. So
I'd like to start with that. We know that you were on a lengthy trip to
China and you were returning home. What exactly happened?

GATES: Well, I was filming my new documentary series for PBS called
"Faces of Americans," it's about immigration. And we were filming Yo-Yo
Ma's ancestral cemetery for a week in China. It was fantastic. And my
daughter and I -- I took my daughter along. And we had just flown back
from China.

I came from New York to Boston. And my driver picked me up. We got to my
house in Harvard Square and the door was jammed. The door wouldn't open.
And to make a long story short, I asked my driver just sort of to push
the door through. I gave him his tip, he left.

I called Harvard Real Estate, which does the maintenance on my house
because they own the house. And while I was on the phone, a Cambridge
policeman showed up on my porch. I walked with the phone still active to
my porch and he demanded that I step out of my house on to the porch.

That's all he said. He said, I would like to you step outside. I said,
absolutely not. I said, why are you here? He said, I'm investigating a
breaking and entering charge. I said, this is my house, I'm a Harvard
professor, I live here.

He said, can you prove it? I said, just a minute. I turned my back. I
walked into the kitchen to get my Harvard ID and my Massachusetts
driver's license. He followed me without my permission. I gave him the
two IDs and I demanded to know his name and his badge number.

O'BRIEN: And when you demanded that, what did he say?

GATES: He wouldn't say anything. He was just very upset. He was trying
to figure out who I was. He was looking at the ID. He didn't say
anything. And I said, why are you not responding to me? Are you not
responding to me because you're a white police officer and I'm a black man?

He turned, walked out -- turned his back on me, walked out. I followed
him on to my porch. It looked like a police convention, there were so
many policemen outside. I stepped out on my porch and said, I want to
know your colleague's name and his badge number.

And this officer said, thank you for accommodating my earlier request,
you are under arrest. And he slapped handcuffs on me and they took me to
jail.

O'BRIEN: Originally they put the handcuffs behind your back.

GATES: They put the handcuffs behind my back. And I told them that I was
handicapped, I used a cane. They had a debate. There was a black officer
there who was very sensitive. He persuaded them to move the handcuffs
from around the back to the front. They took me to the Cambridge Police
station and booked me, fingerprints, mug shot, which has now been all
over the universe.

O'BRIEN: I've got to tell you, to see -- I mean, Professor Gates, I had
him in college. And you know, to have that shot, your mug shot, it is
quite a shock to see. What was that moment like for you?

GATES: It was terrifying. And I realized…

O'BRIEN: Were you afraid?

GATES: I knew that I was in danger but I knew, too, that as soon as my
friends could get to jail, starting with Professor Charles Ogletree, who
is my friend and lawyer, that eventually I would be OK.

But what it made me realize was how vulnerable all black men are, how
vulnerable all people of color are and all poor people to capricious
forces like a rogue policeman. And this man clearly was a rogue policeman.

O'BRIEN: The police report said he described you as behaving in a
tumultuous manner.

GATES: Yes, look how tumultuous I am. I'm 5'7", I weigh 150 pounds. And
my tumultuous, outrageous action, Tom, was to demand that he give me his
name and his badge number. Soledad, why? Because if I had stepped out on
the porch -- it is important for all people to know this about the police.

If I had stepped outside of my house, he couldn't come in my house
legally without a warrant. He couldn't arrest me without a warrant. Had
I stepped outside he would have slapped handcuffs on me for being under
suspicion of breaking and entering because he was responding to a profile.

Two black men with backpacks were breaking and entering into my home.
And when he see me, he just presumed that one of them was me.

O'BRIEN: A neighbor called 911. I mean, it was a neighbor of yours who
said that description, two black men breaking into your house. Are you
angry with your neighbor?

GATES: No. In fact I hope right now that if someone is breaking into my
house this nice lady is calling the police. I have a lot of valuable art
and books in that house. And in fact, I think I'm going to send this
person some flowers. I hope she is watching. I know that she must be
intimidated and she must think that I'm very angry.

It wasn't her fault. It was the fault of the policeman who couldn't
understand a black man standing up for his rights right in his space.
And that's what I did. And I would do the same thing exactly again.

O'BRIEN: The charges were dropped.

GATES: Charges were dropped and the mayor of Cambridge, God bless her,
called me and apologized to me. And my lawyers and I are considering
what further action. Because this is…

O'BRIEN: What does that mean? Does that mean lawsuit?

GATES: Perhaps. Because this is not about me. This is about the
vulnerability of black men in America.

O'BRIEN: You know, you raise an interesting point. And again, the reason
you were originally here was to talk to being the inspiration for Tom
Joyner. You helped Tom Joyner track down part of his history that brings
us right back to the vulnerability of African-American men, but many,
many years prior to your situation.

GATES: Almost a century ago, Tom's great uncles, Tom and Meeks Griffin
(ph) were electrocuted on September 29, 1915, in South Carolina for a
crime -- for murdering a white man, a Confederate veteran, for a crime
that they most certainly did not commit. And we are filing papers to the
governor of South Carolina, who has been rather busy lately, hasn't
responded to my -- to our case.

O'BRIEN: Yes. We heard about him in the news too.

GATES: I think he took your petition to South America somewhere. But
we're going to get them exonerated. It is a terrible, terrible story.

O'BRIEN: What was -- what did it feel like? I mean, all this was done
with the DNA testing. And really your passion has been to sort of fill
in the blanks of the story of African-Americans. You do that on PBS. You
do that in your work. You do that in your research. You do that in the
DNA testing.

It was incredibly emotional for you to know the people you came from.

JOYNER: Yes.

O'BRIEN: Why?

JOYNER: First of all, when you asked me to do this, and you asked, name
someone who has been very influential in your life, this was three weeks
ago, not knowing that what happened to Dr. Gates would have happened and
making him the star of this whole "Black in America 2" show today.

Every day that I go into my studio, I have the books that he gave me
about my ancestry.

O'BRIEN: Tracing your history.

JOYNER: And like the log at the Apollo, just for good luck, when I walk
into my studio, I rub these books, because that makes me realize that no
matter how much of a struggle that I might be going through, that my
ancestors went through a larger struggle.

And that we have come -- we've come a long way and Dr. Gates and the
incident reminds us that we still have a long way to go.

Posted by David Zurawik at 8:18 AM | Permalink | Comments (38)
Categories: CNN
        

Amid all the Emmy news this month, one great bit of news was overlooked here at Z on TV: Inheritance, a film about the relationship between a Holocaust survivor and the daughter of a Nazi prison camp commandant, received two nominations, inluding one as best documentary.

Readers of this blog know I consider it one of the finest documentaries I have ever seen, and I was honored to be on a panel with director James Moll and Helen Jonas, the Holocaust survivor at the center of the film. The panel in March followed a screening at at Goucher College where I teach part time as an assistant professor.

I am wondering if any readers have since seen this incredible film and what they think of it. If you have not yet seen it, I urge you rent it or order it online.

Here is the description of the film and its two nominations from P.O.V., the outstanding PBS series for which it was produced:

Inheritance by James Moll

Categories: Best Documentary and Outstanding Interview

Nominees: Director/Producer: James Moll; Executive Producers: Simon Kilmurry, Chris  Malachowsky, Ryan Malachowsky; Producer: Christopher Pavlick

Imagine watching Schindler’s List and knowing the sadistic Nazi camp commandant played by Ralph Fiennes was your father. Inheritance is the story of Monika Hertwig, the daughter of mass murderer Amon Goeth. Hertwig has spent her life in the shadow of her father’s sins, trying to come to terms with her “inheritance.” She seeks out Helen Jonas, who was enslaved by Goeth and who is one of the few living eyewitnesses to his unspeakable brutality. The women’s raw, emotional meeting unearths terrible truths and lingering questions about how the actions of our parents can continue to ripple through generations.

 

Posted by David Zurawik at 10:14 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)
        

Documentaries are not supposed to be able to attract huge, mainstream audiences. Just ask all the TV networks that don't make them any more, claiming attention spans are too short for such long-form programming.

But CNN turned that notion on its head a year ago with Black in America, a documentary reported by Soledad O'Brien that was seen by 16 million people in the middle of the summer and helped ignite one of the most intense and widespread discussions of any TV production of the year. And most of the talk it generated was about race, a subject that TV had a long history of mostly trying to avoid until last year and the arrival of the nation's first black presidential candidate of a major party.

CNN returns to the topic this week for four hours across tonight and Thursday with Black in America 2, a sequel with every bit as much power and passion as the original. In fact, Black in America 2 might prove to be an even more moving TV experience for some viewers.

Whereas last year's model focused on the experiences of black women and families one night and black men the next, this year's follow-up focuses on what the executive producer describes as "today's pioneers" and "tomorrow's leaders" - African-American men and women who are making some remarkable efforts to provide solutions to the problems of American life. There is an inherent lift in that kind of narrative - and while you might not be inspired, you can't help but be impressed by some of the people you meet in this film.

"Black in America last year generated a viral conversation online. It generated a conversation on talk radio. It generated a conversation in magazines, in churches, in homes," executive producer Mark Nelson said in a telephone interview last week. "What we wanted to do was listen to that conversation. And one of the things we heard is that there are a ton of solutions that are taking place out there. We found people who are creating those solutions and have had incredible success. And that's what we wanted to cast a spotlight on in Black in America 2."

While the documentary is steeped in an informed and nuanced sense of race and sociology, it is never pedantic. That's because the storytelling is about people. O'Brien and a team that includes some of the best producers working in television make us care about the people at the heart of each story, and the rest flows organically from that.

Among the pioneers highlighted Wednesday night is University of Michigan surgeon Dr. Lisa Newman, who is studying the role African ancestry might play in a certain kind of highly aggressive breast cancer. CNN's producers not only follow her back to Ghana and around the U.S. on her research projects, they also sensitively track one of her patients who is battling the disease.

And just in case that isn't enough movement and drama for some viewers, the producers reveal early in the report that Newman has just discovered a lump in her own breast and is going in for a biopsy. As the story of her research unfolds, viewers await news on Newman's fate.

Actor, writer and filmmaker Tyler Perry is also profiled as a pioneer, and he certainly deserves it. But neither O'Brien nor the producers treat him with kid gloves in deference to his millions of devoted fans.

They engagingly chronicle his incredible career and accomplishments, even as they deftly use his story to show the disconnect between the white Hollywood power structure and black audiences. But they also bring in a black cultural analyst who offers a harsh critique of the images in some of Perry's work. As good as the landmark CBS newsmagazine 60 Minutes is, it rarely balances portraits of major cultural figures with any tough criticism of their work. Good for CNN in trying to offer a multidimensional look at the man and his work - though it will probably catch some heat for it.

Nelson, vice president and senior executive producer of CNN Productions, says such heat is part of the price you pay for trying to bring light to complicated and sometimes controversial topics.

"Look, a lot of people loved what they saw last year, but a lot of people thought that they would have liked to see other stuff - and that's fine," Nelson says, referring to complaints from some black critics that the original Black in America wasn't uniformly positive enough for their tastes. "But it looked at people and issues, and it looked at them fairly and objectively. One thing has to be made very clear: This is not programming for black Americans, this is programming for all Americans."

The stories told in Thursday's two-hour segment focus on young leaders and the kind of students who look to provide the next generation of leadership. And while all of them are black, the narratives of promise, risk, sacrifice, achievement and progress are universal.

The profiles of two young leaders and some of the students they inspire are not to be missed. One features Steve Perry, an educator who founded a magnet school in Hartford, Conn., that sends 100 percent of its graduates to college. One of those graduates, a shy teen who has a history of being abused by her alcoholic father, will make you hold your breath in hope as she tries to navigate an all-important college admissions interview.

The other story, which is just as powerful, involves Malaak Compton-Rock and the program she founded in Brooklyn, N.Y., to take economically disadvantaged teens on cultural exchange programs to places ranging from South Africa to Howard University. She's the wife of comedian and actor Chris Rock, but you quickly forget that claim to fame as the filmmakers instantly engage you in her vision and work.

Timing played a large role last summer in the media buzz and deeper cultural conversation that Black in America helped generate. It aired just as voters started to seriously focus on the implications of Barack Obama's candidacy.

Today, those us who listened to that dialogue are smarter about ourselves and the nation. Even though it is an expensive and time-intensive effort that goes against the cost-cutting grain of so much media these days, here's hoping CNN makes Black in America an annual summertime event. We need this kind of enlightened, public affairs TV programming more than ever.

Black in America 2 airs at 9 p.m., following a presidential press conference at 8. A "countdown" show to Black in America airs from 7 to 8 p.m. on CNN.

Posted by David Zurawik at 6:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (9)
Categories: CNN, TV and race
        

Here's a final kick in the pants for The Wanted, the wretched NBC News series that debuted Monday night: It was the lowest rated prime-time program of the evening with 2.99 million viewers.

You can see my highly-critical review here, and some scathing remarks from viewers here. 

And now, the news that the ratings are miniscule. TVNewser does a deft job of pointing out just how bad an audience of 2.99 million viewers is by network standards here.

The most interesting aspect of the ratings is how poorly the show did with young viewers finishing behind even Spanish-language Univision, according to TVNewser. The producers had been touting this self-important and silly show as targeted for a new and younger audience. Not exactly.

Yesterday, in my first post, under the heading of full disclosure, I told readers that I am a part-time assistant professor at Goucher College. Read that post here.

That is possibly relevant because NBC News producers came to Goucher last year to film an interview allegedly for Dateline with a visiting professor from Rwanda. The story of their presence on campus was reported in the Sun including the allegations that the professor was a war criminal. No mention was made of The Wanted -- only Dateline.

A spokeswoman for NBC News Tuesday declined to say whether or not the story on the former visiting professor at Goucher will appear on The Wanted.

Given these ratings, The Wanted might not be around all that much longer anyway.

Posted by David Zurawik at 5:34 PM | Permalink | Comments (7)
Categories: NBC
        

Reaction to The Wanted, a new prime-time series from NBC News, has started to roll in from Norway, and it's official: The show is already a laughingstock on two continents. Read on to understand why Norway's opinion of this newsmagazine matters.

Monday night, NBC News debuted this self-important, silly and reckless production featuring a so-called elite team that tracks down alleged terrorists and war criminals who are (cue the scary music) "living among us."

Dramatically, the show wants to be Steven Spielberg's Munich with the assassinations replaced by gotcha "journalistic" confrontations. But it comes off more like V.R. Troopers, the 1990's action-adventure show for children 4 to 8 years old about a team of teen superheroes with magic pendants.

Monday night's premiere showed the team "tracking down" a terrorist in Norway. They didn't have to do much tracking, though , since he has lived openly in Oslo since 1992. Read my review here, and then savor some of these mocking comments from readers in Norway.

The show has yet to air in Norway, and it already has them rolling in the aisles there. Chalk it up to the power of the Internet -- and really awful televison.

So far, the folks in Norway are reacting to two parts of the show. The first involves team members doing surveillance on the apartment of Mullah Krekar, the terrorist target of Monday's show whom NBC News wants Norway to deport to Iraq. As he sets up a camera in a bit of shrubbery, one of the team members says in a portentious voiceover that people "could get killed" if the slightest slip up is made. It's a totally absurd and over-the-top statement as you will see.

But that's hype. Worse is the duplicity of NBC News in setting up two politicians from Norway as the voices of moral authority in the piece -- castigating the government for not deporting Krekar. NBC News never tells viewers they are ultra-right-wingers who hardly represent the majority or any kind of moral authority.

Here's one from a reader who ID'd himself only as "some guy from Norway":

You're pretty spot-on with this review. I had a look at the show today -- through the wonders of the internet; it doesn't air on TV here until Thursday evening -- and I felt like a mixture of watching Battlestar Galactica and 24 mixed with my worst impressions of american action style war reporting. I was just waiting for Jack Bauer to come busting in and torturing Krekar.

The guys lives in the open, and there was a much more balanced and down-to-earth documentary made by some Australian guys a couple of year ago:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5S0j8WZvYIs

Here's one from another reader in Norway, Thea:

I'm Norwegian and I can't stop laughing! Talking about how "people could get killed" if they slip up on their surveillance, which amounts to hiding behind shrubbery in an Oslo neighborhood"

Too freakin funny!!  We all know where krekar lives. We go grocery shopping in that area, we send our kids to school there, we go to work, we go to cafes with our friends. It's just like any other neighborhood.

I can't even imagine how rediculous it must have looked when these guys were hiding behind trash bins, claiming they could die.
I wouldn't call it "upscale" though, that place is the shabbiest part of Oslo.

"Norway has a governmental procedure for deporting people, and Ciralski and his team are angry because it has not yet deported Krekar back to Iraq. Can you believe the arrogance of a cooked-up, American, prime-time news-entertainment show telling a government like Norway how it should behave?"

This is even funnier. Norway, of course, follows the human rights convention. We have no way of knowing if he will get a fair trial.

Christian weighs in with this:

"As a Norwegian seeing this episode was pure comedian gold! Populist party FRP politicians, criticizing our government?!!?! Who could believe it!I also loved how the ex-military guy also actually said that someone might end up dead if he got spotted. That just screamed, "Everything I say from now on is bs."

And this from Oskar:

As Christian points out, both of the politicians interviewed by "The Wanted" are members (one current and one former chairman) of "Fremskrittspartiet" or FrP, or in English, "The Progress Party". Don't confuse their name with the US term "progressive" (a.k.a. "liberal"). FrP is the most right-wing party in Norway; interviewing the former and current chairman is akin to interviewing Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh on their opinion of the Democratic party.

I also loved the dramatic conclusion of the show: just a few hours before broadcast, Norway announced Krekar would be deported. Uhm, not so fast: the Norwegian foreign ministry just issued the statement that the fundamental situation has not changed, it still is too dangerous in Iraq to extradite Krekar without being in violation of International Human Rights.

See http://www.frp.no/no/Andre_sprak/English/,
http://www.nrk.no/nyheter/1.506599 (Norwegian)

One more -- this is too good to pass up:

Hiding in the bushes? Why not just ring his doorbell? It's not like he's living in Tora Bora. He has a normal apartment in Oslo that he shares with his elderly mother, and I'm pretty sure he's listed.

And also, yes, we know he's a (suspected) terrorist and that he supports al-qaida. The supreme court has decided that he shall be sent back to Iraq as soon as the Norwegian government gets guarantees that he won't be executed. Problem is - we don't have those guarantees yet, and (incredible as it may seem) we're actually one of those bleeding heart liberal countries that like to uphold the law (Yes - in Norway you actually need evidence before locking someone up!), and Norwegian law says that it is illegal to deport someone to a country where they might be executed for the crimes of which they are accused (including the U.S.).

On a different note : I actually almost broke the guy's nose once. I swung open the bathroom door at Gardermoen airport in Oslo (those doors are HEAVY, and they swing out) and missed his nose by about two inches. Shame I didn't do it two seconds earlier really.

Posted by David Zurawik at 12:01 PM | Permalink | Comments (74)
Categories: NBC
        

With unemployment soaring and the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office saying healthcare reform as it stands now will break what's left of the government bank, President Barack Obama will take to the prime-time airwaves again Wednesday night to try and work his TV magic.

ABC, NBC, CBS and PBS will carry the session starting at 8 p.m., but Fox will not. The Fox News Channel and the Fox Business Channel, however, like CNN and MSNBC, will carry it.

The White House had initially scheduled the session for 9, but that clashed with popular reality TV shows on some of the networks, so rather than risk being carried only on one network, Team Obama changed the time.

The time change did cause some shuffling of CNN's schedule, which had Soledad O'Brien's excellent documentary, Black in America 2, scheduled to start at 8 p.m. It will now premiere at 9.

A special "countdown" to the Black in America programming lineup will start at 7. If you cannot watch Black in ASmertica 2 in real time, record it. This is one of the high points of the TV summer. I wrote about it Sunday. I will have a another post on it Wednesday morning.

Posted by David Zurawik at 10:56 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Categories: TV and Politics
        

After watching the premiere of NBC's The Wanted Monday night, I could not help but wonder if there is anyone left in management at NBC News who still has a journalistic bone in her or his body.

How could anyone in a network news division, let alone one with as distinguished a history as NBC, think it was a good idea to produce a show like this? I have seen a lot of wretched hybrids of TV news and entertainment the last 25 years, but I am hard pressed to remember one as silly, self-important and journalistically out to lunch as this.

The premise involves NBC News putting together a so-called elite team to track down terrorists and war criminals who are allegedly living "among us," and confronting them or helping authorities bring them to "justice."

It clearly wants to look and feel dramatically like a TV version of the Steven Spielberg film Munich, a docu-drama about a team of Mossad assassins avenging the massacre of Israeli athletes by terrorists at the 1972 Munich Olympics. But it comes off more like V.R. Troopers, the 1990's kids show from Haim Saban about a team of crime-fighting teenagers with magic pendants.

The comparison is not random. I swear some of the bass-pounding music in Monday night's pilot was nearly identical to that of the music in the pilot for V.R. Troopers. Maybe NBC News is looking for that all-elusive 4- to 8-year-old demographic at 10 p.m.

Or, maybe hotdog shows like this are even cheaper to produce for the 10 o'clock hour than Jay Leno's new show.

The focus of Monday night's premiere was Mullah Krekar, founder of Ansar al-Islam, a militant anti-American organization. The tracking down part Monday wasn't that tough since Krekar lives quite openly in Oslo, Norway. He was first granted refugee status in that country 18 years ago.

And that's what seems to make the blood boil of Adam Ciralski, the NBC producer identified onscreen as "investigative journalist," who leads this team of a former Navy Seal, a former Green Beret and a former prosecutor. There are lots of formers on this team, and the ex-military guys are almost too much to bear --  talking about how "people could get killed" if they slip up on their surveillance, which amounts to hiding behind shrubbery in an upscale Oslo neighborhood outside of Krekar's apartment and shooting photos of Krekar's apartment balcony.

At the end of the hour, one of them actually says the team is trying "to make this world a safer and better place." I think the V.R. Troopers were all for that, too.

But Ciralski is the real piece of work with his little designer engineer caps and his overblown rhetoric about bringing people to justice. He strides purposefully in and out of interviews and says stuff like, "Norway is letting justice stand in the way of justice."

That's the crux of the matter. Norway has a governmental procedure for deporting people, and Ciralski and his team are angry because it has not yet deported Krekar back to Iraq. Can you believe the arrogance of a cooked-up, American, prime-time news-entertainment show telling a government like Norway how it should behave?

The journalistic holes in the efforts of Ciralsky and his team are too many to count. Their report features two Norwegian politicians complaining about the government's lack of action on Krekar, but they both appear to be opposition party members. In fact, one is a candidate for prime minister.

So, you think they might have an ax to grind for their own political purposes? But the show addresses none of that. In fact, it uses the candidate for one of the hour's most artificial attempts at a high point when at the end she thanks the team "on behalf of the Norwegian people" for their efforts in bringing Krekar to justice.

Only they brought him to nothing and they accomplished nothing except a lot of globe-trotting. They got a piece of paper from Kurdistan allegedly promising a fair trial for Krekar if he is sent back. They got it from a guy who was identified in one scene as a general, and in another as a judge. It's better than the guy identified only as "Raj," who they used to try and paint Krekar as another Osama Bin Laden.

All of us in the news business are trying these days to find new models with which to make money. But really, NBC News, you do not have to debase the brand like this to do it. 

Posted by David Zurawik at 6:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (83)
Categories: NBC
        

You knew this was going to happen -- a bidding war for rights to the film and a TV special about Michael Jackson's final days. In this case, it also includes rights to hundreds of hours of video of rehearsals for the tour that never was.

According to the Los Angeles Times, Sony is leading the pack in acquiring film rights, while NBC has the inside track on the TV special.

As reported by the Times, the TV special sounds intriguing: "The special would be broadcast in September and it would be directed by Kenny Ortega, the choreographer-director responsible for such hits as “Dirty Dancing” and “High School Musical.” ...It is described as featuring an ensemble of superstars that might include Janet Jackson, Justin Timberlake and Will.I.Am performing Jackson’s hits using the costuming, choreography, aerial ballet and special effects-driven illusions that had been engineered for the singer’s comeback, a source said."                                                                                   (Photo Mark Ralston /AFP/Getty Images)

As for a feature film about Jackson, who do you think will play Jackson as an adult?

Meanwhile, TV One will launch its "Forever Michael Week" of music and specials about Jackson Sunday. It was supposed to focus on Jackson's planned tour, but will now feature documentaries and specials about the late entertainer.

Posted by David Zurawik at 2:08 PM | Permalink | Comments (5)
Categories: Michael Jackson
        

Brian Kilmeade, co-host of Fox & Friends, apologized for remarks he made about American ethnicity during a recent telecast on the Fox News Channel.

Discussing a Swedish study on the relationship between Alzheimer's disease and marriage, Kilmeade said it was problematic to compare Swedish and American populations, because, "we [Americans] keep marrying other species and other ethnics . . . Swedes have pure genes . . . in America we marry everybody . . ." 

Unity: Journalists of Color, condemned Kilmeade's words, saying they lent credence to "the basest of white supremacist ideologies, the notion that white people and non-white people are of different species, with the white race as 'pure.'"

Monday on Fox & Friends, Kilmeade said he did not intend to offend anyone with his earlier remarks: "Looking back on those comments, I realize they were inappropriate. I sincerely apologize. America is a huge melting pot and that is what makes us such a great country."

Posted by David Zurawik at 12:45 PM | Permalink | Comments (32)
Categories: Fox News
        

How many times are we in the media going to get played either by an American Idol judge or host trying to use the press to negotiate a contract -- or by Fox and the Idol producers themselves to create controversy and hype ratings?

Does anyone in the media remember all the way back to two months ago and the scores of headlines driven by quotes about how Simon Cowell might be leaving the show. Here's what I said then. Talks continue on a new contract for Cowell, who will be back next year, the final year of his old contract. Did host Ryan Seacrest leave? No, he just signed a new mind-boggling deal.

Here's a link to a Monday Los Angeles Times story quoting Abdul's new manager as saying she might leave the show. The story is reported responsibly and properly includes the context of managers trying to use the press to negotiate.

If you are going to read one story, read this one.

But if you spend more than 2 seconds worrying about Abdul's return, I believe you are being played for a sucker once again by the gang at American Idol.

Posted by David Zurawik at 11:34 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Categories: Reality TV
        

Over the weekend as we remembered CBS newsman Walter Cronkite, our focus was the high end of network TV journalism -- the golden age when facts mattered and ideological agendas were left at the newsroom door.

That was then... Monday night, viewers will be offered a look at the questionable lengths and possible depths to which one network news organization is now willing to go in pursuit of a prime-time audience as NBC News debuts The Wanted at 10 p.m.

If you have ever seen the sleazy and controversial editions of the newsmagagzine Dateline that ran under the banner "To Catch a Predator," think of this as "To Catch a Terrorist" or "To Catch a War Criminal." Only who's deciding who is a terrorist or war criminal? And is that something a network news division should be involved in when it is packaged and sold as prime-time entertainment?

Here is the way the show is described at an NBC website: "The Wanted brings together an elite team with backgrounds in intelligence, unconventional warfare and investigative journalism. The show focuses on real operators, in search of real targets — all in an effort to see individuals brought to justice."

According to network, that "elite team" consists of: "Roger Carstens who is recognized as one of the world's preeminent authorities on counter-terrorism and counter-insurgency; former Navy Seal Scott Tyler, an expert in urban reconnaissance and unconventional warfare; David Crane a decorated former US intelligence official...and Emmy award-winning investigative journalist Adam Ciralsky. Ciralsky also serves as co-executive producer of The Wanted with documentary filmmaker Charlie Ebersol."

Are you impressed? I'm not. What is a network news division doing getting into bed with the likes of Tyler, Carstens and Crane? What does "former US intelligence official" mean exactly? Was he in the CIA? What did he do in the CIA?

Here's David Corvo, an excutive producer at NBC News, putting the socially redeeming value spin on the production: " "We hope this program sheds light on an overlooked story. It is surprising how many people with serious accusations against them are living openly and avoiding any sort of judicial process."

Accusations? That's enough for you to target someone before millions of viewers? Hey, it worked for Joe McCarthy in the 1950s, why not NBC News in 2009?

Baltimore area viewers have already had a taste of the way NBC News will seek out those it would define as war criminals. One of those so accused, a Rwandan visiting professor at Goucher College, was suspended after NBC News cameras visited the campus to tape a segment on him. The college said at the time that the case was "murky," and that there was not enough evidence to "exonerate or convict." Read the Sun story here. (Full disclosure: I teach part-time at Goucher.)

Prime-time TV producers don't like "murky," and they hate stories that tell viewers there is not enough evidence to exonerate or convict. They like a clean kill, and are perfectly happy to play judge and jury. That's what troubles me most about The Wanted.

NBC says Monday night's episode "follows Mullah Krekar, the founder and leader of Ansar Al Islam, an internationally designated terrorist organization that has been accused of killing hundreds of Americans and other Westerners. Krekar has been called "Bin Laden 2.0" as well as an "Islamic Nazi" and yet he has been living free in Norway...."

NBC promises to take viewers "intelligence briefings in the Middle East and surveillance operations in Krekar's community in Oslo."

Posted by David Zurawik at 6:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (9)
Categories: NBC
        

If you have not read or seen enough about Walter Cronkite this weekend, I urge you to tune in Sunday night at 7 for That's the Way It Was: Remembering Walter Cronkite.

CBS News has a great history, and it does this sort of TV production about that history exceptionally well.

Understand not all the history of Cronkite at CBS News will be fully explored. The bad blood between Cronkite and his successor, Dan Rather, is not going to dealt with I am told. Part of the reason for the ill will was the way Rather used his new authority when he took over as anchor to keep the newly retired Cronkite off the air. Cronkite says he had been promised an active role in special reports, documentaries, science and political coverage -- and he was not happy when the promise wasn't kept. I was able to include some of that in my obituary of the legenday anchorman. I'll save most of the rest for another time.

Cronkite told me he was made to feel unwelcome at the West 57th Street headquarters of CBS News after he retired.

Rather's crew also made Cronkite loyalists feel unwelcome within the Evening News operation that they helped build into the number one newscast on network TV. At least two journalists who were there at the time used the word "purge" to describe the way the changing of the guard from Cronkite to Rather was handled.

That likely won't be part of Sunday night's special, and I am not saying it should be, I'm just trying to give you a fuller picture of the relationship between the institution of CBS News and Cronkite during other eras. It is more complicated than the testimonials you are reading might suggest. And things have been better in recent years since Rather left, with the current management team at CBS News going out of its way to forge closer ties with Cronkite.

I'll be watching Sunday night, because I can't hear the story told enough of how someone who did journalism the right way not only brought prestige and credibility to CBS, but also made the network piles of money with first-place ratings. One moral of the story of Cronkite's professional career at CBS News: Good journalism can be good business.

And finally, Let me get one more Cronkite fact off my chest. To me, one of the most compelling bits of evidence to support the claim in my Cronkite obituary that the term anchorman was invented to describe what he did is the fact that the first TV newsreaders and presenters in Sweden were simply called Kronkiters. The paragraph with that information in it got cut out of my obituary on Cronkite Friday night -- and I didn't know about it until tonight.

Maybe you already saw that fact elsewhere today, but if not, I wanted you to know how his seminal work in the early 1950's shaped the very construction of the archetype of TV anchorman around the world. I hope that is in the CBS special Sunday night. I think it will be.

Posted by David Zurawik at 11:08 PM | Permalink | Comments (7)
        

As I said in my obituary of Walter Cronkite, in person, he could come off as formal, stiff and even somewhat self-important. But those who worked with and knew him said he had a sense of humor and uncommon kindness.

I saw a bit of both sides of the man over the years in my encounters with him. Let me briefly recount one of those memories before sharing some assessments of Cronkite that didn't make it into my obituary of the legendary newscaster. They come from a Who's Who of television news.

In 1996, he and I sat down at CBS headquarters to talk about a book he was just about to publish, A Reporter's Life. I had been kept waiting a long time while ABC anchorman Charles Gibson posed for publicity pictures and chatted with Cronkite following their interview.

Cronkite, meanwhile, who was already 80 years old at the time, had been running late all day, hadn't eaten any lunch and was not in the best of moods, according to an assistant.

As we sat down, the interview had trouble written all over it. 

Once we were settled into our places, I pulled a microcassette tape recorder out of my bag, snapped it on, and placed it in front of Cronkite.

"It won't bother you, will it?" I said, with an edge even I heard as the words came out of mouth, though I really didn't intend it to be there.

Cronkite said nothing at first. He just stared at the 3 by 5 inch, $33 Realistic Radio Shack recorder on the table between us. Then, he stared at it some more and started to chuckle.

"No, I don't think it will bother me -- not exactly the 5,000-pound pencil, is it?" he said, using a term from the TV news business for the equipment it takes to record a TV interview like the one he had just finished with Gibson. "I think it will be okay."

He chuckled the Uncle Walter chuckle as he said it, and the skies parted. And we were off and running on a terrific interview. Not surprisingly, we talked quite a bit about the differences -- and the common ground -- of TV and print journalism. I learned a lot from him that day -- and it was his sense of humor, irony and graciousness that helped make it possible.

As I said at the time, yes, he embraced the 5,000-pound pencil and the celebrity that comes with it to become the quintessential anchorman, the archetype against which all the others have been measured. But he also stayed in touch with the fact-based values and get-it-right goals of the print reporter working with a spiral notebook or simple tape recorder.

Two years later, I had another encounter with Cronkite as I tried to get a quote from him on then-CBS anchorman Dan Rather for a story my wife, Christina Stoehr, and I were writring for the American Journalism Review.

The editor of AJR thought we needed to get Cronkite's voice in the piece, but Cronkite had very complicated feelings about his successor and wasn't co-operating at all with our efforts to talk to him. 

I got the quotes, but right now, I'm feeling like it's been a long, long day, and maybe I should sleep on this memory before I commit it to print even in the more informal space of a blog. Maybe tomorrow...

For now, let me leave you with some of the quotes from Cronkite's colleagues that are not in my obituary of him, but have something important to say about who he was and what he came to represent in American life. I am sure of this as I sit here at the computer at 1:30 a.m. Saturday morning: The outpouring of respect and affection from the people quoted here is a tremendous testament to what a giant Cronkite was in the history of TV News.

Sean McManus, President, CBS News and Sports: “It is impossible to imagine CBS News, journalism or indeed America without Walter Cronkite. More than just the best and most trusted anchor in history, he guided America through our crises, tragedies and also our victories and greatest moments. No matter what the news event was, Walter was always the consummate professional with an un-paralleled sense of compassion, integrity, humanity, warmth, and occasionally even humor. There will never be another figure in American history who will hold the position Walter held in our minds, our hearts and on the television. We were blessed to have this man in our lives and words cannot describe how much he will be missed by those of us at CBS News and by all of America.”

Katie Couric, anchor and managing editor, CBS EVENING NEWS WITH KATIE COURIC
correspondent, 60 MINUTES: "“When I think of Walter Cronkite, I think of his high journalism standards, integrity – but most of all his humanity.  I think he was so trusted because he exhibited a sense of purpose and compassion, night after night.  He was the personification of excellence."

Don Hewitt, executive producer, CBS News, creator of 60 MINUTES and Cronkite's first executive producer on the CBS EVENING NEWS: “How many news organizations get the chance to bask in the sunshine of a half-century of Edward R. Murrow followed by a half century of Walter Cronkite?”

Andy Rooney, 60 MINUTES commentator: “I've been proud over the years to see Walter become, not just one of the best known people on television but one of the best known people in the whole world of people. He was proud of me, too and there's no better feeling in life than that. I wouldn't trade Walter Cronkite liking me for just about anything I’ve ever had.”

 Mike Wallace, 60 MINUTES correspondent emeritus:  “We were proud to work with him – for him – we loved him.”

Morley Safer, 60 MINUTES correspondent: “Walter was truly the father of television news. The trust that viewers placed in him was based on the recognition of his fairness, honesty and strict objectivity. …and of course his long experience as a shoe-leather reporter covering everything from local politics to World War II and its aftermath in the Soviet Union. He was a giant of journalism and privately one of the funniest, happiest men I’ve ever known.”

 Charles Osgood, anchor SUNDAY MORNING, CBS RADIO "The Osgood File":“There was a reason why Walter was called the most trusted man in America. Nothing was more important to him than getting the story right and telling it fairly, and he expected the same of us.  I've learned a lot from wonderful colleagues here at CBS News, but from him most of all.”

Jeff Fager, executive producer, 60 MINUTES: “Walter Cronkite reached heights that will be almost impossible to match.  It’s unimaginable when you consider his achievements - a journalist who was the most trusted man in America.  He made us proud of who we were and what we did, and always with an extraordinary dignity and humility.”   

Linda Mason, Senior Vice President, Standards and Special Projects: “I was the first woman producer on the CBS EVENING NEWS, and Walter could not have been more welcoming and more professional. I remember his great enthusiasm for almost every story he touched—from politics to space and even the good fire. Everything was new. When I had the opportunity to executive-produce a two-hour special on Cronkite as his career was winding down, I was again struck by how much he retained the common touch and how he regarded his career with wonder.  I told him he was the Forrest Gump of the 20th century and he laughed.”

Rick Kaplan, executive producer, CBS EVENING NEWS: “Radio and television newsrooms all over America are filled with reporters and producers, writers and editors, who got into journalism for one reason: Walter Cronkite. He was a role model for so many of us. I grew up watching Walter on television, and it was the thrill of my life to finally meet him, and a privilege to spend six years producing pieces for him for the CBS EVENING NEWS.  He set standards that we in broadcast journalism still strive to meet today. Walter Cronkite was, quite simply, the best. His legacy and his spirit will always be part of CBS News and wherever good journalism is practiced.”

Susan Zirinsky, executive producer 48 HOURS: “As a Washington researcher under Cronkite during Watergate, as a Washington producer for Cronkite, he pushed us all to never give up and always seek the truth. His energy and his passion were infectious. Cronkite made us all better at our jobs—he was the spine of CBS News and we were proud to be on his team.”

Leslie Moonves, President and Chief Executive Officer, CBS Corporation: “It is with enormous sadness that we mark the death of Walter Cronkite. His passing is, of course, a major loss for journalism. He was a great broadcaster and a gentleman whose experience, honesty, professionalism and style defined the role of anchor and commentator. For almost two exciting and turbulent decades during the 1960s and 1970s he helped inform our nation, and bring us together. In so doing, he transcended his field to become the most trusted man in America. The legacy he left us all will endure. It was one of the great honors of my career to have had the opportunity to know him.” 

ABC News President David Westin: “Walter Cronkite set an example for all broadcast journalism by simply doing his best to tell us the truth about things that matter, with courage and without partisanship. We will miss him, but will seek to keep his spirit alive by following his example.” 

ABC News Anchor Charles Gibson: “Walter Cronkite was and always will be the gold standard. His objectivity, his even-handedness, his news judgment are all great examples. He, as much as anyone, is responsible for developing network television news. He set the standard. He told it ‘the way it is’ and all of us who are privileged to work in this business owe him an enormous debt of gratitude.”

 ABC News Anchor Diane Sawyer: “He was the defining anchor of America’s story – reminding us of what we can be at our best.He had depth, foreign reporting experience, endless excitement about the news, and an irresistible irreverence.A call, a note, a compliment from Walter was pretty much the Nobel Prize for a young reporter. I am so lucky to know what it was to be part of the Cronkite team.”

ABC News Anchor Barbara Walters: “There never was and there never will be another Walter Cronkite. We trusted him and that trust was well founded. He was also a jolly and supportive friend. He will be missed by each of us individually who knew him and by the whole country who loved him.”

Jon Klein, president, CNN/U.S.: “Walter Cronkite not only anchored a newscast, he anchored the nation during perilous times that included the assassination of a president and the resignation of another as well as a divisive war and the culture clash that followed. To this day, more than a quarter century since he vacated the anchor chair, every television journalist aspires to be what Walter was - steady, certain, reassuring, reliable, authoritative but accessible. He was America's Uncle Walter, and for three decades he was the most trusted name in news.”

Posted by David Zurawik at 11:43 PM | Permalink | Comments (13)
Categories: Cable and Network News
        

After watching Paul McCartney on David Letterman Wednesday, I posted my run-and-gun rave review of the show, and went to bed. I woke up five hours later and was off and running with the Emmys, so I did not get much chance until last night to reflect on what made that performance such a special evening of TV for many viewers. So far, it is the event of the TV summer, in my opinion.

I was especially moved by some of comments from readers Thursday about McCartney's appearance -- once I actually had time to read them last night. Check out this one:

All too often, a legendary performer very late in his career embarasses himself and disappoints his legions. Ah, but not so for Sir Paul.

What an absolute delight he was last evening: Reflective, savvy, gracious and ever so entertaining.

I was in high school when the Beatle Mania began. I was never a huge fan of the Beatles. That is, until last evening.

Paul brought home the best evening in television (not just late night) that I have seen in years! Indeed, "Yesterday" was quite the day.

One reader of the blog contacted me via email asking if that commenter lived in the Baltimore-DC area, because she has an extra ticket for McCartney's Washington concert, and thinks the person who wrote the comment might truly appreciate it. McCartney's performance, the comment above and the email request made me feel more optimistic about things than I have in months.

I think the resonance of McCartney's performance is related to that feeling. Yes, there was nostalgia for baby boomers in that it surely reminded some of them of happier, more carefree times in their lives and the life of this country -- like 45 years ago when the Beatles arrived.

But I think there is another layer to that, and it is connected to the sense of joy and vitality that McCartney brought to both the interview and his performance. In this summer of stress, fear and rising unemployment, with baby boomers bearing the brunt of our nation's econmic pain in terms of shredded retirement savings and forced "early retirements," here is one of our artist heroes, and he's still acting like a college kid on spring break (to borrow Letterman's charcterization of the early Beatles).

In this wretched summer when many can't afford or are afraid to take vacations for fear their job will vanish while they are away, McCartney provides a spark of joy, optimism and hope for baby boomers.

I love television for moments like the one David Letterman and CBS brought us Wednesday. I couldn't be in New York City, but I could turn on my TV Wednesday night and see Paul McCartney and his band standing tall and bopping around atop the marquee at the Ed Sullivan Theater -- making me feel for a moment like there were good, if not great, times still ahead, just around the next bend in the river.

Posted by David Zurawik at 10:53 AM | Permalink | Comments (5)
Categories: TV and Pop Culture
        

The raves were instantaneous for David Letterman's Wednesday night show with Paul McCartney, and now comes the very good ratings news: 4.4 million viewers tuned in to see the former Beatle return to the stage where he made his American debut 45 years ago. Only 2.5 million watched Conan O'Brien on NBC.

That continues a roll for a resurgent Letterman, and a troubling downward slide for NBC's Tonight Show since Conan O'Brien took over from Jay Leno. If the executives at NBC responsible for the latenight change weren't sweating before, they should be now after seeing McCartney and Letterman create one of the most exciting TV events of the summer on Wednesday.

And to make matters worst for NBC, ABC's Nightline has also re-established itself as a mandatory stop on days when there is compelling news.

Last week's ratings offer a neat snapshot of what is now happening in latenight.

Nightline, driven in part by the Michael Jackson memorial and general media madness surrounding the performer's death, drew 3.8 million viewers, while Letterman finished close behind at 3.7 million. The Tonight show drew 2.8 million.

Last year at this time, Jay Leno was dominating latenight an averaging 4.6 million viewers a night.

In fairness, O'Brien is winning with young viewers, buit he is losing far too many of Leno's older, stalwart fans. As sudden as it has been, I think NBC might soon discover  that its journey from first to worst in the latenight  ratings is now permanent.

I have to say, I've received a lot of comments here on previous latenight posts, and there has not been a lot of support for O'Brien or the move by NBC.

Posted by David Zurawik at 9:40 AM | Permalink | Comments (14)
Categories: Talk Shows
        

I am running late on several deadlines, so there is not much time to explain. But here are five of my top snubs in the Emmy nominations announced Thursday:

1. January Jones, as lead or supporting actress in Mad Men. I am glad to see all the love Emmy showed Mad Men, but Jones deserved some, too.

2. The final season of The Shield. I didn't think it was great, but it deserved a nod, didn't it?

3. Battlestar Gallactica. Oh, the sci-fi guys are going to see a conspiracy on this one.

4. True Blood. It pumped new life into HBO's drama lineup.

5. Friday Night Lights. Come on, Emmy, this is the kind of show you are supposed to love.

But, overall, I have to tell you I am not too unhappy. I would have been delighted to see my favorite show, In Treatment, get a best drama nod. But almost all the actors and actresses did get their due.

Posted by David Zurawik at 1:36 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)
        

Other cable nominess in the realm of best drama are HBO’s Big Love, Showtime’s Dexter and FX’s Damages.

The lone network nominees for best drama are ABC’s Lost and Fox’s House.

All in all an impressive group, though some folks are sure to be arguing about the snub for the final season of FX's The Shield. HBO's True Blood also came up short.

Among the biggest surprises were those in the category of best comedy where HBO’s Flight of the Conchords and Fox’s Family Guy were among those named.

Conchords is mainly thought of as an off-beat niche program, while Family Guy is only the second animated comedy to ever be nominated. The first was The Flintstones in 1961. Since it lost that year to The Jack Benny Show, Family Guy could be the first animated series to ever win the Emmy.

But it will be a huge uphill struggle against 30 Rock, which won last year and again brought some much-needed prestige back to network TV with its record setting performance Thursday.

In addition to the nod as best comedy series, the sictom about a fictional TV show also picked up nominations for best comedy actress for Fey and best comedy actor for Alec Baldwin.

Competing against 30 Rock, Family Guy and Conchords for the best comedy trophy will be NBC's The Office, Showtime's Weeds, HBO's Entourage and the CBS series How I Met Your Mother.

Besides Baldwin, the contenders for best lead actor in a comedy are Steve Carrell (The Office), Jemain Clement (Flight of the Conchords), Tony Shalhoub (Monk), Charlie Sheen (Two and Half Men) and Jim Parsons (The Big Bang Theory).

Parsons served as co-host of the Emmy nominations announcement show Thursday along with Chandra Wilson, who also picked up a nomination -- for her dramatic supporting work in Grey's Anatomy.

Beside Fey, best actress nominees in comedy are Christina Applegate (Samantha Who?), Sarah Silverman (The Sarah Silverman Program), Mary Louise-Parker (Weeds), Julia Louis-Dreyfus (The New Adventures of Old Christine) and Toni Collette (The United States of Tara).

Another of the most prestigious categories is best lead actor in a drama series. Competing against Mad Men's Hamm are last year's winner, Bryan Cranston (Breaking Bad,) Michael C. Hall (Dexter),  Hugh Laurie for (House), Gabriel Byrne for (In Treatment) and Simon Baker for (The Mentalist).

Along with Mad Men's Moss, the nominees s for lead actress in a drama series are Sally Field (Brothers & Sisters), Kyra Sedgwick (The Closer), last year's winner, Glenn Close (Damages) Mariska Hargitay (Law & Order: Special Victims Unit) and Holly Hunter for (Saving Grace). All but Field and Hargitay are in cable series.

HBO ran the table on movies and miniseres. Grey Gardens, starring Drew Barrymore and Jessica Lange, scored 17 nominations -- tying the record for the most Emmy nominations for a made-for-TV movie. Other big winners for HBO were the movies Taking Chance, with 10 nominations, and Into the Storm, with 14. 

Generation Kill, which was adapated and executive produced by Baltimore's David Simon and Ed Burns was nominated as best mini-series. (see related post) Simon received a solo nomination in the category of best writing for a movie, mini-series of dramatic special for an episode of the seven-part series that he wrote.

Taking Chance and Generation Kill both dealt with aspects of the war in Iraq, an indication of the kind of socially conscious programming HBO provides.

Another writer with Baltimore ties, Robin Veith, was nominated foe the second year in a row for her work on AMC'ss Mad Men.Read an extended interview I did with Veith here. 

The Emmy voters also took notice of a long-time TV actress in posthumously nominating Farrah Fawcett in the category of outstanding nonfiction special for Farrah's Story, the NBC documentary she made with friend, Alana Stewart, about her battle with cancer. Fawcett died last month at age 62.

Click here for a list of all nominees listed in alphabetical order by category.

The 61st annual Prime Time Emmy Awards telecast will air Sept. 20 with Neil Patrick Harris as host.

Posted by David Zurawik at 9:29 AM | Permalink | Comments (9)
        

There was some Baltimore-related news in the prime-time Emmy announcements Thursday morning with HBO’s Generation Kill being nominated in the category of best mini-series. Overall, the production received 11 nominations.

Baltimore’s David Simon and Ed Burns are among the executive producers and writers on the film about the conflict in Iraq. Simon received a solo nomination in the category of best writing for a movie, mini-series or dramatic special for the "Bomb in the Garden" episode that he wrote.

Based on the book of the same title by Evan Wright, the HBO mini-series aired in seven parts starting on July 13, 2008. Simon and Burns worked on the overall adaptation.

The mini-series chronicles what Wright saw as a reporter embedded with the 1st Reconnaissance battalion of United States Marine Corps at the start of the conflict in Iraq in 2003.

Simon and Burns also served as two of several executive producers on the project that was filmed in part in South Africa.

The pair were nominated in 2008 for best writing in a drama series for the final episode of The Wire. But they did not win the Emmy.

With only two nominees in the best mini-series category for which Generation Kill is nominated, the odds look better this year.

The competition is Little Dorritt, the Andrew Davies adaptation of the Charles Dickens book for the PBS Masterpiece Theatre.

Another writer with Baltimore ties was also nominated Thursday. Robin Veith, a Baltimore native who now lives in Los Angeles, was nominated for an epsiode of AMC's Mad Men, the celebrated series on which she works as a staff writer.

Read an extended interview that I did last year on the eve of the Emmys with Veith here. She was also nominated in 2008 for her work on the first season of Mad Men.

Posted by David Zurawik at 8:40 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
        

What a midsummer night's delight: Paul McCartney reminiscing and performing Wednesday night on the Late Show with David Letterman on CBS.

It made for one of the finest evenings of late-night TV that I have seen in years. McCartney was charming and funny as he talked about the Beatles' first American appearance on the same stage of the Ed Sullivan Theater 45 years ago, the group's first American tour and memories of Michael Jackson.

But it was the performance of two songs, the Beatles classic "Get Back" and a new one, "Sing the Changes," off his latest CD, Electric Arguments, that really made this feel like one of the most special nights in the history of Letterman's CBS run.

McCartney and his group played outdoors standing atop the theater's marquee to a large and enthusiastic crowd on Broadway.

Letterman asked McCartney at the start of the interview if being inside the theater brought back memories of that first appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show.

McCartney said he was standing there behind the curtain waiting to begin when the floor manager came over to him.

"He said, 'You nervous?' And I said, 'No.' He said, 'You should be, there's 73 million people watching.' "

Letterman offered his take on the early Beatles as "four guys on a very, very long spring break, just like the best time four guys could ever have." and McCartney said, "Well, it certainly seemed like that, you know, yeah."

And he described a trip to Miami during that first tour: "You say spring break, we went down to Miami. The British car firm loaned us an MG each, and, you know, there was a beach and sand and girls, and come on!”

McCartney also talked about working with Jackson, and he retold the oft-quoted story about how he thought Jackson was kidding when he said he was going to buy the rights to the Lennon-McCartney catalog.

On working together, McCartney said, "It was great, you know, we had a great time. It was Christmas, and I was at home and my phone rang and, you know, a little voice talked to me and I said, 'Who’s this?' You know, kind of guarding my privacy, private number. I said, 'Who’s this?' 'It’s Michael.' 'Michael who?' because I thought it was, you know, a little bit sort of dodgy, but anyway, he said 'Michael Jackson' and he said, 'You want to make some hits?' So I said, 'Yeah, sure,' so, you know, being of the hit-making variety."

McCartney continued: "We made a couple of records together, did a video and were very good friends. It actually kind of fell apart a little bit later because he was talking to me and asking my business advice, and one of the things I said to him was, 'Think about getting into music publishing.' And he looked at me, and I thought he was joking, he said, 'I'm going to get yours.'

McCartney said he hoped to get a better deal for the music with Jackson, but that didn't happen.

"What happened, actually, is then I started to ring him up, 'cause I thought, 'OK, here's the guy historically placed to give Lennon-McCartney a good deal at last,' because we’d got signed when we were 21 or something in a back alley in Liverpool and the deal had remained the same even though we made this company the most famous -- hugely successful.

"So I kept thinking it was time for a raise, you know. Well, you would, you know? And I did talk to him about it, but he kind of blanked me on it. He kept saying, 'That's just business, Paul, you know.' So I went, 'Yeah, it is,' and waited for a reply. But we never kind of got to it, and I thought, 'Mmmmm,' so we kind of drifted apart. It was no big bust-up. We kind of drifted apart after that. But he was a lovely man, massively talented, and we miss him."

McCartney performed an additional set of songs after the show for the crowd outside the theater. It included:  "Coming Up," "Band on the Run," "Let Me Roll It," "Helter Skelter" and "Back in the USSR." To see the mini-concert, go to the Late Show Web site. 

Photo of Paul McCartney: AP

Posted by David Zurawik at 12:38 AM | Permalink | Comments (23)
Categories: CBS
        

I was just thinking Monday night how much I did not miss Jon & Kate since it has been on hiatus and how I ought to ask readers if they felt the same. 

And then, I saw the pictures of Jon Gosselin, the perpetual adolescent slacker boy, on a boat on the Riviera with his 22-year-old girlfriend, Hailey Glassman. And now I'm wondering how people who watched the show regularly feel about that.

I'm wondering, because those viewers -- you, my dear readers -- are the very folks who put Jon on the Riviera in one the greatest TV hustles in a long time. The more you watched, the richer he and Kate and TLC got -- even as they were lying through their teeth on air and off about what was going on and playing us for fools.

Now, as you and your family worry about the soaring unemployment rate and your job, Jon is on the Riviera, Kate is in a mini-mansion, and TLC made more money in half a season than most cable channels of its size will make in the next three years. And you're still worried about the Gosselin kids! In God and television we do trust.

I hit the wall this season with the episode that featured Jon on the ski slopes out West. TLC characterized the trip as Jon making the trek to lead a group of developmentally challenged youngsters on a ski outing.

But the tabloids had him nailed in photos as being on a ski holiday with his girlfriend. I thought, "OK, this kind of lying and exploitation are beneath contempt -- these people are dead to me." I urged readers to just say no -- to quit watching the show. (By the way, let's give credit where credit is due: Without the reporting of US magazine and some of the more enterprising bloggers, TLC probably would have been able to run this scam a lot longer.)

I have my doubts if the show really will come back on Aug. 3 as TLC orginally announced. But if it does, and I put nothing past the brazeness of TLC, do you think that now you will might stop watching? Come on already.

Here's an idea: Spend the time you would spend with the Gosselins with your own family. Or, how about this: Spend the hour on Monday nights that you gave to the Gosselins and TLC doing something related to your job to make yourself a better employe, so that maybe you will be able to survive the next wave of cuts at your workplace. I know, the economy is so bad that saving your job might be impossible. But making the effort is better than giving the hour to these TV hustlers so that they can get rich.

Really, Jon and Kate and even their kids do not need your concern -- they are set for life thanks to the way mom and pop Gosselin and TLC have exploited us.

I don't know how else to say it. Do you think Jon was worrying about you as he skimmed over the cool blue waters in a yacht?

No, he is still mouthing the phony self-absorbed psycho-babble about being vulnerable and in pain that TLC has been feeding him and Kate for the last year -- even as he talks about coming back to the "work" on filming the 34 more episodes he and Kate and TLC have signed for.

Here's what he told People magazine about his new life and the images of him with his new yachting buddy:  "What began as friendship has grown into something more. I know that my decision to appear publicly with Hailey this weekend will be scrutinized, but I hope that people can see I'm a regular guy who is a going through a very difficult time in life and wants to move forward."

A "regular guy who is going though a very difficult time in life and wants to move forward."

If that doesn't make you gag in this summer of soaring unemployment and financial fear, I can't help you. Keep watching TLC if it comes back in August with more of this outrageous trash -- you're just the kind of viewer they're counting on.

Posted by David Zurawik at 9:19 AM | Permalink | Comments (33)
Categories: Reality TV
        

Brace yourself, the Obama TV blitz on healthcare is about to kick into a higher gear Wednesday and Thursday. Team Obama is launching its greatest TV weapon -- the president himself in one-on-one interviews.

Both NBC and CBS will have interviews conducted by their medical-doctor health correspondents on the nightly newscasts Wednesday.

Dr. Nancy Snyderman will be interviewing President Obama on the NBC Nightly News with Brian Williams, while Dr. Jon LaPook will be talking to Obama for the CBS Evening News with Katie Couric.

(Pictured Dr. Nancy Snyderman)

But that's not all. Snyderman's interview will also air Thursday on the Today show, as well as on Snyderman's mid-day program on MSNBC.

Can an ABC News announcement be that far off? I wonder if the president will talk about healthcare while he's in the booth at baseball's all-star game.

(UPDATE Wednesday 5 p.m.: Well, it came a little late, but ABC announced that Obama will be on World News and Nightline Wednesday and Good Morning America Thursday talking healthcare with Dr. Timothy Johnson. Headline from Z: President scores hat trick.)

At least, the White House isn't playing the "exclusive" game this week -- using exclusivity as a carrot to try and get favorable coverage or a slamdunk interview in which the president gets to sell his agenda with no hard questions from the correspondent.

Between Congressional resistance to sweeping healthcare reform and a growing sense in the country that the president's financial stimulus efforts have taken care of the big money gang while more and more middle class Americans lose their jobs and all hope of ever getting them back, look for a lot more face time on TV from the man in the White House.

Except on Fox News, I guess. At least, so far.

Posted by David Zurawik at 5:25 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)
Categories: TV and Politics
        

Someone has to set the record straight, and I guess it's my turn on this one.

Advertising Age published a story  online Monday about a new sketch comedy show set to debut Wednesday on Comedy Central. The report highlights the way in which the two stars of the show are planning to do live commercials within the show. The program is called Michael & Michael Have Issues, and the stars are Michael Ian Black and Michael Showalter.

Here's what the Ad Age story says: "In what is believed to be a first for a scripted series, "Michael & Michael" will feature live commercials during six of its seven episodes, as Messrs. Black and Showalter humorously wax poetic about the virtues of products including Unilever's Klondike, Dunkin' Donuts, Mike's Hard Lemonade and Palm Pre."

And now comes TV Week online linking to the story under the heading, "Here's a first." Well, it is not a first -- not by a long shot.

Gertude Berg, creator and star of The Goldbergs, a popular CBS family sitcom, was doing it in 1949 when the series debuted. In fact, she was rather famous for her in-show pitches for Sanka coffee and vitamins, linking use of the products with her sitcom family.

Nor was she the only one -- many stars, who like Berg had pitched products on their radio shows, kept doing so when they moved to TV in the 1940s and 50s.

Nor is this an obscure fact. I have a chapter on Berg, the TV auteur and TV pitchwoman in my 2003 book The Jews of Prime Time (Brandeis University Press). But if that's too obscure, any TV reference work, like The Great TV Sitcom Book, would tell you about the practice as well.

And if books are too old school for you, try the website of the Museum of Radio and Television -- the museum had an evening devoted to Berg a few years ago. I was a panelist, and I know we talked about her role as on-screen saleswoman for Sanka.

I am just trying to set the record straight here. And I am going to stop now before I go off on a rant about a media universe in which saying "it is believed" seems to have become an acceptable substiture for doing some research.

Posted by David Zurawik at 8:36 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)
Categories: Scripted Series
        

ABC News anchorman Bob Woodruff was not able to report from Iraq as planned and is now on his way to Afghanistan, according to an on-air conversation he had from a military transport plane with co-anchor Chris Cuomo on Good Morning America Tuesday.

Woodruff, who is traveling with  Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was able to land in Iraq Monday. But a sandstorm prevented him from visiting the frontline medical personnel on whom the ABC anchorman had intended to report, according to what Woodruff told Cuomo.

The landing marked Woodruff's return to the country where he was seriously injured by a bomb blast in 2006 shortly after he became anchor of World News, the network's signature evening newscast. Charles Gibson now anchors the telecast.

Writing at abcnews.com Monday, Woodruff explained the what he hoped to accomplish with his return to war reporting:

I have many goals with this trip.  I want to visit the doctors, nurses and medics who are putting their own lives at risk to save others. I would like to understand first-hand the status of the war and learn more about what the US role will be. I want to view first-hand the new equipment and vehicles that reduce the numbers of injured.  

I feel extremely privileged to be back to reporting and to have recovered as well as I did.  It is an honor for me to continue to highlight the stories of this conflict to our audience.

Read a transcript of Woodruff's conversation with Cuomo here.

Posted by David Zurawik at 7:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Categories: Cable and Network News
        

In my run-up to the Senate Judiciary hearings on Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor, I singled out PBS and CNN, the two TV sites most committed to fact based news and information, as places to turn for TV coverage.

By the end of the morning session, a clear pattern ion the coverage had emerged: PBS was doing an outstanding job, while CNN was offering some of the worst and most distracting coverage anywhere on TV or online. Talk about overproduced and misguided as to where the focus should be, CNN seemed to think its talking-head analysts mattered more than what was happening in the Senate hearing room.

CNN cut away from the opening statements in the hearing room for talk among its experts more than any other news channel -- and when they weren'tcutting away for what was frankly not a very illuminating discourse, there were the commercials. I am glad to see any news outlet make money these days, but if you have to break for commercials, don't keep breaking back to the news set for talking-head chatter during what should be your coverage of the event. (Pictured Judy Woodruff)

Senators Patrick Leahy (D-Vermont) and Jeff Session (R-Alabama) had barely finished their excellent opening remarks, when CNN cut back to the studio for analysis. Leahy and Sessions had deftly laid out the differences between the two camps, and they were huge -- both legally and culturally. The key was the standard of "empathy" articulated by Judge Sotomayer and President Barack Obama.

But instead of hearing the opening statement of Sen. Herb Kohl (D-Wisconsin), CNN viewers saw anchor Wolf Blitzer hand the discussion over to Democratic consultant Maria Echaveste who practically jumped out of her seat to attack Sessions for saying that what Judge Sotomayer calls empathy, he calls "prejudice." And, again, I have to tell you Echaveste was all heat and no light -- attitude without insight, a steady stream of partisan talking points. And she got more face time than some of the senators in the early going Monday.

In fairness, MSNBC and Fox were also cutting away for expert analysis and commercials, but each seemed far less stop-and-start, herky-jerky than CNN, which was away for a commercial when the first of two protesters was escorted out of the hearing room by guards. And CNN was also missing from the hearing room when Sen. Ben Cardin (D-Maryland) explored the role of the Supreme Court in trying to reverse racism in post-World-War-II Baltimore in his opening remarks. Thank godness, I had PBS on another channel so I could hear Cardin.

I liked seeing the heavy thunder of Karl Rove on Fox, Chris Mathews on MSNBC and Jeffrey Toobin on CNN. I was intrigued by Rove's pre-hearing analysis, But once the hearings began, the cable channels should have all pulled back and let the process in the hearing room be the star. And CNN was the worst in this regard.

PBS, meanwhile, got out of the way, and let the cameras stay on the Senate hearing room, so that viewers wouldn't miss a word. PBS has its priorities right. It's about Sotomayer and the hearings, not partisan consultants brought onto the set to talk over the coverage and try to score points with the people they work for -- instead of bringing insight to the citizen-viewers.

PBS has an excellent location for its coverage with a booth overlooking the hearing room for anchorwoman Judy Woodruff, of the NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, and analyst, Marcia Coyle, of the National Law Journal. But instead of shooting the events in the room in such a way as to constantly remind us of how close Woodruff and Coyle are to the event, PBS is using a simple, straightforward camera shot that put the focus on the senators and Sotomayer.

Woodruff and Coyle talked only when the hearings stopped, except to identify speakers in the hearing room. And when they did talk during the breaks, Coyle generally had something important to say.

Under Woodruff's gentle questioning during the lunch break, Coyle skillfully explained the concepts of "empathy" and "activism" as they were used on both sides of the aisle Monday morning.

PBS was the place to be Monday. And unless the all-news cable channels change their ways, it would be my choice for coverage throughout the hearings.

One of the afternoon session's more fascinating moments of TV, politics and pop culture found Al Franken, the junior senator from Minnesota, delivering his opening remarks. The former Saturday Night Live writer and performer talked about watching such hearings over the years: "These TV hearings taught America a lot about the Constitution."

As he spoke, CNN put up a graphic informing viewers that Franken "portrayed a senator" in a Saturday Night Live skit on the Clarence Thomas hearings.

It could have been a little surreal, but Franken acquitted himself well as a senator who was grateful for the chance to serve and took his responsibility seriously.

And I am glad that CNN discovered that such a statement running alonside the screen is much better than letting the on-set experts talk too much.

Posted by David Zurawik at 10:57 AM | Permalink | Comments (8)
Categories: Cable and Network News
        

ABC News anchorman Bob Woodruff has reurned to Iraq where he was seriously injured by a roadside in 2006 shortly after becoming anchor of World News.

His first report from Iraq was scheduled to air Monday night on World News with Charles Gibson, but a sandstorm interfered with satellite transmission, according to the network, and the piece is now scheduled to air on Tuesday's Good Morning America. Woodruff is traveling with Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

In a blog post written before he left, Woodruff explained his reasons for returning to the conflict that almost took his life.

Posted by David Zurawik at 9:38 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)
Categories: ABC, Cable and Network News
        

Wouldn't it be nice if American television cared as much about the composition of the Supreme Court as it did Michael Jackson?

Sadly, that's not the country or the media universe we live in, but the two most reliable sources of news and information in American TV will be on the case Monday morning when the Senate confirmation hearings on Judge Sonia Sotomayor begin.

Cable channel CNN and the NewsHour with Jim Lehrer will offer live coverage, and that means everyone with a TV set will have access. For Maryland viewers, the good news is that Maryland Public Television says it will carry the NewsHour coverage -- local carriage is not an automatic, as local PBS outlets can opt out.

Judy Woodruff will anchor PBS coverage with analysis from Marcia Coyle, who covers the Supreme Court for the National Law Journal and NewsHour.

The  hearings are expected to run through most of the week, and NewsHour says it will cover all of proceedings, as well as offering wrapups each evening on its nightly newscast. For its part, MPT says it will carry whatever NewsHour offers. Good for both NewsHour and MPT. This is the kind of broadcasting that defines public service television.

CNN will have Wolf Blitzer anchoring its coverage along with an outstanding lineup of analysts. They will include: Gloria Borger, Candy Crowley, John King, Jeffrey Toobin and Jessica Yellin.

Senior congressional correspondent Dana Bash and congressional correspondent Brianna Keilar will cover the hearings from Capitol Hill.

You can also watch live streaming video of the hearings at newshour.pbs.org or cnn.com. The PBS website is a joint effort by the PBS and NPR. Live streaming is also avaailble at MSNBC.com. The online streaming is not interrupted by commercials the way it is at the cable channels.

Posted by David Zurawik at 6:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)
Categories: CNN, Cable and Network News, MPT, PBS
        

Forget esthetics and a critical analysis, I guarantee that your reaction to this film will be shaped almost exclusively by your politics and how you feel about Kennedy.

But even if the only things that come to mind when you think about the nine-time senator from Massachusetts are Chappaduiddick in 1969 and the death of young woman who was a passenger in Kennedy’s car, or the way he torpedoed Robert Bork’s nomination for the Supreme Court in 1987, there is still something here for you. (By the way, both Chappaquiddick and the Bork hearings are in this documentary, though the former comes and goes rather quickly.)

Producer Peter Kunhardt, a three-time Emmy winner who made similar films about John Kennedy and Robert Kennedy, pays attention to detail and history in this production. As a result, Teddy In His Own Word is an evocative and moving ride through American history since World War II.

Watch and you will re-live 60 years of our collective past, some of it – like the horrible events of 1968 – too incredible almost to believe. If you weren’t alive in those years, this is a must-see film – if only to get a sense of what this country was like in the wake of the assassinations of Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King, Jr.

Teddy: In His Own Words premieres Monday at 10 p.m. with multiple plays through Aug. 13 on HBO.

Posted by David Zurawik at 1:16 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)
Categories: HBO
        

Wouldn't it be nice if American television cared as much about the composition of the Supreme Court as it did Michael Jackson?

Sadly, that's not the country or the media universe we live in, but the two most reliable sources of news and information in American TV will be on the case Monday morning when the Senate confirmation hearings on Judge Sonia Sotomayor begin.

Cable channel CNN and the NewsHour with Jim Lehrer will offer live coverage, and that means everyone with a TV set will have access. For Maryland viewers, the good news is that Maryland Public Television says it will carry the NewsHour coverage -- local carriage is not an automatic, as local PBS outlets can opt out. 

Judy Woodruff will anchor PBS coverage with analysis from Marcia Coyle, who covers the Supreme Court for the National Law Journal and NewsHour.

The  hearings are expected to run through most of the week, and NewsHour says it will cover all of proceedings, as well as offering wrapups each evening on its nightly newscast. For its part, MPT says it will carry whatever NewsHour offers. Good for both NewsHour and MPT. This is the kind of broadcasting that defines public service television.

CNN will have Wolf Blitzer anchoring its coverage along with an outstanding lineup of analysts. They will include: Gloria Borger, Candy Crowley, John King, Jeffrey Toobin and Jessica Yellin.

Senior congressional correspondent Dana Bash and congressional correspondent Brianna Keilar will cover the hearings from Capitol Hill.

Posted by David Zurawik at 11:09 AM | Permalink | Comments (14)
Categories: Cable and Network News
        

Michael Phelps will be a guest Tuesday on the Tonight Show with Conan O'Brien, according to NBC.

Phelps will be talking about his return to competitive swimming in recent weeks and his children's book, How to Train with a T. Rex and Win 8 Gold Medals. Phelps set a world record Thursday in the 100-meter butterfly at the U.S. National Championships. It will be the swimmer's first appearance on the show, NBC says.

O'Brien needs all the help he can get. ABC's Nightline has been coming on strong in the ratings all year, and last week it beat both Tonight and the Late Show with David Letterman.

Posted by David Zurawik at 3:33 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)
        

I admit it, I get edgy every time I see an email from a network or cable news division that boasts of President Barack Obama granting "exclusive" access to an anchor, correspondent or the news division itself.

It signals that the Obama administration is up to one its oldest and most masterful games of selectively granting access to try and get flattering coverage. I wrote about it when NBC's bowing anchorman Brian Williams was allowed into the White House for a highly-rated two-night special, and in advance of ABC's "town hall" meeting on healthcare at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

And now, comes this email from CNN with the headline: "Anderson Cooper 360 with Exclusive Access to President Obama."

I've been wondering when Team Obama was going to try to work its game on CNN. Et tu, Anderson?

Look, I am not pre-judging. And when the president of CBS News, say, grants me exclusive access, I am there in a heartbeat with a shine on my shoes and a smile on my face. That's part of being a journalist. But I am also there with all kinds of alarm bells going off in my head, telling me not to give this person a break because they are giving me access.

And part of my job now is to say,"Hey, Anderson and CNN, we'll be watching to make sure you're not taken for the kind of ride Williams and NBC News were taken for by one of the savviest teams of White House image makers this side of the crews that surrounded Ronald Reagan and John Kennedy." I think that kind of warning from a number of people contributed to ABC News not handing its airwaves over to Obama in the town hall meeting last month.

Here is the CNN press release, and I would put one out, too, if I was given the access. But note  the "special" programming already planned as a result of the "exclusive" access. That's the kind of power to enrich -- ads can be sold within such "specials" -- that being in the White House allows. And let's not forget that when the final product airs and we are able to judge it.

As President Barack Obama makes a historic visit to Africa, CNN’s Anderson Cooper sits down with the President for an extensive interview and joins him exclusively as he visits Cape Coast Castle, Ghana, the site of an overcrowded dungeon where slaves were held before they were shipped west.

Interview topics will include domestic and international issues as well as the President’s own close connection with Africa and the significance of his trip for African-Americans today. CNN’s chief medical correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta will join Cooper from Haiti, where he will report on the slave trade that continues to thrive in that country. The interview will air on Monday, July 13th and Tuesday, July 14th. Anderson Cooper 360° airs weeknights at 10pm ET on CNN.

On Saturday, July 18th and Sunday, July 19th CNN will air a special titled President Obama’s African Journey, anchored by Cooper, which will explore the President’s personal history in Africa, and First Lady Michelle Obama’s African lineage and how her ancestors came to the United States. In addition, Cooper will lead a discussion with African-American leaders about the significance of the President’s trip. The weekend special will air at 8 and 11pm ET. The special will also air on CNN International.

One last thought: I wonder when the Fox News channel gets its special access on a high-visibility trip like this.

Posted by David Zurawik at 11:10 AM | Permalink | Comments (17)
Categories: Cable and Network News, TV and Politics
        

Call it the TV summer of plus-size love.

That's the lead on a trend story I just finished writing for the Sunday Sun  in my "Z on TV" column. The piece reports and explores the arrival of new series featuring plus-size contestants and characters.

I am wondering if readers have seen Oxygen's Dance Your Ass Off, which debuted last week -- and if you did, what you think. Described as Biggest Loser meets So You Think You Can Dance, it combines a weight loss competition with dance contest. Marissa Jaret Winokur is an engaging host -- and I thought the pilot was promising.

How about the second season of Ruby, which started last week the Style channel? This documentary series follows a woman who lost 100 pounds last season. It did very well in Season 1.

Sunday night, Lifetime debuts Drop Dead Diva starring Brooke Elliott (Wicked) in a comic series about a self-absorbed model who is killed in an auto accident anmd returns to earth in the plus-size body of super-smartattorney. The pilot has a strong cast and very good writing.

My piece raises the question of whether or not these series could mark a change in depictions of plus-size people on TV. Dating back to The Honeymooners in the 1950s, being heavyset was generally a bad thing on television -- and overweight characters were often put down in various ways.

If you have seen any of the reality shows including NBC's long-running Biggest Loser, let me know what you think.

Here's a link to the full piece that will appear in Sunday's Sun: http://www.baltimoresun.com/entertainment/tv/bal-zontv-plus-size-tv-0710,0,477407.story

Posted by David Zurawik at 9:25 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)
Categories: TV and Pop Culture
        

While a number of readers of this blog have expressed their disappontment in learning that the TV audience for Micahel Jackson's memorial service Tuesday was smaller than that of the funeral of Princess Diane in 1997 and the burial of Ronald Reagan in 2004, I have been trying to stress that neither of those event had anywhere near the online audience watching live video streams.

When you add the more than 20 million people watching live TV coverage on computer and mobile screens Tuesday to the 31 million watching on TV screens, the Jackson memorial wins hands down. And I have received many comments and emails from folks who were in that online audience at work Tuesday.

That points to one of the other groundbreaking aspects of coverage of Jackson's death for the past 13 days -- the degree to which fans combined new and old media in getting their news and analysis about Jackson.

How and where did you watch Jackson coverage? And did it make a difference in your experience of the events?

According to Nielsen, not only did the TV and online viewing of the memorial service set records, the media conversations about Jackson continuing through yesterday (and probably today) also reached new highs.

As Nielsen points out, almost 15 percent of all online chatter about Jackson involved some reference to TV or social network coverage of the Jackson story. 

Michael Jackson's death and memorial service clearly show us rapidly moving down the path of media integration -- a second path of integration that he helped move a worldwide audience along.

Posted by David Zurawik at 8:07 AM | Permalink | Comments (6)
Categories: Michael Jackson, New media
        

An combined audience of 31.1 million viewers on 18 networks watched the memorial service for Michael Jackson on TV Tuesday.

That was 2 million fewer than the TV audience for the funeral of Princess Diana in 1997, and 4 million fewer than the number who tuned in for President Ronald Reagan's burial in 2004, according to Nielsen.

While the smaller size of the Jackson TV audience might seem surprising, consider that the memorial service did record and near-record numbers in online viewing. MSNBC.com set a record with 19 million video streams, while CNN had its second highest total ever with 19.5 million live and on-demand video streams.

Neither the Princess Diana nor Reagan events had anywhere near than kind of online viewing audience. So the combined TV and online audience for Jackson will probably prove to be larger once all the live streaming sites are calculated.

While CNN did 26.9 million live streams during the day of President Barack Obama's inauguration, the 10.5 million Tuesday for Jackson's service was a 6,000 percent (yes, six thousand percent) increase over an average day during the last four weeks.

Posted by David Zurawik at 3:33 PM | Permalink | Comments (11)
Categories: Michael Jackson
        

Based on preliminary figures, it is clear that large audiences watched the Michael Jackson memorial service online Tuesday. But it looks as though the overall audience might wind up being smaller than the one for President Barack Obama's inauguration.

CNN.com, one of the largest sites, reported 9.7 million live video streams from midnight Monday to 5 p.m. Tuesday. More cmplete figures will be available later today. Hulu has not yet released its metrics, but said its live video stream traffic was second only to the one it had for Obama's inauguration.

MSNBC.com, meanwhile told the Hollywood Reporter, that its total of 3 million live video streams set a record -- 50 percent higher than its traffic for the inauguration.

CNN's figures come from Omniture, an independent Web measuring service. All sites are promsiing full numbers later today.

Given the number of sites, the audience is sure to be enormous. What is not certain is whether or not it will top the Obama ceremonies.

Posted by David Zurawik at 9:54 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)
Categories: New media
        

Twelve days is a long time for near non-stop TV coverage of any one event. In terms of funerals, it is unprecedented in American television.

So, I am wondering on this morning after a day of Michael Jackson memorial coverage, how viewers are feeling.

Historically on such TV orgies, the mood has been akin to a hangover: It was too much, and we are never going there again.

But I don't feel that way. On Sunday, I argued on CNN's Reliable Sources media show that the TV coverage was not excessive. Maybe it wasn't war or taxes, but Jackson mattered in a profound way to many people, and part of our job is to understand, if not respond, to that. I still feel that way today.

So, what do you feel about the time you spent or didn't spend with Jackson coverage the last two weeks?

And this is not a rhetorical question. There was definitely something different about this story. The public did not want to let it go after a day or two -- and the media listened.

Posted by David Zurawik at 9:03 AM | Permalink | Comments (68)
Categories: Michael Jackson
        

TV coverage of the Michael Jackson’s death had it all Tuesday: helicopter freeway shots of the funeral procession, an army of breathless anchors to ratchet up anticipation and, last but not least, the singer’s gold-plated, flower-draped casket on view for a massive worldwide audience.

Yet through all the media build-up, anticipation and pomp, the actual memorial service remained extraordinarily moving and elegant.

Talk about a day of TV worthy of the king of pop spectaculars. Maybe the difference lies mainly in all the new media that have arrived in the last 30 years, but Elvis Presley went out like a peasant in 1977 compared to Jackson's TV sendoff Tuesday.

The TV coverage started early on the network morning shows, and it was as wild and uneven as Jackson's remarkable life and career.

The Today show, the highest-rated program in morning TV, had a profile of Bubbles, the chimp who once lived with Jackson. The piece featured Bubbles shuffling along in a caged area, and suggested that either Jackson's moonwalk was inspired by Bubbles -- or Bubbles was imitating the moonwalk because he knew Jackson was dead (even though the chimp now lives in Florida).

As nutty as that report sounds, it was representative of much of the massive run-up to the memorial service on this day of wall-to-wall Jackson TV.

But while the media might have acted without much restraint in the morning, the memorial service at the Staples Center opened on a far more subdued and respectful note with Smokey Robinson reading statements of condolence from Diana Ross and Nelson Mandela. And that heightened tone was maintained through the program that ran just over two hours. It was a dignified and impressive event with bits of fire and soul.

After a delay following Robinson's remarks, the memorial got under way at 1:33 p.m. with a gospel choir singing "we are going to see the king," as Jackson's casket was carried into the hall. You could hear the crowd gasp as it arrived.

Mariah Carey and Trey Lorenz followed with "I'll Be There," and the cameras showed tear-streaked faces from inside the hall and remote locations ranging from Harlem to Tokyo.

Queen Latifah came next reading a poem written about Jackson by Maya Angelou, We Had Him: "He came to us from the creator trailing creativity in abundance," one line said. "We had him...He was ours and we were his."

Lionel Richie sang "Jesus Is Love" with a full gospel choir. And then, came the legendary Motown founder Berry Gordy, who said Michael Jackson "was like a son to me." Gordy recounted the audition at Motown when Michael was 10.

"He was special. He sang a Smokey Robinson song, 'Who's Lovin' You,'" Gordy said. "He sang it with the blues and passion of a man who had been living it his whole life. He sang it better than Smokey... Though it ended way too soon, Michael Jackson's life was beautiful...He became the undisputed king of pop... I think he is simply the greatest entertainer that ever lived."

Powerful words coming from Gordy and it drew rousing applause from the crowd.

Stevie Wonder sang "Never Dreamed You'd Leave in Summer," a song he said he wrote for Jackson, as the TV cameras showed the flower-draped coffin and shots of mourning fans from locations around the world.

What the first hour of the memorial lacked was humor. Magic Johnson came onstage with Kobe Bryant at 2:15 p.m., and tried to fill that void with talk about him and Michael eating "a bucket of Kentucky fried chicken." The audience seemed to appreciate the chance to smile at a fond and bittersweet recollection by one of its heroes.

The most rousing performance in the early going came from Jennifer Hudson singing "Will You Be There." She stuck with the gospel tone that each of the songs struck.

The Rev. Al Sharpton brought the crowd to its feet with a spirited sermon that again attacked those who focused on the more controversial aspects of Jackson's life.

Addressing Michael's three children, Sharpton said, "There weren't anything strange about your daddy. It was strange what your daddy had to deal with. But he dealt with it anyway. He dealt with it for us."

Sharpton said of Jackson, "He pulled down the color curtain...He brought blacks and whites and and Asians Latinos together."

Sharpton was embraced by Jackson's brothers when he came off the stage as the audience stood in applause. Sharpton's fiery words are going to be the talk of the memorial, but there was a gentleness on display as well.

After Brooke Shields, who dated Jackson as a teenager and remained a lifelong friend, reminisced about how the performer's favorite song was Charlie Chaplin's "Smile," Jermaine Jackson came onstage and sang it with tenderness. His performance was one of the memorial's most touching moments.

Usher's performance of "Gone Too Soon" included the singer descending the stage to touch the golden flower-draped casket and then breaking into tears before he ended the song. He was embraced by several members of the Jackson family.

Another high point included an adolescent singer, Shaheen Jafargholi, singing "Who's Lovin' You," following a clip of Jackson singing the song in 1969 on The Ed Sullivan Show and Robinson remembering what he felt like the first time he heard Jackson perform his composition. If Robinson made the crowd smile with the memory of a 10-year-old putting him to shame, the choral finale brought forth tears around the world.

The closing songs -- We Are The World and Heal The World -- were sung by an all-star chorus in tribute to Jackson, who wrote them both. And they showed him for the sensitive artist and global pop phenomenon he had become.

The event closed with family members talking about Michael Jackson, and in the end, no one was more eloquent than Jackson's daughter, Paris.

"Ever since I was born, daddy has been the best father you could imagine," she said breaking into tears. "And I just want to say I love him so much."

None of the many great entertainers, politician or civil rights leaders who took thre stage at the Staples Center Tuesday afternoon, did better than 11-year-old Paris in honoring her father. With those few wrenching words, she helped us to see him and those he loved and left behind as human beings rather than celebrities.

And so, the TV mourning finally ends. But brace yourself for some major blowback as the media start feeling self-conscious about all the coverage and begin complaining that today's events were somehow anti-climactic. If it comes, I will have none of it.

Michael Jackson had the largest audience in media history for his memorial service Tuesday, and his friends and family gave his hundreds of millions of fans one terrific and touching show.

Posted by David Zurawik at 12:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (23)
Categories: Michael Jackson
        

From the Harlem Gospel Choir singing "We Are the World" in Times Square outside the ABC News studio, to CBS News correspondent Bill Whitaker at Forest Lawn Cemetery quoting unnamed "sources" as to whether or not Michael Jackson was buried Monday night, the networks got up early Tuesday to kick off their national day of TV mourning.

Outside of weather and news at the "top of the hour," as the anchors says, the morning shows were jammed packed with Jackson coverage even if it was only 4 a.m. in Los Angeles when Today, Good Morning America and The Early Show hit the airwaves.

Morning shows can be embarrassing on regular days, but when it comes to big events for which they don't have any kind of particular news access or exclusives, they can be downright pathetic. Count Harry Smith, co-host of the CBS Early Show, in that category for fawning over Entertainment Tonight's Mary Hart like she was Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein combined because Jackson invited her to some of his concerts and to dinner in his hotel suite and, in at least one case, gave her a "gift," according to Hart.

I am stretching the term, but Hart is, after all, part of the entertainment press corps, and we probably shouldn't be celebrating her for accepting gifts from the people she covers.

But Tuesday morning, anyone who knew or touched Jackson and was willing to get up in time to be on the morning shows, had a shot at network face time -- and being treated like a sage.

Like Bubbles, the chimp. Yes, NBC's Today offered a feature on Bubbles, the chimp whom once lived with Jackson.

Being an animal lover and wondering about Bubbles myself, I didn't criticize CNN's Anderson Cooper or any of the others on TV  who did the obligatory Bubbles story. But the one on Today Tuesday set a new record for loopiness.

The report showed Bubbles walking, and then, in voice over, compared his movements to Jackson's patented moonwalk. Then, a handler talked about Bubbles, who now lives in Florida, maybe knowing Michael was dead. The only thing they didn't do is have Bubbles move his lips and pipe in a voice singing one of Jackson's hits.

And then there was Micahel Okwu, the correspondent NBC News had at Forest Lawn, where Jackson is expected to be buried Tuesday. In describing the celebrities who are buried there, Okwu included actress Betty White.

Luckily, Meredith Vieira, a pro who kept her head throughout her coverage from the Staples Center, corrected Okwu, saying he probably meant Bette Davis -- since Betty White is still alive.

Posted by David Zurawik at 8:45 AM | Permalink | Comments (6)
Categories: Michael Jackson
        

If you want a quick break from Michael Jackson coverage before the memorial service begins, check out this interview with Sarah Palin by ABC News correspondent Kate Snow.

It was just posted this morning, and it features Snow asking Palin about the ethics investigations that the Alaska governor has been citing as among the reasons for her abrupt resignation.

What would Palin do if she were president of the United States and there were ethics investigations, Snow asked. The answer is priceless.

Palin says that if she were president of the United States, the "Department of Law" would throw most of them out.

The Department of what?

The ABC editors felt the need to include a line telling online readers there is no Department of Law in the United States government.

We already know Palin's education is a little, shall we say spotty. But Department of Law? You have to wonder if she took high school civics.

Posted by David Zurawik at 8:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (28)
Categories: TV and Politics
        

At 12 days and counting, the length of coverage has already run longer than anyone’s idea of a state funeral. Tuesday, the degree of saturation of TV coverage on the death of Michael Jackson reaches the boiling point.

All of the major networks and cable news channels will be offering live coverage of the Jackson memorial service starting at 1 p.m. Tuesday at the Staples center in Los Angeles.

NBC had looked as if it would skip live coverage and go only with a one-hour prime-time special Tuesday night. But network executives changed their plans Sunday, and announced that NBC will join ABC and CBS in covering the memorial service live with their top anchors. Both Today show co-host Meredith Vieira and NBC Nightly News anchor Brian Williams will be at the Staples Center Tuesday.

Vieira will serve as co-host of Tuesday’s Today show, while Williams anchors the memorial service. ABC has Charles Gibson penciled in at the anchor desk live from the Staples Center for its full court press Tuesday afternoon.

CBS didn’t announce live coverage of the memorial service until Monday, but it already had Katie Couric in Los Angeles anchoring the CBS Evening News from the Staples Center. She will be out front on its live memorial broadcast starting at 1.

In addition to Couric’s newscast, CBS has also been doing its Early Show out of the Staples Center since Monday. And there is a prime-time Jackson hour planned for Tuesday night with Couric as host. Among the networks, none gets the importance of this story more clearly than CBS.

Expect nonstop coverage on MSNBC, Fox and CNN throughout the day – unless there is a huge breaking story elsewhere. The 24/7 cable channels were among the first to announce plans to cover the memorial service live.

CNN, which has enjoyed a strong ratings surge for its Jackson programming, lists its coverage as starting at 6 a.m. with Kiran Chetry anchoring American Morning from Los Angeles. The memorial itself will become the focus at noon with Don Lemon continuing to anchor CNN’s coverage from Los Angeles. He will be joined there by Soledad O’Brien, Anderson Cooper and Larry King.
Several of CNN’s sister channels – HLN, CNN International and CNN en Espanol – will also be carrying the memorial live. Robin Meade, A.J. Hammer and Jane Velez-Mitchell will anchor the coverage at HLN (formerly Headline News).

Just as it did for the inauguration of President Barack Obama, CNN will again team up with Facebook Connect so that Internet users can watch CNN coverage online as they update their Facebook status or communicate with friends using the CNN.com live video player. That coverage starts at 8:30 a.m.

Shepard Smith will be at the anchor desk for Fox News, while Megyn Kelly will be at the helm for coverage on the Fox broadcast network. Chris Jansing will be anchoring at MSNBC during the memorial service.

Ethnic and show biz channels will be running full throttle as well on this day and night of wall-to-wall Jackson programming.

TV One, the Maryland-based channel that targets African-American viewers, will offer live coverage at 1 p.m., with repeats at 8 and 11 p.m.. Art Fennell and Jacque Reed, who anchored TV One’s Democratic Convention and election night coverage last year, will lead the coverage.

E! and TV Guide, both entertainment channels, will also be carrying the memorial service live starting at 1 p.m.

And, of course, with all that TV coverage, I’ll be online all day at my blog, Z on TV, writing about this cultural story that has dominated old and new media for almost two weeks now.

Posted by David Zurawik at 12:38 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)
Categories: Michael Jackson
        

So, now the Rev. Al Sharpton is a media critic. Well, let me tell you something. He is a very reckless one  -- making racially-charged allegations without having his facts straight.

Sunday, standing in the pulpit of the First African Methodist Episcopal Church of Los Angeles, Sharpton called coverage of Michael Jackson's death "disgraceful."

"I am here because of the disgraceful and the despicable way some elements of the media have  tried to destroy the legacy and image of Michael Jackson," he told the congregation, charging the media with using different standards for black and white performers.

"You have had other entertainers that have had issues in their life," he said. "But you [the media] did not degrade and denigrate them... Show the same respect for Michael and Michael's family that you showed Frank Sinatra and Elvis Presley."

From what planet was Sharpton following Presley's death if he thinks tawdry aspects of Presley's life weren't reported? There was no shortage of reporting about the details of how and where Presley's body was found, the cocktail of drugs to which he was addicted and the weirdness in general of Presley's life at Graceland. And in 1977, we didn't have the vast landscape of Web and cable outlets that we do today.

But Sharpton went further yet, according to wire reports, attacking the media for what he characterized as a lack of diversity and sensitivity to black culture in reporting the story.

"I don't think the media understand who Michael was,'' Sharpton was quoted as saying in wire reports. ``I don't think they have any cultural significance.''

One of the leading sources of mainstream media information on the Jackson story has been CNN. And the anchor who has been sprearheading CNN's coverage in Los Angeles is Don Lemon, who is African American.

I was on the CNN media show, Reliable Sources, with Lemon and others Sunday. The show offered 30 minutes of  analysis of Jackson's "cultural significance" and coverage of his death, with a clear and strong African-American voice at the center of the discussion. Lemon made a great and passionate case for the cultural importance of Jackson.

Perhaps turning on his TV to one of the leading cable channels in America and watching 30 minutes of coverage before taking to the pulpit is asking too much in the way of homework from Rev. Sharpton.

I could cite dozens of other examples of Jackson's racial and cultural significance being explored in mainstream media in the last 10 days, like the Wednesday night special on CBS that found anchorwoman Katie Couric interviewing Spike Lee on that very topic.

Katie Couric and Spike Lee on CBS in prime time. More than 8 million viewers watched the conversation, but Rev. Sharpton apparently missed it -- or conveniently chose to ignore it because it didn't fit his inflammatory and divisive rhetoric.

Posted by David Zurawik at 12:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (38)
Categories: TV and race
        

You can tell a lot about a news operation by how it responds to a breaking news story on a holiday or weekend when the A-Team is away.

I first wrote that in November about cable coverage of the Mumbai attacks and the sorry performance by MSNBC, which mainly stuck to its canned lineup of prison documentaries while CNN and Fox scrambled to cover the story live.

Well, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin dropped a political bombshell late Friday afternoon in announcing that she would resign only two and a half years into her term, and it was fascinating to watch the 24/7 channels already in holiday mode chase the story.

MSNBC responded this time. Even though the program guide had a prison documentary slated for the 4 p.m. hour, MSNBC had Alex Witt at the anchor desk and such analysts as A.M. Stoddard, of The Hill, dissecting Palin's resignation.

MSNBC was using NBC News resources as well. An on-screen headline said: "Sources tell Andrea Mitchell Palin is out of politics for good." We'll check back in on that one in few weeks to see whether it turns out to be true or not. But it sure beats a Lockup doc.

By the 5 p.m. hour, MSNBC had NBC backup White House correspondent Mike Viqueira on, and he provided some of the finest analysis anywhere on TV up to that point. He was one of the first to deconstruct Palin's resignation speech and point our how "meandering" it was.

The speech was more than meandering -- it was disjointed, inconsistent and utterly unconvincing in her explanation as to why she was resigning. Good job by Viqueira in nailing that on the run.

Fox was impressive in quickly getting up to speed and bringing in a range of diverse and savvy voices. And, again, maybe it was mostly the result of the usual A-Team of conservative analysts being unreachable right away on this holiday weekend, but you have to acknowledge the excellent analysis offered on Fox by Lanny Davis, a former White House aide to Bill Clinton, and University of Virginia professor Larry Sabato.

The latter was brilliant in explaining how Palin's abrupt mid-term departure would make her look like Ross Perot, the 1990's independent candidate whose presidential aspirations were in part dashed by opponents who labeled him as "erratic, unstable and likely to resign in mid-term" -- just like Palin did Friday.

I had just left CNN's Washington bureau about 3 p.m. Friday after taping a segment for Sunday's Reliable Sources, so I had a pretty good on-scene sense of how much the news operation was into holiday weekend mode. Suzanne Malveaux, who had been subbing all week for Wolf Blitzer, was at the helm of The Situation Room Friday.

And while it was clear CNN couldn't field its usual on-air team of top political analysts, it showed some real depth putting CNN political editor Mark Preston on the set with Malveaux and bringing in political producer Peter Hamby by remote. The presence of those two seemed to really stabilize and center the coverage.

They were followed by a range of voices, including that of conservative strategist Ed Rollins, who offered a withering and informed analysis of Palin's decision to resign on a dime.

Posted by David Zurawik at 5:42 PM | Permalink | Comments (24)
Categories: Cable and Network News
        

MSNBC's Keith Olbermann took offense to a post I wrote Saturday that referred to him as "slumping." He didn't dispute any of the facts in my piece, he just went on the attack with his usual innuendo, slurs and bombast over my characterization of his performance in the ratings. 

Here are two graphics from tvbythenumbers.com tracking Olbermann's ratings the last six months. Read them and judge for yourself whether the adjective "slumping" applies.

No spin, just the facts. Especially note the one that shows him down 50 percent since the last quarter of 2008 in the key news demographic of viewers 25 and 54.

Also, note that in the first quarter of 2009, Olbermann's show ranked in the Top 10 programs on all news cable TV. In the figures released this week for the second quarter of the year, he is no longer in the Top 10. All 10 spots belong to shows on Fox News.

Posted by David Zurawik at 5:37 PM | Permalink | Comments (35)
Categories: Cable and Network News
        

Today is the day that they start measuring TV audiences differently in Baltimore. As one general manager of a Baltimore TV station put it in a memo to his staff: "Television starts anew in Baltimore today! Let’s move out of the past – and position ourselves to be the leaders of the future!"

What's new is the use of Local People Meters, an electronic device, to measure viewing patterns of Baltimore area residents.The new Nielsen system replaces a way of counting viewers that relied in part on diaries that some researchers considered unreliable and out of date given new digital technology.

The general manager's memo went on to succinctly described the advantages of the new technology this way: "The local people meters include a larger sample and daily extensive demographic data that was not available under the traditional set meter ratings. The new LPMs allow multiple individuals in the same household to record their television viewing simultaneously. The sample includes for the first time cell phone only homes...."

But the meters have also brought shakeups in the ratings and controversy in some other cities, like Miami where they introduced this spring.

I have written about the switch to people meters for the Sun and this blog. Here is some of what I said in a Sun story last month after explaining that Nielsen ratings are the primary source of data used by station to sell advertising time, and therefore central to the business of local TV:

Previously, Nielsen relied on a decades-old method of handwritten diaries. The new People Meters offer instant, real-time demographic data that rules out the variable of faulty recall by viewers in filling out their diaries.

But as good and technologically improved as Local People Meters have seemed to be on paper, their arrival in other cities has often caused major disruptions in viewing patterns, complaints from stations and even lawsuits.

What tends to happen in most cities is that the market-leading station or stations see their audience ratings drop. Sometimes, they even fall from the top of the heap altogether.

Local People Meters were introduced in Miami in October, and last month, WSVN, the Fox affiliate, filed suit against Nielsen, claiming that flawed data from the People Meters will cost the station $12 million in revenue this year.

According to the lawsuit, the station says that ratings for its 10 p.m. newscasts fell 50 percent after the People Meters were introduced, while ratings for American Idol, the hit prime-time show from Fox, fell 40 percent.

"Nielsen's imposition of the Local People Meters in the Miami-Fort Lauderdale market has been an unmitigated disaster for its broadcast television customers there," Sunbeam Television Corp., the owner of WSVN, said in its lawsuit. "From the outset, Nielsen's LPMs produced defective, wildly inaccurate ratings data, which literally overnight, created havoc in the market."

Speaking of what happened in other markets, Don Lowry, vice president of government and public affairs for Nielsen, said in a Baltimore Sun interview, "There have been shifts. I wouldn't call them dramatic. But there have been shifts that as a television operator you would definitely pay attention to."

Lowry said that company representatives have installed the full 600-home sample of Local People Meters in Baltimore and have been offering the stations here test data for several months that are consistent with the ratings derived from the older methodology.

But while Lowry said he didn't expect any major disruptions, sources familiar with the Baltimore test data say that it has shown considerable change from what came before. So far, the People Meters in Baltimore have generally served up lower ratings for WBAL and WJZ - and even offered data that would have reversed the standings in one key news race during the May sweeps.

Station managers say they are prohibited by contract with Nielsen from discussing the test data publicly.

I am not naming the general manager who wrote the memo quoted at the start of this post. Nor am naming his station or reporting any of his specific suggestions to his staff. I think it unfair to give competitors such information.

But, in a general sense, viewers should look for more animated, higher energy local newscasts starting today with a tighter feel and quicker pace. People Meters instantly measure tune-out in a way that diaries could never record.

More than ever, stations need to grab fast and hold onto viewers if they want to score well with the new technology.

As for the new ratings data, general managers at Baltimore's network owned and affiliated stations were unanimous in cautioning against making too much of what the People Meters tell us in July. This week, for example, is a holiday week with strange viewing patterns that further accentuate the traditional abnormalities of local TV viewing during the summer.

We will have to wait until September to get a real fix on the new technology, but we'll be on it long before that at Z on TV.

Posted by David Zurawik at 6:51 AM | Permalink | Comments (6)
Categories: Baltimore Television
        

If you think there has been too much Michael Jackson on TV, wait until the funeral. Or, how about Matt Lauer and NBC's Today show getting inside Neverland for a Thursday morning tour? And then, Larry King offering the TV tour of Jackson's ranch in prime time at 9 p.m. Thursday. Matt Lauer, Larry King and Neverland -- isn't American TV fabulous?

But for my part, so far, I really do not think the coverage has been excessive. I am pleased, in fact, to see TV serving so effectively as a medium for the ritual of public mourning. (Not bad for a so-called dinosaur, is it?). Furthermore, TV is providing the forum for an illuminating discussion of race in connection with the dead entertainer -- and I think that matters in an important cultural way.

The latest entry on that front came Tuesday night with Katie Couric interviewing filmmaker Spike Lee for a CBS special on Jackson. The program, which aired under the 48 Hours banner, won the time period with 8.15 million viewers -- one of the largest audiences of the year for 48 Hours. (Pictured Spike Lee at a Michael Jackson tribute. AP)

Lee and Couric focused on the controversial words Jamie Foxx used to open the BET Awards Show Sunday night. I wrote about them in my Sunday post as well, arguing that they instantly contextualized the BET program in part as a discussion of race.

"We want to celebrate this black man -- this black man. He belongs to us. We just shared him with everybody else," Foxx said at the start of the awards telecast.

"Black folks have become very territorial about Michael," Lee said when asked about those remarks. "It's a bad time to badmouth Michael around some black folks. Because, you know, we had issues with him, but that stuff is over now.... Let's make no mistake, Michael never forgot who he was and where he came from in the history of African Americans."

And now, comes word from the Pew Research Center that black viewers are following the Jackson story much more closely than whites. Some 80 percent of blacks say they are tracking coverage closely, while only 22 percent of whites said they were following the coverage intensely. A new TV divide.

Jackson has lessons to teach us about race even in death.

Posted by David Zurawik at 1:32 PM | Permalink | Comments (19)
Categories: Michael Jackson
        

Two weeks ago, I praised Fox News for being one of the only TV news operations seriously questioning the administration of President Barack Obama as it pushes an agenda of massive social change not seen since Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal.

Whatever the reasons for Fox's tenacity, I said, it is the one channel that seems absolutely committed to being a watchdog on the White House -- a job crucial to any notion of press responsibility. My post was inspired in part by Obama's petulant sounding complaint about Fox made in an interview with CNBC.

Now comes the ratings data this week showing that Fox, which has long ruled in cable TV news ratings, has entered another league altogether of near-total dominance. I believe this current ratings surge is related to the relentless watch Fox News is keeping on the White House. Viewers are responding to Fox as the cable channel speaking most effectively to citizen questions and concerns about the breakneck pace at which American life is being tranformed. Meanwhile, few hard questions are being asked of the administration elsewhere on television.

Comparing the second quarter of 2009 with the same period in 2008, Fox is up in total-day viewing by 33 percent among all viewers and 44 percent in the key news demographic of viewers 25 to 44 years of age.

In prime time, it is up 34 percent in total viewers and 55 percent in the desired demographic. Fifty-five percent!

Even more impressive is that the Fox ratings surge comes at a time when competitors often try to explain any year-to-year ratings drop by saying you can't compare pre-election 2008 and post-election ratings because the audience was so much larger and more engaged last year at this time due to the presidential race. Yeah, tell that to Fox.

In the first quarter of 2009, Fox had nine of the top 10 shows in cable news. The only non-Fox entry in the Top 10 during the first three months of the year was Keith Olbermann's show on MSNBC.

Now, Fox owns all 10 of the Top 10 spots -- no Olbermann in the Top 10.

Fox is now the 3rd highest rated basic cable channel in prime time behind USA and TNT, which program top-rated entertainment series.

Maybe, it's wishful thinking. But I would like to believe part of the latest surge is the result of Fox performing a socially important press function in not giving the president a free pass to change American life overnight.

Posted by David Zurawik at 9:14 AM | Permalink | Comments (20)
Categories: Cable and Network News