After the last back and forth with Keith Olbermann in May, I decided I was not going to respond to any new criticisms made of me by the cable TV slash-and-shout gang. Unlike them, I have an actual beat to cover, which doesn't leave a lot of time for name calling.

But Bill O'Reilly came after me Monday night for a blog post that I wrote last Friday pointing out how he and Sean Hannity seemed to be using their highly rated Fox News shows to help raise legal defense funds for James O'Keefe and Hannah Giles, the two filmmakers who posed as pimp and prostitute and used hidden cameras at an ACORN office in Baltimore.

The thing about O'Reilly's attack that makes it too big a target to ignore is that he wound it up by calling me an "ideologue" -- the very same thing that Olbermann called me in his commentary. While I am always careful about claiming singularity on any matter, I have to be the only media critic ever to be called an ideologue by both Olbermann and O'Reilly -- with each claiming I was criticizing them because I was on the opposite end of the political spectrum.

Is it humanly possible to be both a right-wing and a left-wing ideologue at the same time? Or are their remarks evidence that they just throw such charges around to try and discredit any criticism of them as being the result of partisan politics?

In taking on the right-wing talking point that O'Keefe and Giles are champions of the First Amendment, I wrote that the only place where that might be true is on the cube-sided Planet Bizarro.

O'Reilly said I belong on the Planet Bizarro and that he is "exhausted by these ideologues masking as TV critics."

Take a moment to check out Olbermann's and O'Reilly's segments and note the similarities. Maybe I was put on the Earth to help these two find common ground -- even if they can't agree on which end of the spectrum I am supposed to reside.

Posted by David Zurawik at 4:36 PM | Permalink | Comments (30)
        

The great sitcoms have always captured the mood of the their times. Bill Cosby's 1980s powerhouse, for example, was in perfect synch with that era's back-to-the-1950s emphasis on families, dad in a sweater and upward mobility.

I am not yet ready to say "The Middle," which premieres Wednesday night at 8:30 on ABC, is a great sitcom, but it sure seems in synch with the mood of middle America today. And what a difference from the sunny optimism of the 1980s and Ronald Reagan.

"The Middle" stars Patricia Heaton, one of TV's most popular middle class moms thanks to her long run on "Everybody Loves Raymond." Here she plays Frankie Heck, wife, mother of three and used car salesman living in the middle of Indiana.

Her husband, Mike (Neil Flynn), works at a quarry with guys she describes as being none too bright. Mike is no intellectual himself, but he's smart in his own way -- and nice. And the two do have a relationship of some affection.

Their kids are something else. Axl is a teenager who looks like he's already a lost cause. Sue seems to have no talent whatsoever, but she is so earnest and sweet it breaks your heart.  And Brick is just one weird kid -- even Frankie admits that, especially when he lapses into his bizarre habit of repeating the last word or phrase that he spoke out loud in a stage whisper.

This family will make you smile a lot, especially Frankie's  stressed-out, manic attempts to keep this house of nutsiness almost functioning. Heaton is an outstanding comic performer who really deserved all those Emmys in the "Raymond" days.

But here is what matters: The sociology of this show, particularly as it relates to the recession. As we meet her in the pilot, Frankie is on the verge of being fired if she doesn't sell a car by the end of the month -- and there are only a couple of days left. She is desperate for a sale.

When she gets her pay packet, she is shocked. She claims she spends more on gas to get to the job than she makes. Her boss shows absolutely no sympathy. In fact, he reminds her how expendable she is. Sound familiar? Welcome to America in 2009.

I love that a network sitcom is taking this subject matter on. And if I was one of those folks in Washington saying the recession is over, I would watch the ratings very closely on this sitcom with its message that we are really hurting and the only thing helping us get by is the love of our families.

I'd pay very close attention, because I think this is a sitcom that, despite all its processing through the corporate belly of the ABC-Disney beast, is more in touch with middle-class America and the pain it is feeling than any of the people running the country today.

There's another family sitcom premised on the recession and featuring a familiar TV face that premieres tonight on ABC -- "Hank," starring Kelsey Grammer. It would have been nice to write this post as an essay talking about the recession and the sociology of these two shows.

But that would have been a mistake, because one sitcom has great promise, and one is an empty-headed mess. "Hank" is the mess.

The premise: Hank (Grammer) is a Wall Street CEO who is fired by the board of directors after the economic meltdown. The series opens like a Depression-era film with Hank and his family in front of their former Park Avenue digs as their possessions are loaded on a moving van.

They wind up in a rundown home in Virginia in a setting that is way too much like the 1960s CBS sitcom "Green Acres" to make you even think of suspending belief for a second. And I say that with apologies to "Green Acres," which I loved -- when I was 14 and thought Eva Gabor defined hot. ("Dahling, I love you, but give me Park Avenue.") 

The producers tried too hard to catch the feeling of the times in their premise, and not hard enough to develop the characters and craft the words they say. The result is a silly, one-dimensional cartoon of a family that I am guessing viewers will start tuning out before the half hour ends. 

Posted by David Zurawik at 6:14 AM | Permalink | Comments (13)
        

A New York appeals court Tuesday dealt a bitter blow to former CBS News anchorman Dan Rather when it ruled unanimously (5-0) to dismiss his $70 million lawsuit against his former network for what he characterized as an effort by his bosses to run him off the job by denying him meaningful assignments after he stepped down from the anchor desk.

All of Rather's troubles at CBS stemmed form his disastrous report in 2004 on "60 Minutes II" about the teatment of George W. Bush in the National Guard. The report by Rather claimed that Bush received preferential treatment during the Vietnam War.

But the report was based on a documents that Rather did not verify, and when the authenticity of the documents was challenged, the CBS anchorman could not prove their validity. The affair became known as Memogate and led to the end of Rather's career at CBS News.

Since leaving the network, Rather has been engaged in an attempt to restore his reputation. The lawsuit was at the heart of that effort.

But the judges Tuesday dismissed the claim that CBS breached his contract and caused his reputation to be damaged.

Posted by David Zurawik at 4:03 PM | Permalink | Comments (5)
        

UPDATE: Starting Nov. 2, "Jon & Kate Plus 8" will become only "Kate Plus 8" with Jon Gosselin gone. The latest version of the troubled show will feature only Kate Gosselin and the divorcing couple's eight children, TLC announced Tuesday. The president of the cable channel says she is making the move to reflect changes in the Gosselin household, but in truth, this is a last gasp to try and salvage the show.

"It's not a huge shift, but it's reflective of where the show is already going," said Eileen O'Neill, president of TLC, in trying to put a good face on what has become a nightmare of a show. As I reported last week, the series has lost more than 80 percent of its audience since the couple started divorce proceedings. Last week, it reached a low of 1.7 million viewers, down from 10.6 million in June.

Now, here's the post I put up about an hour before the TLC announcement Tuesday. It was an analsyis of Monday night's show with a prediction at the end that a big change was about to be made in "Jon & Kate Plus 8." It ran under a headline that said "'Jon & Kate' -- The end is near.'"

If it wasn't part of my job to chronicle the final days of "Jon & Kate Plus 8" -- and these are the final days -- I do not think I could stand to watch any more. The reality of the Gosselins' wretched lives has overtaken any possiblity of finding pleasure in the TV viewing experience of the show. Or, let me put it this way, the truth of their lives has made it impossible to suspend disbelief for even 30 minutes a week any more.

Monday night brought that home to me. Just as I was sitting down to catch the "new" episode scheduled to air at 9 with Kate taking three of her girls to a tea room in Wilmington, the rerun that had started at 8:30 was wrapping up. And it ended with a few minutes that featured the Gosselin dogs as puppies. I couldn't believe it.

After the news that Kate had sent the dogs back to the breeder two weeks ago, and last week made insensitive remarks about how the dogs had bent the bars of their crates trying to get out, what in the world was TLC thinking? Does anyone screen these reruns? Do they think the audience doesn't pay attention to how poorly these dogs were treated in real life? Do they think the audience is a pack of fools? I swear, I would have zapped the channel and never watched "Jon & Kate" -- and maybe TLC for that matter -- ever again.

I am still boiling about those dogs, and what bad fortune it has been for them to come in contact with this family. I hope the breeder has the decency to try and give them a better life -- and never send them back.

As for Monday's episode, it felt like a leftover from Kate's trip to the beach this summer -- as TLC furiously tried to invent a new template for the show with Jon and Kate separated. She took three younger girls to a tea room in North Carolina, while Jon made a bonfire for the two older girls in Pennsylvania.

But, again, reality intruded, and blew the entire episode up for me. Jon gave two of his daughters earrings that he said he bought in New York for them. As soon as he said "New York," my brain started processing tabloid and blog stories and pictures of Jon in New York with his new girlfriends. I wonder if one of them helped Jon shop for the earrings -- and what he bought for her. 

Kate being bad to the dogs, Jon being nice to the new girlfriends. TLC, please end this misery.

As I wrote last week, the show has lost 62 percent of audience since Aug. 4, and more than 80 percent since the start of the season. Read it here.

Prediction: Something is going to break with this show in the next week or so. Even TLC has to know it can't go on this way.

UPDATE: TLC did indeed know it couldn't go on that way. Goodbye, Jon. But here's another prediction since I am on a roll: The change  won't be nearly enough to save the show for all the reasons I listed above.

Posted by David Zurawik at 9:51 AM | Permalink | Comments (101)
        

When WBFF-TV dropped its morning anchorwoman Jennifer Gladstone May, I wrote that the news had a familiar ring to it.

Across the country, TV and radio outlets are in the midst of a cost-cutting effort that is reshaping the industry and offering few hints of when - or if - it might end. Locally, TV stations are downsizing anchor desks, cutting overtime and looking at new models of content-sharing as ways of coping with a harsh economy.

The latest Baltimore station to move in that direction is WMAR (Channel 2), Baltimore's ABC affiliate, where Mary Beth Marsden is now anchoring the flagship 11 p.m. newscast alone, and station mangement says it has no plans to add a co-anchor.

Furthermore, with the recent departure of Rob Carlin, the station no longer has a full-time dedicated sports reporter, and is using free lancers for coverage. And don't look for any late news at all on Saturday nights on Channel 2 this fall. With ABC football games running late, General Manager Bill Hooper says there is not enough of an audience available to justify the newscasts.

"Mary Beth has been solo anchoring for quite a while now and we are not looking for a co- anchor," Hooper said Monday in an email response to questions about the on-air lineup at Channel 2 as affiliates and network-owned stations here settle into the new TV season.

In confirming Carlin's departure (for a job doing pre-game shows for the New York Islanders hockey team), Hooper said, "We are currently looking for a new reporter -- will use free lance for now."

As to my question about whether or not late news on Saturday had been cancelled, Hooper said, "During ABC's Saturday night college football as the games run very late and the available audience is very small."

The move to one anchor at 11 p.m. is a significant one, as that is the newscast that generates the most revenue for a station. But given Channel 2's position in the ratings well behind market leaders WJZ (Channel 13) and WBAL (Channel 11), it was inevitable in this bitter recession.

I am surprised Hooper and Channel 2 were able to hold out as long as they did -- there simply is not enough advertising revenue right now in a market this size to support a fully staffed late news on all three stations -- and WBFF (Channel 45), which airs its last news at 10. In fact, there might never be enough revenue ever again -- one anchor could be the new normal for all stations except the market leader in cities like Baltimore.

In the wake of Gladstone's departure, I wrote a piece in early June about the downsizing and cited TV executives here saying privately that this market will face more and deeper cuts if the advertising climate does not improve by fall.

The White House can tell us over and over how much the economy is improving -- even that the recession is over. But all viewers have to do in markets like Baltimore is turn on the local news to see that cutbacks, not growth, are still the order of the day.

Posted by David Zurawik at 5:33 PM | Permalink | Comments (40)
Categories: Local TV News
        

Other Sunday night assignments kept me away from AMC's "Mad Men" the past few weeks. Last week, it was the Emmys, for example.

But I have to be honest, the way this series that I once so adored was going this season, I didn't miss it that much.

This weekend, though, I caught up, and I am happy to say that I fell back under its spell. The episode in which Betty gives birth is the one that did it.

"Finally," I thought about half way through, "some drama." On the other hand, resisting the urge to fall back in love with a show I had been about to abandon, I countered that feeling by writing in my notes, "Sure, but how many times can your leading lady give birth in a season?"

Happily, it wasn't all about the birth of the Drapers' third child -- not by a long shot.

I loved the way that the producers and writers had Don Draper continually telling other characters, "Everything is going to be all right."

Two of the characters to whom he says that in the "birth" episode are the prison guard whom he meets in the hospital waiting room and his daughter, Sally. Of course, Draper has absolutely no idea if things are going to be all right. In fact, if anyone knows they probably won't be all right it is Mr. Existential, who knows everything is invention and artifice including one's identity.

But Don Draper is also Mr. Madison Avenue, and that is the role that advertising plays in American life: It keeps telling us that everything is going to be all right. And that is crucial to American life, because if we don't believe in the future, then we won't keep buying, buying and buying. We are getting a taste these days of what life is like in this nation when faith is lost in our ability to make next month's mortgage payment.

And, of course, because it is 1963 in "Mad Men," we know how not all right things are going to be by the end of November.

And I have to say, creator Matthew Weiner and his writing team are building a superb sense of drama and dread about the future.

The eclipse in Sunday night's episode made me think of Julius Caesar for some reason. But each of the moments in which a character reacted to the eclipse seemed perfectly true to the character, but also echoed with larger, cosmic themes. I am thinking of Betty Draper on the street saying she felt slightly dizzy.

The random on-the-road violence of the two young people that Don picked up was perfectly pitched as a sneak preview of the helter-skelter 1960s that would open in the wake of the Kennedy assassination. The scene sounded all the notes: drugs, sex without love, the Vietnam war, avoiding the draft, altered states of consciousness and crime.

Enough for now. I'm going to leave it right here. There was a lot to like. What was your favorite part of Sunday's episode?

Just in terms of performance sense, I have to say that I was blown away by the scene in which Don told Peggy she was not going to get a raise -- and then really unloaded on her. I like Elisabeth Moss (the actress who plays Peggy), but I never thought she was worthy of the Emmy nomination she received for last year's work. But she made a believer out of me in that scene.

I also loved the moment  in which Don was told to sign the new contract or else -- and he did.

It is nice to have "Mad Men" to look forward to again on Sunday nights -- even if I do know it is going to end on the grassy knoll in Dallas.

Once again trust Weiner to tell me something about that moment and its impact on American consciousness that I don't already know. We'll see whether that's true, or like a good mad man, he has simply convinced me with the last few epsiodes that everything is going to be great -- if I just keep watching.

Posted by David Zurawik at 6:17 AM | Permalink | Comments (10)
        

Michael Vick's return to NFL league play was a big pre-game TV story Sunday, and it was fascinating to see how the networks and cable channels that carry the games handled his past crimes of torturing and killing dogs in its interviews and pre-game hype-a-thons.

The answer: They gave it short shrift with a brief mention or a fleeting shot of protestors outside the stadium, and then they rushed headlong into their favored narrative of forgiveness, redemption and hoped-for future on-field glory.

Did you see any of the pre-game coverage? What did you think of the way his horrid past was minimized?

Guess who was leading the all-is-forgiven parade Sunday? James Brown, of CBS Sports, who played father-confessor to Vick in August on a much-discussed interview for "60 Minutes."

CBS Sports employed a clever strategy of showing an excerpt from the August interview so that Brown would not have to ask Vick again about the crimes. The excerpt was the one in which Brown brought up the crimes that sent Vick to prison and then gave the ex-con a clear field to act like his only crime was "not taking the initiative to stop what happened." 

"It was wrong, J,.B... I didn't step up. I didn't act like a leader," we heard Vick say again.

And again, you were reminded how incumbent it should have been for the interviewer to say, "No, Michael, it wasn't about not being a leader. It was about you torturing and killing dogs with your hands."

And again, of course, Brown said no such thing.

By presenting the August videotape rather than having Brown ask Vick during the interview last week about the crimes, CBS made the dog killing seem like ancient history -- and Brown didn't have to ask any questions that might upset Vicki or interfere with the CBS Sports anchor telling viewers how hard the Philadelphia Eagles quarterback is working these days and how dedicated he is.

"The difference between the old Michael Vick and the new Michael Vick: work ethic," Brown said in conclusion. "He's the last one off the field."

His staying late at work should make us all feel so much better about the dogs he killed.

In another textbook case of a punch being pulled, ESPN in its pre-game hype did include a brief shot of protesters outside the stadium -- but the camera was held far enough away so that viewers could not see the bloody, tortured victims of Vick that were shown on protester placards.

I am sure ESPN kept those images from us only because they did not want to offend the delicate sensibilities of their NFL fans.

Posted by David Zurawik at 3:33 PM | Permalink | Comments (50)
        

In August, I wrote about C-SPAN's telecast of a town hall meeting in Virginia as one of TV's best moments of health care coverage. Amid all the confusion, here was one program that showed the warfare up close and personal and offered you the chance to get up from the TV set smarter than when you sat down. Read it here.

I didn't think C-SPAN could do much better than that, but last week it did with overnight radio broadcasts of the Senate Finance Committee mark-up sessions. They started at 11 p.m., and ran almost all night. They are replays of broadcasts on C-SPAN radio, WCSP-FM (90.1), that aired during the day, and they will resume this coming week when the committee goes back to work on the legislation it is drafting. 

What a fabulous inside look at the manuevering, compromising, character and politicking of the handful of men and women who to large extent are deciding the shape and scope of health care reform (or non-reform) for the nation by nature of the bill they will send to the floor of the Senate. I learned more in two nights of lying awake and listening than I did in two months of watching TV coverage of President Obama's smile-for-the-camera super-spin and oppositional "Death Panels" counter-spin. Finally, with C-SPAN radio, some clarity!

This is the committee you have heard so much about -- the one chaired by Senator Max Baucus, a Democrat from Montana. It's the one with moderate Republican Senator Olympia Snowe, who some think will vote with the Democrats if they move far enough in her direction. It is the last and most important committee still at work on health care legislation.

And under pressure, the members are showing their colors like I have never seen them before. Thursday night, I heard Massachusetts Senator John Kerry pleading with committee members for an amendment that would allow insurance companies to charge older Americans only twice as much as young subscribers for medical coverage.

The difference between rates for old and young had been 5:1 percent! But Kerry and other democrats managed to get that reduced to 4:1 percent. Now Kerry asked them to take it down to 2:1 percent.

I couldn't believe my ears: "This is the reform we're going to get?" I thought. "Older Americans are going to pay four times as much as young subscribers for insurance -- after reform? Thanks a lot, President Obama for such 'sweeping' reform. And why had I not heard of this before with all the coverage I have been watching for months?"

Kerry felt the same way, saying four times was way too high particularly since the people hardest hit by the recession are men ages 50 to 64 who are being laid-off, downsized and made redundant with little or no hope of ever returning to the workforce with the kind of salaries they once had. And now, we are going to aks them to pay four times what younger American pay for health insurance? he asked rheotorically.

And guess who opposed him? Senator Charles Grassley, a Republican from Iowa, who a congressional correspondent on C-SPAN later in the broadcast indentified as the recipient of some $2 million in insurance company contributions.

The amendment was defeated. As the bill still stands, older Americans will four times as much as younger persons for insurance. Who knew you could get such a life lesson -- such an education in realpolitik -- lying in bed in the wee hours?

And on it went all night long on C-SPAN radio -- with me for the first time getting a true sense of the real forces at work in this battle. And I have to tell you as bouyed as I was to hear Kerry say what he did about baby boomer men and the recession -- something no one in the White House has come near acknowledging -- I am more pessimistic than ever about any meaningful change finally being enacted.

Yes, folks like Grassley are torching reform behind the scenes, but the president seems to have no clear plan of attack and is all too willing to cave to insurance company interests while selling out various demographic groups. His plan is to go on TV, trade quips with late-night hosts and tell everyone their insurance will not change a whit if they stick with him.

Well, I have news: Anything over 1:1 is a change in my rates.

And I have only C-SPAN radio to thank for informing of what's happening behind closed doors -- of being the first media outlet to bring me the news of what I am going to lose despite all the president's smiling reassurances.

UPDATE: Just as a little test of the misinformation and partisan spin that is so confusing health care reform, please help me out. If you are between the ages of 50 and 64, please let me know whether you were aware that under the best case scenario on reform, you will still be paying 200 percent what younger people pay for coverage. And as it now stands in the powerfuil Senate Finance Committee, you will pay 400 percent. Thanks.

Posted by David Zurawik at 7:17 PM | Permalink | Comments (18)
Categories: Radio
        

Committing yourself for 12 hours to any TV production is a big deal. But before you decide you don't have the time for Ken Burns' new multipart documentary, "The National Parks: America's Best Idea," consider just giving it a 30-minute tryout.

Watch the first half hour Sunday on PBS, and I bet you will become hooked on one of the best and most rewarding viewing experiences of the TV year. This is a film with both beauty and brains -- it is gorgeous to look at, it will make you think and possibly even stir your soul.

A history of the nation's great parks might not sound as hot and toe-tappingly transgressive as the saga of jazz or as action-packed and heart-rending as the Civil War, two American narratives that Burns has explored in landmark films for public television. But the parks have their own power, and part of it comes from a visual glory that neither of those other two topics inherently held.

And Burns, both as director and one of four cinematographers, embraces that spectacular beauty from the opening moments in a visual overture that runs 14 minutes in length. It's an eye-popping, brain-boiling montage of the magnificence of nature as it exists in our national parks.

The most striking aspect is the primordial, eternal aura of these landscapes -- and it is so at odds with our national sense of identity as a country that is still new, young, fluid and on the make.

"This project offered wonderful challenges and opportunities to explore -- particularly with the live cinematography -- the expressive capabilities of that visual sumptuous feast that we know as the national parks," Burns said in an interview last week, explaining that the film is structured around "two casts of characters."

One involves the "60-odd human beings" who played a leading role the past 150 years in the " drama of the parks."

The other cast of characters is described by the 56-year-old filmmaker as "some of the most spectacular landscapes on Earth."

In that lyrical opening segment, Burns says he tried "to build a kind of symphonic introduction to that one cast of characters, the landscapes of the parks, so that viewers will be prepared to receive the complicated drama that follows of human beings arguing to either acquire or save these places."

The human characters -- as they always are in a Burns film -- are fascinating. Most Americans know some of the white male characters to whom history has been kind -- like Theodore Roosevelt and John Muir.

But as skillfully as Burns brings those historical figures with all their eccentricities and foibles to life, he has a more diverse human tale to tell with hard-driving narratives involving Native Americans, African Americans and women. And he deftly starts, stops and resumes those story lines like a Russian novelist.

There's the inspirational saga of writer and conservationist Marjory Stoneman Douglas and her crusade to preserve the Everglades, and there's the sad, sobering tale of Chief Joseph, of the Nez Perce tribe, and his last ride through Yellowstone National Park.

And has anyone ever done talking heads as successfully as Ken Burns? Remember Shelby Foote from "The Civil War"? I rest my case.

Wait until you hear Yosemite National Park Ranger Shelton Johnson, who grew up in Detroit, talk about what the park means to him -- or recounts the history of the African American cavalrymen known as Buffalo Soldiers who once roamed the same land on which he now works.

But for all the passion of the people and beauty of the places, the great drama of the film comes from the argument between those who would exploit the parks for private and commercial use and gain versus those who fought to preserve them as public places where all Americans could go to experience the wonder of nature. It should come as no surprise to anyone who has seen " Brooklyn Bridge," "Jazz," Baseball," "Civil War," or "The War," Burns is firmly on the side democracy.

"What if there were no national parks?" Burns asks rhetorically by way of making his case. Before you can answer, he says, "If there were no national parks, then the Grand Canyon would be lined with mansions, and you and I and, more importantly, our children would never get to see that view. If there were no national parks, then the Everglades would be drained and it would be filled with tract housing developments and golf courses -- and the world's most exquisite, diverse habitat would be lost forever."

Without stopping for breath, he pushes on with the litany, "If there were no national parks, Zion and Yosemite, two of the most beautiful canyons on earth, would be gated communities. If there were no national parks, Yellowstone would be Geyser World."

That's the passion Burns feels for the subject matter of this documentary, and it infuses virtually every frame of film.

"There is a very democratic spirit to the parks," Burns says. "And we emphasize that -- the fact that we all own these places."

The film tracks the history of the parks up until 1980, but the argument that so animates the documentary continues to resonate today.

Allen Moore, Maryland Institute College of Art professor and one of three cinematographers who worked with Burns on the film, said that the theme of the national parks as an extension of democracy was sounded continually in his discussions with Burns from 2003 to 2007 when Burns was deciding what place and scenes Moore should film.

"The beauty of Ken's work is that it's about ideas as well as people," Moore said last week. "And the tension at the heart of the film still exists. Look at the big controversy in recent years over Manassas, the battlefield in Virginia, and whether they were going to build a mega-mall right up against it. That's a great example where one part of community wanted one thing, and another wanted the other. Fortunately, the conservationists won out on that one, but you never know."

The stunning visual overture at the start of "The National Parks" ends with these words from Muir, whose biography is one of the high points of the first two hours: "Everybody needs beauty as well as bread -- places to play and pray where nature may heal and give strength to body and soul alike. This national beauty hunger is made manifest in our national parks, nature's sublime wonderlands, the admiration and joy of the world."

"The National Parks: America's Best Idea" is the story of how a nation known globally for its commercialism came to accept if not embrace that sentiment and guarantee that all its citizens, not just the richest or most powerful, could share and enjoy its greatest beauty.

"The National Parks: America's Best Idea" airs nightly at 8 p.m. Sept. 27-Oct. 2.

Posted by David Zurawik at 4:35 PM | Permalink | Comments (32)
Categories: PBS
        

It was fascinating to see the reaction on Fox News Thursday night to the announcement that ACORN was suing the filmmakers Hannah Giles and James O'Keefe, along with the Web site Breitbart.com, over the hidden camera recording that the two did at an agency office in Baltimore.

There was Bill O'Reilly offering his sympathy to Andrew Breitbart, the founder of the Web site that first put the film online.

"I'm sorry you have to go through this, Andrew, I know it's unpleasant," O'Reilly said in opening the interview. Sound sympathetic enough, you think?

And there was Sean Hannity with Giles and her attorney, Kelly Shackelford, skillfully setting them up so that Shackelford could describe the lawsuit as "an attempt to bully a 20-year-old girl" and "to intimidate, to chill speech and freedom of expression."

Hannity, not to be outdone on the sympathy front by O'Reilly, solicitously asked Giles if the lawsuit has "scared" her "a little bit?"

What a pity party and fund raiser for the legal defense fund these two "interviews" turned out to be.

And if you don't think they were about fund raising, consider this exchange between O'Reilly and Breitbart.

"Do you have lawyers helping you with it? Because you know, this is expensive," O'Reilly said. "That's what lawsuits are -- they try to break you financially."

"...I just want everybody to know we will be advertising Hannah and James' defense fund at BigGovernment.com (one of Brietbart's Web sites)," Breitbart said.

Sounding much like Shackelford, Breitbart also said the lawsuit was an "attempt to stifle free speech and the First Amendment."

Nonsense. Only on the cube-sided Bizarro Planet are O'Keefe and Giles champions of the First Amendment.

I'll spare you the right-wing rhetoric about how these two young filmmakers -- ages 20 and 25 -- are supposedly heroes for allegedly doing what the mainstream media should have done but didn't because (fill in the blank choosing among the following terms from the dictionary of right-wing, TV talking points: "they're a bunch of sell-outs," "they're gutless" or "they are toothless dinosaurs crawling to the boneyard where dead liberal stooges go to die.")

Let me just try to set a couple of things straight in this highly-politicized pile of mud.

First, save the tears about this poor "20-year-old girl" allegedly being bullied. Giles and O'Keefe broke a law. I know this law about as well as anyone, because I was subpoened as a witness in a case that featured John Stossel charged with a felony for allegedly doing what O'Keefe and Giles admitted doing -- taping without consent. Ironically, I wound up being threatened with jail for declining to testify. Read about it here.

Second, the reason members of the mainstream media didn't do what these two did is that very few  responsible TV news operations use hidden cameras any more. The CBS News magazine "60 Minutes," for example, gave them up years ago.

Number two, no responsible news operation allows the kind of entrapment they practiced.

And number three, responsible journalists know the laws, and rarely if ever do they break the laws to get a story.

If you and your editors should decide a story is worth breaking the law, then you face the consequences of your actions. You expect lawsuits or criminal prosecution. And if that means going to jail, then you go to jail.

You don't go on cable TV and whine about it -- and ask for money.

Posted by David Zurawik at 1:13 PM | Permalink | Comments (127)
Categories: Fox News
        

The last two weeks, I have taken some heat from commenters who disagreed with my assessment of President Barack Obama's latest TV blitz.

They disagreed with my characterizations of his performances on "60 Minutes," several Sunday morning talk shows and "Late Show with David Letterman" as being "lackluster," "uninspired" and marked by him saying the "same thing over and over and over" without much impact. I saw the blitz as a misguided attempt to regain control of the health care debate by simply appearing again and again and again on TV. I said it seemed as if the president's "TV magic" was gone.

Oh no, the president was "charming" and "convincing" and "totally effective," supporters and some other TV and media critics said.

And now comes a "New York Times"/CBS News poll that says the TV blitz was essentially a failure in terms of informing and convincing viewers of supporting the White House plan for health care reform.

Here are the operative paragraphs from the "Times" story on the poll:

The poll found that an intense campaign by Mr. Obama to rally support behind his health care plan — including an address to Congress, a run of television interviews and rallies across the country — appears to have done little to allay concerns.

Majorities of respondents said that they were confused about the health care argument and that Mr. Obama had not done a good job in explaining what he was trying to accomplish.

Just to be clear: The story says that the president "had not done a good job in explaining what he was trying to accomplish." You have to wonder if all that time in front of the TV cameras could not have been used more wisely in an effort to secure health care reform -- perhaps, with the president personally "working" members of Congress.

This is a serious issue -- the president and his team thinking the way to govern is to be on TV all the time. Hopefully, the failure of this latest campaign, which was built on a steady diet of hardcore TV stumping, will lead them to re-think the matter about how best to lead the country in this time of crisis.

Posted by David Zurawik at 5:54 AM | Permalink | Comments (12)
Categories: TV and Politics
        

In 24 years of daily writing about TV and media, I do not think I have ever seen an audience loss quite like the one "Jon & Kate Plus 8" has been experiencing since the mother and father of eight children announced their divorce on TV.

On Monday, the TLC reality TV show had an audience of 1.714 million viewers. If you compare that to the 10.6 million who watched a one-hour special on June 22 when the show returned after the parents announced their breakup, that's an 84 percent plunge in viewership.

In fairness, the 10.6 was for a one-hour special that had been hyped mercilessly by the tabloids, so the comparison to a regular half-hour episode in September is not a perfect one -- if there is such a thing in ratings stories.

But consider this, which is more than fair: Since Aug. 3, the show has lost 62 percent of its audience -- from 4.2 million viewers for the half hour show on that night, to the 1.7 million on Monday.  

And the skid has been steady: from 4.2 million on Aug. 3, to 3.4 million on Aug. 10, to a 3 million on Aug. 17, to the 1.714 million Monday.

The only comfort for TLC is that it does appear that the show might finally be hitting bottom. On Sept. 14, the audience was 1.789 million viewers, according to TVbythenumbers.com. So, the drop to 1.714 this week, is the smallest of the season.

Still, what a drop. As one of my colleagues who is more of a ratings expert than me, said Thursday, "Looking at those numbers, I would say Jon & Kate's 15 minutes might not yet be up, but they're at about 14 and 1/2 and counting."

Posted by David Zurawik at 4:12 PM | Permalink | Comments (85)
        

Let's catch up here at Z on TV with some of my other print and podcast work on the new fall network season. It should all be right here every day for regular readers of this blog, but it often doesn't work out that way. Don't get me started. I'm ready to rant.

So, here are three pieces of the fall lineup that I would like to hear your thoughts on. First, this post includes my full review of Julianna Margulies in "The Good Wife." We have all had a chance to see it now -- even on TiVo -- so what do you think? I am especially wondering how women feel about this show. And here is my preview of "FlashForward," which premieres Thursday night on ABC.

And here's a link to a podcast I have up on Ken Burns "The National Parks: America's Best Idea," which debuts Sunday on PBS. You'll also find a podcast on Larry David's HBO series  "Curb Your Enthusiasm" there. And the production values on these podcasts are among the best you will hear anywhere online (or on the radio) because they come to us courtesy of Baltimore public radio station WYPR-FM with Lisa Morgan, co-producer of "The Signal" producing, and program director Andy Bienstock hosting the podcasts. So check them out.

Now, here's "The Good Wife" review. Please let me know what you think about this provocative series...

By the downsized standards of network TV today, "The Good Wife" has about as high-powered a cast as you are ever going to see again: Julianna Margulies, Chris Noth, Christine Baranski and Baltimore native Josh Charles.

And with all four bringing their "A" games to the pilot, it looks as if CBS could have another winning 10 o'clock drama.

Let's be clear, however, this is not an ensemble drama. As engaging and strong a presence as Noth, Charles and Baranski can each be, this series belongs to Margulies. It is pitched to women, and it is her vehicle. She is in virtually every frame, and she absolutely shines.

Let's also quickly dispense with the opening, because while it is clever in a ripped-from-the-headlines sort of way, the series looks to be better than this attempt to give the viewer an instant docu-drama sense of being backstage as a public life comes unraveled.

The pilot opens with Alicia Florrick (Margulies) standing next to and looking dazed as her husband, Peter (Noth), prosecutor for Cook County (in Illinois), faces a phalanx of photographers and reporters after being charged with trading lighter sentences for sexual favors.

If you have seen even two seconds of any teaser clips for the series, you know the producers want you to think of the scandal that brought down New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer. They want you to think this series will answer the question so many had as they watched Spitzer's final gubernatorial news conference: What was going through the mind of his wife, Silda, as she stood there looking to be in such anguish?

"The Good Wife" does offer an answer of sorts. But while you can't blame any new fall series for embracing a high-visibility concept to try to cut through the premiere-week clutter, the irony is that the pilot only starts to click when you stop thinking of Margulies' character as a thinly veiled Silda Spitzer and start believing in her as Alicia Florrick. Happily, Margulies is more than enough of an actress to make that belief possible.

And once that happens, what you have is one of the most compelling female characters in prime time starting out on a journey that cuts straight to the heart of some of the most emotionally loaded issues in American life today - issues of gender, power, workplace identity, marital infidelity and economic survival.

As Peter Florrick goes to jail, Alicia heads back into the workplace as a very junior attorney. Their home has been sold to pay legal fees, and she is left with two teenage children to support.

The first leg of her journey back to work is brutal, with her barely able to crawl through a day let alone stand and compete for a permanent job.

In the end, here is what matters about this series and what I think will make it a success: It bores into gender-related feelings of anger and even rage about men betraying women, and women being forced to choose between work and home in ways that men are not.

Two scenes you will remember. One you have probably already seen in teaser clips: Alicia Florrick slapping her husband's face. The other is even more cathartic as Alicia refutes her husband's soothing words as to how everything will soon be "back to normal," by telling him in specific detail what her 14-year-old daughter saw him doing to a prostitute on an Internet video.

 Save your pretty lies and fantasy talk for someone else, Peter. Alicia doesn't live there any more.

Posted by David Zurawik at 8:56 AM | Permalink | Comments (20)
Categories: TV Review
        

Just when you thought network TV had given up making new expensive, serial dramas, along comes ABC's "FlashForward" tonight at 8. And it is as compelling a new series as you are going to see this fall.

It's smart, richly textured, complex and filled with suspense and intellectual challenge - in short, it has all the things network television is supposed to have abandoned in favor of cheap reality shows.

And you know what? I wouldn't be surprised if it is gone by March. "FlashForward" feels too much like the crop of a dozen richly textured, complex serial dramas with titles like "Vanished," "Kidnapped" and "The Nine" that debuted in the fall of 2006 and crashed and burned by midseason in one of the most expensive bonfires of network vanity in decades.

"FlashForward" even has the sociological mojo I so loved in many of those serialized dramas from the Class of 2006 that seemed to reflect and speak directly to the darkness, uncertainty and fear of our post- 9/11 national life.

Here's the premise and event at the core of the ABC series: At 11 a.m. on a sunny day in the fall of 2009, everyone on Earth blacks out for 2 minutes and 17 seconds. Of course, planes and cars crash, people die on operating tables, and there is a period of mass confusion. Think of the minutes and hours after the planes crashed into the World Trade Center towers, or the first few days after Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans.

In fact, there are street scenes clearly designed to evoke those shared memories and the sense of fear and panic.

Viewers experience the events and post-traumatic reaction through the eyes of a family of three in Los Angeles: FBI Agent Mark Benford ( Joseph Fiennes), his wife, Dr. Olivia Benford (Sonya Walger), and their preschool-age daughter, Charlie. Other key players are Mark Benford's partner, Demetri Noh (John Cho); their FBI boss, Stanford Wedeck (Courtney B. Vance); and Dr. Bryce Varley (Zachary Knighton), who works at the hospital with Olivia Benford.

When the blackout hits, Agents Benford and Noh are in the middle of a car chase in pursuit of suspected terrorists, while Dr. Benford is in the middle of surgery.

The mystery they face upon regaining consciousness centers on trying to figure out what happened - and explaining visions that almost everyone had while they were out. The visions all seem to involve a flash-forward to a day six months into the future - April 29, 2010.

Here's where the pilot starts getting post-apocalyptic spooky. After the blackout, Charlie announces to her baby sitter, "I dreamt there are no more good days."

Ah, the child with the dark vision - I think there were only three or four of them in the fall of 2006.

Both Dr. and Agent Benford have equally troubling visions. As for Agent Noh, he has none and wonders if it means he will be dead in six months. This is a not a happy show.

Still, for all the similarities to the serialized dramas from 2006, there is one wild-card factor that might help this series avoid their failure: the huge change in America in the last three years. Social reality today is much darker and far more uncertain than it was three years ago.

I think the fear of losing jobs, homes and any sense of optimism about the future has more Americans lying awake at night in 2009 than the fear of another terrorist attack did in 2006.

What I'm saying is that maybe those expensive, finely crafted serialized dramas were a bit ahead of the culture in 2006. And now, maybe we're ready to embrace the angst and darkness seeping through this American life. "FlashForward" is certainly steeped in both.

"FlashForward" airs at 8 p.m. (ET) Thursday on ABC.

Posted by David Zurawik at 8:39 AM | Permalink | Comments (21)
        

On the eve of the start of the National Football League season, I wrote a Page One story about how some economists and advertising agency executives were thinking that the recession might be a GOOD thing for NFL football on television this fall.

The thinking is that just as lavish Hollywood film productions soared at the box office during the Great Depression of the 1930s, televised National Football League games, which offer the same kind of escape, might be more attractive to viewers and advertisers than at any time in recent memory. In my notes when I was reporting the story, I labeled it "The NFL as MGM Musical Hypothesis."

"NFL football games on TV are filled with colorful pageantry and uplifting exuberance. And those are the very qualities that helped provide the 'escapism' of the MGM musicals of the 1930s," said Abe Novick, a former executive at the Euro RSCG global agency who now writes about advertising as pop culture at abenovick.com.

Well, the ratings are in for the first couple of weeks, and they are huge. Both the Sunday and Monday prime-time games are dominating all other programming, and I think we can drop the "might" from the sentence about the harsh economic times being good for the games. They have definitely been great.

The first two weeks of ESPN's Monday Night Footballl averaged 13 million viewers making it the most watched show of the year on cable TV. Remember this is cable where 3 million is a big audience. The nearest cable competition the last two weeks: "Hannah Montana" and "WWE Raw," (wrestling) each with about 5 million viewers.

Sunday night's game on NBC between the Dallas Cowboys and New York Giants, meanwhile, averaged 25 million viewers making it far and away the most watched program on all of television. In fact, it was the most watched since the finale of "American Idol" in May. And it was on opposite the Emmys telecast, which drew 13.3 million.

What about you? Are you or are members of your family watching and getting more engaged with TV football games this year? Do you think that's good thing -- or more evidence of America becoming a bread and circuses culture headed in the same direction as the republic for which that term was coined?

Posted by David Zurawik at 6:04 AM | Permalink | Comments (20)
        

Watching President Barack Obama Monday night on David Letterman, I couldn't help thinking: The TV thrill really is gone.

The excitement I felt seeing him the first time on a late night show with Jay Leno, for example, has been replaced by a sense lately that he is on TV everywhere all the time and saying the same thing over and over and over. One almost wonders if his senior staff shouldn't consider an intervention: No more TV for a while, Mr. President. Let's focus on this governing thing and stay off the tube. You're in danger of starting to feel like a rerun.

With all the appearances and less than inspired performances, it is almost as if the president has come to believe that if he just keeps showing up on TV over and over and over, his message will carry the day and he will regain control of the health care debate.

Monday night's stop on "Late Show with David Letterman" was only the latest example -- a replay of his five lackluster Sunday appearances.

(AP Photo/Charles Dharapak)

Letterman teed up beachball questions for the president and when the leader of the free world didn't spike one home, the talk show host would jump in with comments like, "I can't tell you how satisfying it is to watch you work."

But I had heard the points made on Letterman already sounded on several channels Sunday morning -- and in prime time the Sunday before that on "60 Minutes" when this latest TV blitz started.

The pattern has come to involve the interviewer saying how ugly political discourse has become, and then asking the president if he thinks the criticism of him might involve racism.

And the president gets to go high road saying, while one can never totally dismiss the possiblity of racism, that's not the deal for most Americans, as he sees it. After all, a majority did elect him.

As he explained it to Letterman: "I actually think that what’s happened is that whenever a president tries to bring about significant changes, particularly during times of economic unease, then there is a certain segment of the population that gets very riled up. ...FDR was called a socialist and a communist. JFK, there were all kinds of names hurled at him. Ronald Reagan, when he came into office, he was moving in a different direction and people were sure that he was bringing the country down. And so, this is not untypical. You know, one of the things you sign up for in politics is folks yell at you."

Nice job of linking himself to the FDR, JFK and Reagan. And nice company to be in. But he has hit that note before, and it is starting to sound too rehearsed.

Or maybe the president is just getting punchy from too many TV appearances. As Lynn Sweet pointed out in her Daily FLOTUS blog, the president mixed up the names of his daughter Malia and his half-sister Maya in his Sunday interview with CNN's John King. 

Small slip? Maybe.

But also maybe taping five interviews back to back in one day is too much TV and not enough time for a first-rate mind to recharge, focus and be at the top of its game -- at a time when the country desperately needs it to be.

Posted by David Zurawik at 1:40 AM | Permalink | Comments (40)
Categories: TV and Politics
        

It is getting harder and harder to figure out where the ads end and the TLC show "Jon & Kate Plus 8" now begins -- or resumes after commercial breaks anyway.

While the product placement on "Jon & Kate "often seemed excessive to me this season, Monday's show seemed especially problematic for the way the main story lines of the episode and the ads merged.

As soon as Kate said she was going to have "family game night" with the kids in Monday's episode, we went to commercial, and what was the commercial for? You guessed it: family game night.

Either TLC is shopping the show to advertisers, and telling them they can get their ads placed right at the point where the Gosselin family endorses the product, or worse, the producers and TLC are having the family engage in activities for products that are pre-sold. In order words, the ads are driving what the family does onscreen. Either way, tell me again what part of the entire 30 minutes is reality TV entertainment -- and not an ad.

And then, there was the chicken cacciatore that Kate cooked after buying organic vegetables from an Amish farmer, followed by an ad for Ragu as a way to get your kids to eat their vegetables.

I am not going to question the commitment to and love of organically grown vegetables that Kate espoused over and over during the first half of Monday's show. But I do see it as part of the "greening" of Kate by TLC. Remember when a contractor came and put in solar panels and all sorts of other energy saving "green" products in an episode that ran between the end of last season and the start of this one?

I have to say I didn't buy Kate's commitment to the environment one bit in that show, and if she really was into organically grown vegetables would she let the kids eat some of the junk snacks that she does?

Who knows? I spent the whole episode looking for the two dogs that have been sent back to the breeder.

I didn't see them. But they were rarely let out of their crates when Kate was running the house in the episodes that I saw.

 I'm sorry, I can't get past what happened to those dogs right now -- and to any of the kids who might have formed attachments to them.

Posted by David Zurawik at 9:42 PM | Permalink | Comments (95)
Categories: Reality TV
        

In an uncanny repeat of last year, the same two shows and three performers again took top honors at the "The 61st Primetime Emmy Awards" Sunday night.

"Mad Men" and "30 Rock" won as best drama and comedy, respectively, while Bryan Cranston, of AMC's "Breaking Bad," and Glenn Close, of FX's "Damages,"won as best actor and actress in a drama series. Alec Baldwin, of "30 Rock," repeated as best comedy actor. 

What are the odds?

But there was one new and big winner: the telecast.

The program began on a cool and swinging note with host Neil Patrick Harris singing a Las Vegas-style opening number. Striding onstage in a white tuxedo jacket, Harris instantly took control of the Nokia Theatre -- acting as if he had been hosting the show for years.  And he never let go of the throttle

No opening nerves with this Tony Awards show veteran, and as the evening wore on, several Emmy winners, ranging from comedian Jon Stewart to reality show host Jeff Probst, praised Harris for his work.

The first awards for "Mad Men" didn't come until 10:35 p.m., and it looked like it could be a long and unrewarding night for the celebrated drama. But with the Emmy as best drama, as well as one for best writing, The evening was a victorious for writer-producer Matt Weiner and his team.

While "30 Rock" creator and star Tina Fey, who won last year as best comedy actress, lost out to Toni Collette, of Showtime's "United States of Tara," Baldwin's win as best comedy actor helped make it another big night for the NBC sitcom.

The awards began with a bit of glamour and glitz and a nod to the nominations run up by the two series as Jon Hamm ("Mad Men") and Fey were the first presenters. they wound up handing out the award for best supporting actress to Kristin Chenoweth, of the cancelled ABC series "Pushing Daisies."

A tearful and somewhat disjointed Chenoweth thanked the academy for "giving an award to a show no longer on the air."

She also did a little advertising for herself, saying, "I'm unemployed now, so I'd like to be on 'Mad Men.' I also like 'The Office' and '24.'"

Best Comedy Performers

But it didn't take long for the first big surprise and upset of the night with Collette, winning as best actress in a comedy series. Fey was the hands-down favorite going into the telecast.

Fey's "30 Rock" soon struck back, though, with Baldwin's win. In his acceptance speech, Baldwin dedicated his award to executive producer Lorne Michaels.

In an effort to widen the field, the Emmys had increased the number of nominees in major categories this year, and there were seven for best drama and best comedy each. The change seemed to help network TV be more competitive with cable in the early going.

Coming into the night, Fey's stellar NBC sitcom 30 Rock led all shows and made history with a record 22 nominations.

It took the second award of the night, for Best Writing in Comedy, with the Emmy going to Matt Hubbard for the episode of "30 Rock" titled "Reunion."

Jon Cryer, of the CBS sitcom "Two And A Half Men," took the third award, for best supporting actor in a comedy series.

"Well, the night could have gone in two directions," Harris said when the show came back from a break after his loss to Cryer. "The host lost. ... It's going to go a little faster than expected."

But Harris did a great job of turning his defeat into a running gag with Cryer. They did a funny back-and-forth with Harris onstage and Cryer in the backstage interview room celebrating his victory.

Reality TV Winners

"Neil Patrick Harris, this is the way you host the Emmys -- nice job," Jeff Probst said as he accepted the award for best reality show host for his work on "Survivor." Probst was one of the five reality show hosts who were roundly panned for their performance as hosts at last year's Emmy telecast.

"Amazing Race," to no one's surprise, won as best reality series again.

"Unbelievable, guys -- upsets at every turn," Harris said drawing another big laugh.

NBC's "The Office" took the award for best comedy direction -- with the trophy going to Jeffrey Blitz. It looked like the networks might have a very good night in comedy -- a category many analysts had ceded to cable.

Movies and Miniseries: HBO and PBS 

Cable still dominated the nominations coming into the night, and started scoring big once the telecast got around to movie and minseries -- with HBO taking the first two.

Ken Howard won as best supporting actor in a movie or miniseries, and Shohreh Aghdashloo won as best supporting actress for "Grey Gardens" and "House of Saddam," respectively. 

Brendan Gleeson, of HBO's "Into the Storm," won as best actor in a movie or miniseries, while Jessica Lange, of HBO's "Grey Gardens," took home the Emmy as best actress in the movie and miniseries category.

Lange's acceptance speech was a classy one, saying half the award belonged to her co-star, Drew Barrymore, who was fantastic and was thought to be the favorite by many pundits.

"Grey Gardens" took one of the most coveted awards  of the evening winning for best movie -- a category packed from top to bottom.

PBS cut into a major sweep by HBO with three prestigious awards for "Little Dorrit" -- for best miniseries, as well as for best writing and direction in a miniseries. The production beat out  HBO's "Generation Kill" in two of those categories.

HBO led the field coming into the telecast with a total of 99 nominations, while NBC was second with 67.

Best Variety, Music or Comedy Series

"The Daily Show With Jon Stewart" won another of the industry's most highly prized trophies when it took the Emmy as variety, music or comedy series beating out tough competition from "Late Show With David Letterman" "the Colbert Report" and "Saturday Night Live."

Stewart's show also won for best writing in the catregory.

In accepting the best show award, Stewart also praised Harris for the job he was doing as host.

"Neil Patrick Harris, you're doing a wonderful job... You're tremendous. These shows, they usually suck -- let's be honest."

This category far and away had the best clips of the evening.

One of the telecast's most touching moments came with Sarah McLachlan singing "I Will Remember You" as a montage played behind her of performers who had died this year.

Best Drama Performers

The networks started strong in the drama category, taking both the supporting actor and actress awards for Micahel Emerson, of "Lost," and Cherry Jones, of "24."

The big prizes for best dramatic actress and actor went to Glenn Close, of FX series "Damages," and Bryan Cranston, of AMC's "Breaking Bad." It was the second win in a row for both of them. Close called her role, "probably, maybe the character of a lifetime."

Matthew Weiner and Kater Gordon, of "Mad Men," won in the best writing for a drama category. But it was the show's first Emmy and didn't come until 10:35 p.m. -- and this for one of the most nominated shows of the year with 16.

Posted by David Zurawik at 7:43 PM | Permalink | Comments (12)
        

There he goes again, President Barack Obama playing media critic, -- and for all his many skills, media analysis is not one of them. But he can't seem to leave it alone. In that sense, he's getting less like JFK and more like LBJ and Richard Nixon every day. Not a good direction in which to be heading.

The latest complaints about the media came during the whirlwind of five Sunday morning talkshow interviews that were really recorded, as probably everyone knows, on Friday.

While President Obama has been complaining and blaming cable news for the toxic turn in our public discourse for months, he extended the criticism to bloggers in the cycle of interviews that aired Sunday.

Here's what he said on "Face the Nation," the CBS News Sunday morning show: "I do think part of what's different today is that the 24-hour news cycle and cable television and blogs and all this -- they focus on the most extreme elements on both sides. They can't get enough of conflict, it's catnip to the media right now. And so the easiest way to get 15 minutes of fame is to be rude to somebody. In that environment, I think it makes it more difficult for us to solve the problems that the American people sent us here to solve."
(Screen grab courtesy of CNN's State of the Union)

I am struck by two things about that statement. First. the George-W.-Bush-like lack of precision ("and all this"). Second, by what a broad-ranging indictiment of all media it could actually be read to be. I'll limit it to bloggers. But the message from the president is clear: The American people and the administration are all right, it is the media that are causing the turmoil in the country with their interest in conflict.

One fast counterpoint: The media have always been keenly interested in conflict -- that is a crucial part of our mandate in a free society. And it often serves democracy very well -- as when network TV went into the South in the early 1960s and reported the civil rights related "conflict" there, informing millions of citizens of voting and human rights abuses. And from the correspondents of that era whom I interviewed, not one of them thought of it as "catnip." It was scary, depressing and physically dangerous assignment.

As to a model for how a president should be respectfully but responsibly be interviewed, I would suggest going online to see the interview John King did on CNN's "State of the Union." I was so glad to finally hear a mainstream interviewer from a Washington-based show challenge the "recession is over" talk coming from Team Obama in recent days. King challenged it by pointing to the stark, harsh frightening reality of millions of middleclass families suddenly losing the income of their primary breadwinner -- or going to bed every night worrying if they will be next.

I believe King has a sense of the mood of the country that some other Sunday morning TV shows lack because since the start of "State of the Union" he has been on the road every week talking to citizens across the country. He is hearing about their hard times and fear of worse days to come -- as opposed to hearing only the rosy rhetoric from the White House.

One last thing about King, I loved the fact that he didn't try to have some kind of schmoozy, feel-good moment with the president. He kept it professional and businesslike -- as did George Stephanopoulos on ABC, who did a very focused and hard-nosed interview with the president. To his credit, Stephanopoulos cut the President Obama no slack, and you could feel the tension mount as the ABC interviewer kept firm control of the conversation.

David Gregory, on NBC's "Meet the Press," on the other hand, closed by trying to talk baseball with the president. Of course, the president obliged. It is easier to quip about harmless stuff than answer hard questions.

The press should not try to be let's-catch-a-game-together-Washington-buddies with the president. The founders really did try to set up a bit of an adverserial relationship between the press and government.

We should be civil and respectful, as King was, but when you only have 15 minutes as these interviewers did, let's drop the kiss-kiss questions and do our job on behalf of the people out in the country who are hurting -- not the ones in Washington who are still mainly doing just fine.

Posted by David Zurawik at 7:09 PM | Permalink | Comments (16)
        

OK, after seeing Kate Gosselin serve as a guest host on episodes of "The View" this week, is there anyone out there who really believes she is ready to host or co-host her own show -- as Kate apparently believes she is.

Forget the pairing of her and Kathy Griffin on Friday's show. Griffin had mocked Kate on Jimmy Kimmel's show, and the producers of "The View" put them together Friday to see what would happen. The answer: not much. Kate did not confront Griffin on the parody.

But five minutes into Tuesday's excellent edition of "The View," I knew Kate was not going to be successful as a talk show host. Because of all the magazine covers and online chatter, I  admit that I had even started to think of Kate Gosselin as some kind of star -- or at least star-size persona. But seeing her sitting next to women of serious accomplishments like Whoopi Goldberg and Barbara Walters Tuesday, was to see her shrink almost from sight. 

Simply put, Kate had nothing to offer. Compared to them, she was intellectually and verbally slow -- instead of projecting through the screen and into your home, she seemed to recede into herself. It was a terrible choice by Kate and her handlers to put her side by side with such talents -- the interface was deadly.

Despite the pairing with Griffin, I think the producers of "The View" tried to be kind to Kate. Did you notice that when they used her to go to a break, instead of having her "tease" to the next segment after the upcoming commercial break, they simply had her hold the microphone while an audience member voiced the "when-we-come-back" lines. If an amateur flubbed the words, so what? If Kate flubbed it, the result would be embarrassing. They spared her such a moment.

Kate has another problem that would be fatal to a career in daytime TV: Her basic on-camera persona is not a friendly one. Joy Behar's isn't either, you might say. But Behar is one of four or five co-hosts, and her job is to be fast, funny and sometimes snarky. If you are playing the "mom" co-host that Kate says she wants to be, you better exude warmth. And I don't know anyone who thinks of Kate and warmth in the same breath.

So, if the online reports about Kate being in negotiations with Telepictures to co-host a daytime show are true, I bet the executives at the production company are having second and third thoughts now. "Jon & Kate" is surely coming to en end, but I don't think Kate Gosselin's next life is going to be as a TV host.

What do you think?

There was an an animated discusson when the ladies of "The View" asked Kate about an In Touch magazine story about another woman who said she had sex with Kate's ex-husband, Jon. Turns out it was the same babysitter who Kate got so upset about being at the house that police had to be called. But that was mainly 

Posted by David Zurawik at 1:45 PM | Permalink | Comments (190)
        

One of the reasons we started this blog a year ago was a sense I had that the political press didn't appreciate what a huge role TV was playing in the presidential campaign particularly when it came to then candidate Barack Obama.

The consensus in the summer of 2008 was that he was the first great candidate for the Internet Age. Nice ring to that -- and he was using new media wisely. But I wrote a newspaper column saying no, he's not the first great candidate for the Age of the Internet, he's the last great TV candidate. Start with John Kennedy, go straight to Ronald Reagan, and then comes Barack Obama.

I also have been arguing loudly and often in print, online and on-air since January that the press needs to pay more attention to how President Obama is using TV to push his agenda. And saying, "Gee whiz, isn't he great," which is the level at which most critique sadly still resides, won't get it. We need to systematically analyze the way he is using the medium to drive this country toward monumental change not seen since the New Deal -- for better or worse, you decide.

So, instead of chuckling and shaking our heads in admiration and maybe even amazement at his marathon sweep of the morning shows on Sunday and unprecedented sitdown with David Letterman Monday, let's try to do our jobs as critics.

Let's try to analyze how he controls some conversations as he did last Sunday with Steve Kroft on "60 Minutes." I wrote about that last week -- the way in which he set himself up as the model of civility, and Kroft not only didn't question him, he helped him in that claim.

I can't tell you how surprised I was Monday morning to hear a voicemail from a longtime CBS News division employee who I have worked and liked for years suggesting that there was something peculiar about me analyzing the president's TV performances on "60 Minutes" so closely as I had in a post I put up Sunday night. I was the only critic so interested, he said, as if I should be worried about that. 

In thanking him for his email, I told him I didn't think I was the only critic, but if I was, that was OK, too, The one way I have come to know during the past 25 years that I am often on the right track is when I am NOT running with the pack of TV critics. In fact, TV and media criticism are never worse than when they are practiced as a pack activity. By the way in another post on Sept. 10 announcing President Obama's return to the "friendly confines" of "60 Minutes," I wondered in print if this could "be the start of another media blitz." I didn't know the half of it.

So, let pay attention to how President Obama tries to control the conversations and which of the interviewers let him -- or do not let him.

And let's ask if it is fair to exclude the Fox New Channel from the interview circuit.

Maybe, the president doesn't need to sit down with the prime-time howlers on Fox like Sean Hannity, but what's wrong with Fox's lead anchor, Shephard Smith? Maybe the president should look at the video on YouTube of Smith tearing Joe the Plumber apart last fall when the fool said on-air that a "vote for Obama is a vote for the death of Isreal."

And as critics, again, let's try to systematically deconstruct the elegantly cool TV persona of President Obama so that we can understand how it is being used as a tool of political persuasion.

As I said in a post months ago, it is going to be too late when someone publishes a book two years from now explaining how TV was used to tranform the nation. We have to do it now while the tranformation is taking place on the flat screen in our living rooms. (And don't worry about the book. I'm working on that front.)

I'll be there Sunday and Monday watching. Will you?

Posted by David Zurawik at 6:14 AM | Permalink | Comments (15)
Categories: TV and Politics
        

From the looks of Oprah Winfrey's Monday lineup, she appears to be betting that AMC's "Mad Men" is going to be the big winner again at Sunday nightr's Emmy Awards telecast on CBS.

Oprah is going totally 1960s Monday including a dress designed for her by Janie Bryant, the Emmy-Award-winning costume designer of the cable drama. (click below to see the dress)

Her guests on Monday will be Jon Hamm and January Jones who play Don and Bettty Draper, the couple at the center of the drama. He's a Madison Avenue ad agency executive with a troubled sense of identity, and she's a pregnant mother of two in Connecticut with some real feelings of discontent.

The music will be from the 1960s, and the audience will be encouraged to come in '60s garb, according to AMC.

It sounds like fun. But what if "Mad Men" has a really bad night at the Emmys? It has happened to great shows before.

Well, there is always the Janie Bryant dress.

Posted by David Zurawik at 9:13 AM | Permalink | Comments (7)
        

The fact that I had an entire chapter on "Seinfeld" and had already published some of the research in a Ph.D. dissertation at the University of Maryland, College Park, his alma mater, didn't help a bit in my requests for an interview.

So, this week, when I had the chance to join a conference call with him in connection with Sunday's debut of the seventh season of "Curb," I thought what the heck. I liked the three episodes sent to critics a lot, including the one with the "Seinfeld" reunion, and I got a chance to ask him about Jews on TV. And he gave me what I think is the most honest answer he's yet given on the topic.

"Honest" is tricky word when it comes to a Larry David interview. The questioner before me asked David "how much of [the real] Larry David we're really seeing on the show." And David replied, "I've always said my personality is a lot truer on the show than it is in life. So, to me, you're really seeing my personality [on the show]. What you're getting now [in the teleconference], and what most people get daily, is a dishonest human being." And then it was my turn and I asked him to talk about how his "depiction of Jewish identity" has changed from what he was doing with "Seinfeld" to today on "Curb."

As my book points out, NBC executives thought the first draft of "Seinfeld" was "too Jewish" and that vibe was muted as the series was shaped into becoming a mass audience hit. On "Curb," David seems not at all restrained when it comes to dealing with such subject matter -- sometimes upsetting Jewish viewers with his humor. "I've never given that a moment's thought, honest to God," he said.

"What we're dealing with in terms of anything Jewish on the show, my thinking on the matter hasn't changed since I started doing 'Seinfeld.' If it's something I can use comedically, I will if I think it's funny." Even though I didn't believe him, I said "thanks," thinking that was it. I took my shot -- nothing. Move on. But after a pause, he started back in on it with, "And the more people I can offend the better," he said. That's better, I thought, and I jokingly said to him, "That sounds less like the lying person we have been talking to."

I said it in a nice way and meant to use his word "dishonest," but there you go. I was just trying to confirm my impression. "Yeah, that's true," he replied in what sounded like a friendly voice to me. And then as the HBO publicist started to welcome another reporter who had just joined the teleconference, David came back on the line with, "I would say this: The difference is that on 'Seinfeld,' you did have a lot of people watching who did get offended by many of the things that we did, because it was a network show. But the people who are watching 'Curb Your Enthusiasm' on HBO,' they're paying to watch this.

You know, they want to see this kind of thing." I am grateful to David for answering the question. I think it is an important one especially for those concerned with Jewish identity on television. But, of course, it extends beyond that to the difference between comedy on network and comedy on cable -- particularly pay cable like HBO. And it is one great explanation as to how you are missing some of the best of American popular culture if you don't have access to the channels where the medium's most talented writers and producers like David have the freedom to create without feeling constrained.

Posted by David Zurawik at 7:49 AM | Permalink | Comments (11)
Categories: HBO
        

While it was nice to see some images of Baltimore on national TV that were not all guns, drugs and homicide victims, I have to be honest: "Shaq Vs.," the reality sports show that featured basketball star Shaquille O'Neal swimming against Michael Phelps Tuesday night on ABC, pretty much defined the downsizing of network TV.

Let's be honest, if we are going to complain about Jay Leno's new show on NBC as the cheapening of prime time, what can you say about this production?

Try this: In terms of concept, execution and production, it should have been shown on a regional sports network on a Sunday afternoon when there were no big games -- not network TV in prime time. At least, not on network TV as we used to know it. Maybe this is the on-the-cheap future of network TV. If so, get me the next tier of cable -- and let's add another satellite dish, too, so I can pick up TV Rumania.

I thought Phelps did fine. He seemed like a good sport just having some fun. Shaq was OK, too. I have to admit he was a better swimmer than I expected.

But the announcer who screamed about what  "spectacular" and "incredible" races we were seeing was too much to bear. Did he use the word "epic" to describe any of the silly and confusing competitive events they set up to try and offset Phelps' edge? Mercifully, I forget.

And the woman from the show who did the interviews with Shaq and Phelps, yikes. I have never seen an interviewer get that close to an interviewee in my life. I don't know if she wanted to be close to them or certain she got as much of herself in the shot as possible, but as the cable TV news interviewers say, "Let's leave it right there."

I am sure local viewers will find things they liked about Tuesday night's show. Let's talk about it.

Posted by David Zurawik at 6:35 AM | Permalink | Comments (17)
        

I tuned into "The View" Tuesday to see Kate Gosselin as guest host, and I quickly realized she had nothing to offer in this role. But I left an hour later dazzled by what an outstanding off-the-news, pop-culture production this show has become with Barbara Walters and Whoopi Goldberg leading the way.

What a fine hour of daytime TV -- despite Kate, who was way out of her league next to women of genuine accomplishments.

The show opened with Goldberg and Walters remembering Patrick Swayze, who died Monday of pancreatic cancer at age 57.

Goldberg, who seemed genuinely moved by his death, said she got the role in the feature film "Ghost" because of Swayze: "I got that movie because of Patrick Swayze, and because of him I have an Oscar."

And then, they showed a portion of the last intervew Swayze did. It took place in January and Walters was the interviewer. My lord, she is good when she is on her game. She asked him about "Ghost" and the line he says in the movie to the character playing his wife: "It's amazing, Molly. The love inside you -- you take it with you."

It is a brilliant, on-the-money question that brought a touching and poignant answer from a man facing his own death with his real-life loving wife sitting by his side. The studio audience was as hushed as it might have been a funeral mass.

After a break, Barbara questioned Kate Gosselin a little, asking why she wears the wedding ring and if she took fertility drugs after having twins. She also asked her about Jon saying he "despised" Kate. But, believe me, for Barbara Walters, this was pulling punches, because she didn't follow up on any of Kate's thin and tired answers about doing it all for the children and being a "high-road taker." In this company, the answers sounded weaker than ever.

The finale was a knockout: Taylor Swift explaining how she felt when Kanye West crudely took the microphone from her at the MTV awards Sunday and said Beyonce should have won the award Swift was onstage to receive.

Talk about timely. And, my oh my, did the ladies of "The View" ever give Taylor Swift the love.

Walters praised her for showing a "lot of character and a lot of poise." She also asked a brilliant question. After showing video of West on Jay Leno's show Monday night saying how sorry he was and how much he wanted to personally apologize to Swift, Walters asked if West had actually reached out to the country-pop singer via an e-mail, phone call or through representatives.

When Swift said no, you could hear gasps. Goldberg, in the voice of a petrurbed schoolmistress, wondered aloud if West might be making that call shortly after he heard about Swift's appearance on "The View." If ever West needed an intimation of how bad it could get for him with the Hollywood establishment for what he did to Swift, it was right there in Goldberg's voice. It made me shiver.

And then Swift sang -- two songs.

I hate to say it, but Tuesday's "The View" was a heckuva lot better than Jay Leno's Monday night premiere. Maybe ABC wants to open up its own 10 p.m. timeslot.

Posted by David Zurawik at 12:58 PM | Permalink | Comments (23)
        

So, Jon and Kate Gosselin feel great pain each time they have to leave their children because of their legal separation. Kate says viewers have no idea how hard it is. Jon says it is so "stressful."

I didn't have time to write about America's most discussed and dissed TV family Monday night, because I had to review the new Jay Leno show. But I did see it, and the overall theme of Jon and Kate feeling the pain of single parenting only felt more outrageous after I had some time to think about it.

Too bad if they feel sad. How do you think the children feel each time they see a parent leaving at the end of their temporary stay -- and the level of parental support drops by at least half? And who is responsible for them having to leave -- Jon to his Manhattan condo and Kate to her mysterious "elsewhere," which some folks still think is a condo in Maryland despite Kate and the unnamed "source" who say it isn't?

I really was put off by the producers trying to play on viewer sympathy for Jon and Kate Monday and ignoring the kids' feelings. I would hate to think how heart-breaking it would be if the kids' could articulate and we could hear their feelings about what's happening in this family.

But that's all right if the kids are sad, isn't it? We shouldn't feel so bad about it that we don't watch.

After all, they have tents and lanterns and cowboy outfits and popcorn machines -- the best TLC money can buy (or the cable channel can take in tradeout for product placement). Oh, and they can call their dad up and ask him where he is and what he's doing. And as Jon said Monday night, "And I'm like, 'I'm walking on Broadway' ...."

And do you think they might be wishing you were there with them in Pennsylvania, Jon, instead of walking on Broadway? 

But let's all feel sorry for Jon and Kate -- because they are not each already self-absorbed enough.

Posted by David Zurawik at 9:20 AM | Permalink | Comments (76)
        

You have to hand it to Jay Leno, he certainly had a power-packed premiere for his new prime-time show Monday.

Beyond the announced first guest of Jerry Seinfeld, there was a surprise appearance by Oprah via remote video screen. And then in the big moment, came Kanye West, hot or cold, depending on your point of view, off his controversial MTV Video Music Awards show debacle in which he boorishly interrupted Taylor Swift's acceptance speech Sunday night.

Everyone was talking about it Monday, and here comes an emotional, seemingly contrite and somewhat confused West to sit down with Leno and say how sorry he was for what he did and how he needed to "take some time off" and figure out "how he wants to live" the rest of the life in the wake of the "pain" he caused.

West was a scheduled guest, but even Leno said on-air that he wasn't sure whether or not the performer would appear after the criticism he was facing for his MTV actions.

And West did seem rocked by the scorn that had been heaped upon him the last 24 hours. Whether he was authentic or not, it was very good television -- you could almost feel the audience hold its breath as West fumbled with his emotions, especially when Leno asked him what his late mother would have thought of his MTV awards show behavior. The segment crackled with energy -- enough to make you forget most of the sins that preceded it. And there were sins to try and foget.

And while there were sins to forgive and forget, here's is the bottom line: You would have to work on it not to have a decent hour of TV with Seinfeld, Oprah, West, Rihanna and Jay-Z -- especially with West being at the very center of pop consciousness in the wake of his incredibly rude and even cruel actions toward Swift.

But frontloaded to high heaven or not, it was still a solid premiere.

Now, that bad news: None of the standard building blocks of the show seemed that impressive on their own -- so that when you tried to imagine the show without an overload of starpower and star-drama, it didn't seem that exciting.

The videos used after the opening monologue were uninspired. One featuring Leno going to a "Cheaters" reality show to see if bandleader Kevin Eubanks was "cheating" on him was lame to the point of being offensive. And for an opening night, Leno's monologue was nothing to get excited about. And maybe it's just 50 years of looking at TV couches, but I hate the two blue chairs in which Leno and his guest sit. Even Seinfeld seemed like he couldn't get comfortable.

The funniest comedy bit involved some clever editing of Steve Kroft's interview with President Barack Obama on "60 Minutes" Sunday so that it looked like Leno was the one doing the interviewing. The president's remarks were sliced and diced so that he seemed to be answering silly questions from Leno -- like the beer commercials with former football coaches. Hey, I'm just saying "clever" by the sinking standards of prime-time network TV these days, OK?

All of which begs the question of what Leno's show will look and feel like when he starts booking lower level guests and there are days when there is not much news to play off.

Leno's new show won't be as hot as it was Monday night, that's for sure. But then, performers like West don't make major fools of themselves on global TV every night -- and then come on your show 24 hours later looking dazed and confused and desperately seeming to seek forgiveness.

Posted by David Zurawik at 10:56 PM | Permalink | Comments (26)
        

Smith says, "I feel incredibly lucky to be doing what I love for the past ten years and am very proud of my staff and colleagues for their hard work and dedication in making The Fox Report the number one newscast on cable."

Posted by David Zurawik at 7:04 PM | Permalink | Comments (8)
Categories: Fox News
        

Caught in  a harsh economy that is that taking a stiff toll on public broadcasters across the country, Maryland Public Television (MPT) Monday laid off 18 employees -- about 10 percent of the  work force.

Two senior managers are among those laid off, including one senior vice president for content. Calls to MPT were not returned Monday afternoon.

"The staff reductions at MPT, while extremely painful, will result in no loss of programming and no on-air talent will be affected," Robert J. Shuman, president of MPT said in a statement. "We realize that there will an end to the current fiscal crisis we and our sister stations are facing at some time in the future. But for now, we have been forced to make a difficult decision that I'm sorry to say impacts the most important resources Maryland Public Television has -- it's people."

One of the manager who laid off was Mike Golden, managing director of corporate communications. Golden recently helped the station develop a widely praised documentary of former Baltimore mayor and Maryland governor William Donald Schaefer, for whom he once worked as press secretary.

"I know there was nothing personal behind this decision, it was just basic economics," Golden said in a phone interview Monday. "The station is not getting the kind of revenue it needs to sustain the level of employment that it had. It's as simple as that."

The other senior manager who was laid off is Eric Eggleton, senior vice president for content. Eggleton could not be reached for comment. Eggleton joined the station in 1999. 

Unlike many public broadcasting outlets that are attached to educational institutions or run by community groups, MPT's license is held by the state. As result, one-third of its funding, $10 million, comes from the State of Maryland, which has recently announced its own cost-cutting moves and furloughs to try and meet its budget shortfalls.

"Prior to resorting to staff reductions, station officials scrutinized the MPT budget, cut non-essential expenses and froze salaries for FY10 (Fiscal Year 2010) to avoid a shortfall," MPT's statement said. "Additionally, MPT employees will be furloughed in accordance with the state's recently enacted furlough plan."

But, like other public brodcasters, MPT's woes run deeper than just a cutback in state funds.

"Each year MPT gets two-thirds of its budget through individual membership and corporate/institutional support while receiving one-third of its support from the State of Maryland," MPT's statement says. "The decision to pare its staff comes at a time when MPT faces the same challenges as other public broadcasters: reduced state appropriations coupled with a significant drop in underwriting, foundation support and individual donations."

Most public broadcasters made their cuts in June at the end of the fiscal year. And they were widespread extending from the top at PBS down to small stations across the country.

MPT seemed to be using the same playbook in making Monday's cuts as the one employed by WHYY in Philadelhia when it cut 17 staffers, 8 percent, of its work force. from its radio and TV operations in June.

MPT has been feeling the dollar squeeze since last fall when the economy went into free fall.

"We've dodged the bullet [on layoffs at MPT] for quite some time," said Golden, a 20-year state employee. "It was only a matter of time before somebody would have to pull the trigger. And the time has arrived. State revenues are drying up. Corporate underwriting is down, and membership dollars are down. You don't have to be a genius to figure out something's got to give."

Posted by David Zurawik at 2:26 PM | Permalink | Comments (16)
Categories: Baltimore Television
        

The networks' new fall season doesn't officially start until Sept. 21, but the only story line that really matters begins Monday night with the debut of Jay Leno's new prime-time 10 p.m. nightly show on NBC. 

There are fewer new shows this fall than at any time in the last three dedades, and only a handful of them are likely to still be on the air by midseason.

So, forget that old-fashioned notion of fall network TV, and focus on the "Jay Leno Show." His new prime-time show represents the downsizing of network television. If it works, all the networks will move to making even cheaper TV than the reality fare that dominates the airwaves. If it bombs, there will be a major shakeup in senior management at NBC.

The network's affiliates, like WBAL (Channel 11) in Baltimore, are holding their breath hoping Leno can at least provide a respectable lead-in to their late newscasts, the prime driver of local revenue.

You get the idea, it's a big story for a bunch of possible train-wreck reasons -- from making network TV even cheesier than it has already become, to watching network managers thrown overboard if an already listing NBC sinks any deeper in ratings and earnings.

We have been writing about the Leno move for months. In May, I wrote a Page One story for the "Sun" as Leno ended his 17-year run in late-night TV as host of The Tonight Show.

Here is some of what I wrote about the action that starts Monday night:

In one of the biggest shifts since the networks embraced reality TV, NBC will upend the prime-time landscape by replacing its expensive 10 p.m. dramas with a new show for Leno.

The potential fallout to the 11 p.m. newscasts of NBC affiliates like WBAL is enormous.

"This is a big experiment by NBC and a huge roll of the dice for their affiliates in cities like Baltimore," said Douglas Gomery, a media economist at the University of Maryland.

Gomery pointed to Oprah Winfrey's powerful lead-in effect on early newscasts across the country as evidence for how important a 10 o'clock network show can be to the fortunes of an 11 o'clock local newscast.

"We're talking about tens of millions of dollars in local station revenue," Gomery said. "And NBC is seriously messing with that. I tell you, I'd be worried if I ran an NBC station."

Some of the affiliates are very worried, but publicly they are all trying to put a good face on things hoping for the best.

One programming executive of a large chain of stations that includes several NBC affiliates told me, "Is this a smart move? For NBC, probably -- they will be saving tens of millions in programming costs by not producing dramas during that 10 o'clock hour five nights a week. But as for our NBC affiliates, we're on our own when it comes to our 11 p.m. newscasts -- don't count on any help from the network there."

And some of the heaviest hitters in the business are going to do everything they can to take advantage of the void at 10.

Calling Leno's move to 10 p.m. "a real sea change," Leslie Moonves, chief executive and president of CBS Corp., announced his fall lineup by saying, "There will be more [audience] share available for the people who put on great dramas" at 10 p.m. weeknights."

And the CBS fall schedule that Moonves' programmers will launch next week is all about pounding Leno and NBC at 10 p.m. with such shows as The Mentalist, the highest-rated new drama on TV, on Thursday nights and "The Good Wife," the highly anticipated new Julianna Margulies drama, on Tuesdays.

We won't know the answer on Leno for at least several weeks.

This week, he will be front-loaded with talent and up against fairly weak competition. Next week, there will be sampling and general schedule disruption with the debut of new series. 

But by week three or four, a ratings pattern should emerge -- and those numbers might just comprise the new calculus of prime-time network television.

(I'll post a review Monday night after the premiere of Leno's new show.)

Posted by David Zurawik at 5:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (12)
        

President Barack Obama returned to the friendly confines of "60 Minutes" Sunday night, and while Steve Kroft asked some sound questions, he also let the president control the conversation, especially at the end.

I told myself, I was not going to write about the interview. I have written about Kroft and Obama together a lot, and while I praised Kroft and "60 Minutes" for the Obama interviews at first, I now think they are walking up to the line at which the broadcast is letting itself be used for political purposes.

At the end of last night's conversation, the president decided to play media critic again and use 24-hour cable news channels as the foil for making himself look like the would-be champion of civility. Kroft set the president up on this theme, and then let him run straight into the end zone untouched -- where the interview ended.

Here is the bite I am talking about at the end:

PRESIDENT OBAMA: I will also say that in the era of 24-hour cable news cycles that the loudest, shrillest voices get the most attention. And so, one of the-- things I'm trying to figure out is, you know, -- how-- how can we make sure that-- civility is interesting. (LAUGHTER) And-- and-- and that-- you know, hopefully, I will be a-- good model for the fact that, you know-- you don't have to yell and holler-- to-- to make your point, and to be passionate about your position.

STEVE KROFT: So, your goal to bring civility back to Washington is still a work in progress?

PRESIDENT OBAMA: It's still a work in progress. No doubt about it.

Instead of ending the interview there with big smiles between the two as "60 Minutes" did, I would suggest that perhaps Kroft should have respectfully asked the president if he thought using the adverb "stupidly" at a press conference to describe the behavior of the Cambridge (Mass.) police officer who took Harvard University Professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. into custody was a good example of civility -- particularly since the president acknowledged not having all the facts in the case at the time.

I ask commenters on this blog not to call other commenters or their words stupid because I think it is the antithesis of civility.

Kroft could have pointed out that the president often is a good role model of civility. But the question about him using the word "stupidly" to describe the actions of a police officer should have been asked rather than letting the president use one of the largest forums in American life, "60 Minutes," to set himself up as the model of civility without any questions asked.

I wonder how the president would have responded. I wonder if it might not even have been what folks in Washington like to call a "teaching moment."

We won't move toward a more civil society until we acknowledge that we are all part of the problem. And it is point-the-finger-politician-too-simplistic-scapegoat-talk to blame it all on 24-hour cable TV news channels.

Posted by David Zurawik at 9:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (62)
        

Amid all the conflicting reports on cable TV and the Internet as to whether or not the filmmakers who secretly taped two ACORN employees in Baltimore violated any law, let me add one historical fact that might bring a bit of clarity and context to the discusssion.

The Baltimore State's Attorney's office has brought felony charges in the past for what was alleged to be essentially the same act as that committed by James O'Keefe and Hannah Giles, the two who did the secret taping at ACORN.

And one of the five persons whom the state's attorney's office charged in the past was John Stossel, the TV news journalist who this week made headlines for another reason by leaving ABC News to join the Fox News Channel.

I know this because I was one of two journalists who was believed to have heard Stossel allegedly admit that ABC News had violated the secret taping statute and was subpoened to testify at the trial. The case was reported in the "New York Times."

Throughout this short holiday week, I was locked into other print stories for the paper on tight deadlines, so I hadn't been able to focus on the ACORN hidden camera story. But when I finally got a chance to dig into this one late Friday, I have to admit that I was surprised that the Stossel case had not come to light during the last three days of online heat as the videotape shot by O'Keefe and Giles played on the Fox News Channel and across the Internet.

The two had posed as a pimp and prostitute seeking advice from ACORN employees in Baltimore on how to dodge tax and other laws. Their hidden-camera video tape shows that encounter with the two employees who do not appear to know they are being taped. You can read excellent "Sun" reports about the matter from Friday and Saturday here and here.

The Stossel case happened in 1996, when, according to the charges filed, an ABC News producer, Deborah Stone,  who worked with Stossel visited a Baltimore medical doctor posing as a patient who might be suffering from "multiple chemical sensitivity," one of the specialties of the medical provider, Dr. Grace Ziem. Stone was accompanied by her sister-in-law, who also posed as a patient.

According to the "Times" account of the charges, which you can read here, Dr. Ziem "suspected they were 'fake patients,' but "was not aware that she was being recorded" at the time.

(I am using the "Times" account, because once I was subpoened, I was no longer reporting the story and was advised to talk only to the attorney whom the "Sun" provided. A bit of small-world trivia: The "Times" story is reported by Bill Carter who I was hired to replace as TV critic in 1989 when he left for the "Times.")

According to the "Times," Dr. Ziem was subsequently approached by Stossel about being interviewed for a show about "debates in medicine." She agreed, but became suspicious after "being tipped off by a colleague that Mr. Stossel has said he was doing a special on 'junk science'..."

Dr. Ziem agreed to be meet Stossel in a Baltimore hotel, but instead of a willing interview subject, what Stossel and his crew found was an assistant of Dr. Ziem's and two reporters he had contacted to witness what Stossel was up to. It was intended to be a reverse sting, if you will. The other reporter was Fern Shen, then of the "Washington Post."

Long story short, the case hung on what Stossel and his producer are alleged to have said to me and Shen when he and his producer came out of the hotel room after he realized what Dr. Ziem's assistant was doing.

Here is how the "Times" reported it: "Mr. Stossel... and Ms. Stone spoke outside the room with two reporters. It was in this conversation, Dr. Ziem charged,  that Mr. Stossel and Ms. Stone said they had recorded Dr. Ziem's consultation with the two women."

I do not know anything about the dealings Shen and "Post" had with the State's Attorney's office, but I was advised that the conversation outside that room with Stone and Stossel was protected under Shield Law, a crucial and hard-won journalistic protection absolutely essential if the press is going to be free to operate without government control. You don't waive that lightly. As a result, my attorney and I both advised the State's Attorney's office that I would not be testifying about that conversation despite the subpoena.

As you can see from this post, I so value the principle behind Shield Laws that I still feel the conversation with Stone and Stossel should be protected -- almost 13 years later.

A preliminary hearing and a trial date were set in the case, but it was dropped before coming to trial.

For the record, the "Times" account quotes an ABC News spokeswoman calling the charges against Stossel and four other ABC employees "totally baseless," insisting, "No recording and tapes were made."

So, unless the law has changed (and I have found no evidence of that), there is clear precedent for the Baltimore State's Attorney's office in charging these two filmmakers, if a complaint is filed,  with a felony that carries a maximum sentence of five years.

And this time, Baltimore State's Attorney Patricia A. Jessamy's office won't have a case based on at least one journalist who won't testify and a network that says videotaping never took place. From what I've seen online, O'Keefe and Giles are saying openly that they secretly taped the ACORN employees in Baltimore with hidden cameras.

Going back through this unpleasant experience of declining to testify and being told I could be jailed for it isn't the way I had planned to start my weekend after four days of nasty deadlines. But I was there in 1996, and it felt like my number was being called to recount this bit of Baltimore media and legal history -- as cable TV pundits and Internet analysts mostly add to the confusion in these ahistorical times of whether or not a crime was committed by the fimmakers with their ACORN taping.

Posted by David Zurawik at 12:50 PM | Permalink | Comments (85)
Categories: Fox News
        

Are you using TV to remember 9/11 today?

Readers of this blog know I believe that TV plays a huge role when it comes to shared memory and national remembrance. Evocative video images can instantly transport us emotionally back to such moments of history.

So, I am wondering how folks are using TV today. And if you have seen something on TV that touched or moved you, please share it with us.

Thanks

Posted by David Zurawik at 9:09 AM | Permalink | Comments (14)
Categories: TV and Pop Culture
        

Together again -- President Barack Obama, Steve Kroft and "60 Minutes." The interview will take place Friday and air Sunday at 7 p.m. on CBS.

Could this be the start of another major Obama media blitz?

Remember how close "60 Minutes" and Obama became during the presidential campaign in 2008? No one had a backstage pass to Obama's candidacy like Kroft and "60 Minutes." Last fall, I praised the broadcast for working to gain that access, but now I am not so sure.

I have to admit, I have come to be troubled since Obama took office by the way the White House tries to control the press and then complains at the slightest scrutiny.

(Steve Kroft interviewing Barack and Michelle Obama for 60 Minutes)

So, I am not sure how to read this move by the president to return to the friendly confines of "60 Minutes."

Is this an administration that is getting paranoid about the press and is only willing to talk to correspondents it considers sympathetic or trustworthy? Or is this an Obama who still thinks he is a great TV president and is simply seeking the largest prime-time venue he can get?

Last fall, I thought Obama was the greatest TV president since Ronald Reagan and John Kennedy. Now I am not so sure about that either.

I am wondering if President Obama is going to do an interview with the Fox News Channel, which does, after all, have the largest prime-time audience on cable by far.

Posted by David Zurawik at 7:22 PM | Permalink | Comments (15)
Categories: CBS
        

Jenna Bush Hager will make her debut on NBC's "Today" show Sept. 17 and have her first story air on Sept. 18 in a broadcast from Cowboys Stadium outside Dallas, the network said Thursday.

Bush, who lives in Baltimore, will profile Dalton Sherman, an 11-year-old motivational speaker from Dallas. (As someone who lived and wrote a column in Dallas in the 1980s, I am allowed to say, "only in Dallas.")

According to the network annoucement, Sherman "made headlines last year after giving an inspiring speech" at his school's pep rally. Bush was hired to be a contributing correspondent on education stories, so I guess the pep rally is the educational angle. Let's wait and see.

Posted by David Zurawik at 6:57 PM | Permalink | Comments (16)
Categories: NBC
        

Longtime ABC News anchor John Stossel is leaving the network to join the Fox News Channel and Fox Business Network on cable TV, the company announced Thursday.

Stossel is most widely known for his work on the long-running ABC newsmagazine, "20/20," where he has served as co-anchor and done investigative reporting.

"John has done meaningful and important work throughout his career. His thoughtful and charismatic style has carved a unique niche in the world of television," Roger Ailes, chairman and CEO of Fox News said in making the announcement.

Stossel's contract was described as "multi-year" by Fox, with Stossel anchoring a weekly program on the business network and making regular appearances on the news channel. He is the second high-visibility on-air talent added to FBN, along with Don Imus who signed a simulcast agreement last week.

"John Stossel is one of the most talented and thought-provoking journalists in the field and we are extremely excited to welcome him to the Fox business team," said Kevin Magee, executive vice president. "His insights on consumer-related issues are unparalleled and will be a natural complement to our business programming."

Posted by David Zurawik at 2:49 PM | Permalink | Comments (29)
Categories: Fox
        

Fox Television announced Wednesday night that talk show host Ellen DeGeneres will become the permanent fourth judge on "American Idol" replacing Paula Abdul.

DeGeneres was a surprise appointment, and it will be fascinating to see what her off-beat sense of humor does to the chemistry of the show when "Idol," the most popular show on TV, returns in January. Her brand of humor was apparent in a statement issued Wednesday night by Fox.

 “I’m thrilled to be the new judge on American Idol,” DeGeneres said. ”I’ve watched since the beginning, and I’ve always been a huge fan. So getting this job is a dream come true, and think of all the money I’ll save from not having to text in my vote.”

Creator and executive producer Simon Fuller said, “I could not be more excited to have Ellen join the 'American Idol' family. Ellen has been a fan of the show for many years, and her love of music and understanding of the American public will bring a unique human touch to our judging panel. I can’t wait for this next season to begin.”

“We’re all delighted to have Ellen join our ninth season of American Idol,” said executive producer Cecile Frot-Coutaz. “Beyond her incredible sense of humor and love of music, she brings with her an immense warmth and compassion that is almost palpable. She is one of America’s foremost entertainers, and we cannot wait to have her join our team.”

Mike Darnell, president of alternative entertainment for FOX added, “We are thrilled to have Ellen DeGeneres join the "American Idol" judges’ table this season. She is truly one of America’s funniest people and a fantastic performer who understands what it’s like to stand up in front of audiences and entertain them every day. We feel that her vast entertainment experience – combined with her quick wit and passion for music – will add a fresh new energy to the show.”

I can't wait to hear what "Idol" fans think of the move. By the way, all the temporary judges announced earlier will still get their 15 seconds of "Idol" judging fame, the network said Wednesday night.

Posted by David Zurawik at 9:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (9)
Categories: Fox
        

After hearing Jon Gosselin on "Good Morning America" Tuesday accuse his wife, Kate, of everything from stealing his wedding ring to "beating" him down, you might think there would be nothing left to say.

But you would be wrong. ABC News saved more trash and slash from a three hour interview Chris Cuomo did with Jon for a 30 minute prime-time segment on "Primetime: Family Secrets" Tuesday night. And as bad as the story of Jon and Kate had become in the tabloids, it got worse with this ABC News interview with the dad of what was once a very popular reality TV show about a beloved American family.

"What happens behind closed doors, doesn't always stay behind closed doors," viewers were told as a sleazy tease to the program. 

So, Tuesday night in prime time before what will probably turn out to be an audience of 6 to 8 million viewers, Jon accused Kate of being the first to commit adultery, saying he suspected her of having an affair with her body guard. Cuomo, to his credit, pressed Jon as to whether he had proof, and Jon admitted that he only suspected Kate of having an affair.

"I don't know. I speculate," Jon acknowledged. But the accusation by the husband was made.

Saying he was "abused" and "beaten down," Jon also expanded on what was shown in the "Good Morning America" interview, saying Kate deliberately "separated" him from his mother and brothers.

"I was beaten down so long, I couldn't even make a decision for myself," he said.

Jon also claimed all the trouble in the marriage started this spring when Kate came into the living room one night as he was seated at the dinner table and said, "I don't even know why I got married."

He made it sound as if it was totally out of the blue, and some kind of total transformation in Kate. It was all downhill from there, according to him. Things came to a head, he said, when against Kate's will he went out with his friends. It was the first time in 10 years he had ever done that, in his telling.

Jon also denied having a romantic relationship with two of the three women he is said to have been involved with, according to the tabloids. He says Hailey Glassman, the daughter of Kate's plastic surgeon, is someone he loves more than he did Kate -- and that she shows him "love and respect" as Kate never did. He is having a romantic relationship with her, he admits.

And on and on it goes with Jon telling a story almost 180 degrees different than Kate's -- and the accusations and denials of both making you feel more and more soiled for listening to these two increasingly pathetic characters.

One of the weirdest parts of the interview came when Jon said he and Kate saw Dr. Phil for a counseling session, but the TV psychologist only talked about how to save the show. Dr. Phil, who seems tro be an expert at swimming in the same stream of false TV sanctimony as Kate, issued a statement saying he wouldn't comment out of respect for the Gosselins' privacy.

Jon said he spent $22,000 on therapy for himself, but Kate wouldn't go.

In the end, Jon's bottom line is that no matter how many "mistakes" he's made, he's a good person and Kate is not because he "speaks from the heart...and she doesn't." This speaking from the heart is real big with Jon and apparently makes up for everything.

Somehow, I don't think his children are going to see it that way when they look back one day on all the videotape, sex and lies their parents generated while cashing checks from TLC.

Posted by David Zurawik at 5:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (89)
Categories: ABC
        

After more than two decades at the Baltimore TV anchor desk, WJZ newswoman Sally Thorner said Tuesday that she is retiring. The 54-year-old anchorwoman said her last day at the station will be Dec. 18.

During her career in Baltimore, the Smith College graduate has come to represent local broadcast news at its best -- serious, trustworthy and non-sensational, but also reassuring and friendly.

Thorner, who was on the air for 10 years at WMAR before she joined WJZ in 1993 in one of the most highly publicized anchor moves in Baltimore TV history, could certainly ask the hard questions. She was an excellent reporter.

But it is her calm and solid presence at the anchor desk that will be missed and remembered most by Baltimore viewers when she steps down.

Thorner also came to embody some of the challenges facing women of her generation, as she was always open in discussing the choices she made professionally in relation to goals she had for her family life. She lent her on-air prominence to many fund-raising efforts during the past 25 years, particularly those for women.

"As I look back, the overwhelming feeling I have is gratitude for my career," Thorner said in a "Sun" interview Tuesday. "I was blessed that I was always able to do it on my terms. When I got married and had a baby, that was when I chose to get off nights and now that we're reaching another sort of chapter in my family, I'm able to do this on my terms, too. And that's sort of unheard of in any business, but particularly in this one."

Thorner explained that her son, Everett, has just started college at Yale University, and that her husband, Dr. Brian Rosenfeld, travels a lot in connection with the acute care medical business he founded.

"You know, we're feeling that empty-nester thing a little, and now I can travel with my husband," Thorner said. "I love working at the station, and everybody has been great. But this the right time."

Here is the memo Thorner sent to her collegues at WJZ Tuesday announcing the move:

I love what I do but the time has come for change.  I'm retiring! As many of you know, my career decisions have always centered on my other family, the one at home.

I left WMAR years ago to get off nights which, for me, were not conducive to raising a child and having a family life. And now that child is off to college!

Brian travels extensively on business and, since Everett's away, I can now go with my husband.  Our adventure begins at the end of the year.

I'll miss the people I work with, my friends that I have made over the years, and our loyal viewers.  WJZ has been a wonderful place to work because of all of you. Baltimore will remain my home and so will TV Hill for the next 3 months!

Thanks Everybody, 
Sally

Here's the memo General Manager Jay Newman sent the staff announcing the change.

I’d like to share with you the following news.

Sally Thorner has told us she plans to retire from WJZ the end of this year.  As you know, Sally has played an important role in the success of WJZ as a primary anchor and reporter for our key news broadcasts.  Sally joined WJZ in 1993 after spending the first part of her Baltimore television career at WMAR. She is well known, well respected and has worked hard on air and in the community on behalf of WJZ. 

On a personal note, I have worked with Sally for more then a decade and will miss seeing her everyday.  I want to thank her for all her hard work and her many contributions to the success of WJZ. I am sure you all join me in wishing her well.  She will be missed!

Posted by David Zurawik at 1:03 PM | Permalink | Comments (39)
Categories: Baltimore Television
        

NBC's "Today" show got the first big interview with Kate Gosselin, but  ABC's "Good Morning America" got the more emotional, less seemingly rehearsed one with her divorcing husband, Jon, on Tuesday.

Jon Gosselin, who has been depicted as a slacker and party boy for the last several months, came out breathing fire in the interview with GMA's Chris Cuomo that aired Tuesday morning. He said he despises Kate and can't stand to sit on the same sofa with her to tape their reality TV show. More of the conversation will air Tuesday night on "Primetime: Family Secrets" at 10 on ABC.

From co-host Diane Sawyer to Cuomo, the GMA team set out to recontextualize the Battle of Jon and Kate in keeping with the dueling spouse whom they have access to. As Sawyer put it in her introduction, "... here for the first time, telling his side...."

" I was beaten down" by Kate, Jon said. "She would hold my kids over my head. I would want to spend time with my mom, and she would say, 'Don't spend time with your mom, spend time with your kids.' Why can't I spend time with my mom and my kids?"

Citing years of "verbal abuse" from Kate, Jon said he cannot stand being near Kate.

"I can't sit on the sofa with that woman [the couch on which the two sat during segments of their show "Jon & Kate Plus 8" and talked to the camera about their family]," he told Cuomo. "I can't sit with someone I despise."

Jon Gosselin said TLC now uses "separate" crews for him and Kate to tape the show.

Jon also claimed Kate, who still wears her wedding ring, stole his. (Is this starting to sound a little trashy and tawdry?) "She took my ring," he told Cuomo, laying out an argument of supposition and circumstantial evidence -- but no real proof. 

It wasn't all anger. Jon also told Cuomo that he has cried a lot in the past eight months: "I get frustrated -- pent up... I have no one in the media to tell my side."

You do now, Jon. You do now.

He also said he and Kate need to move on with their lives: "I would say, let's finish what we got to finish and move on with our lives," Gosselin said. "And stop feeding into the frenzy."

I think this interview is part of the feeding, Jon. I really do.

The GMA segment ended with the reading of a brief statement of response from Kate in which she said "for the sake of my children," she will not discuss specifics of the marriage.

Posted by David Zurawik at 7:47 AM | Permalink | Comments (72)
Categories: ABC
        

The resignation Sunday of Van Jones, White House environmental jobs "czar," is as much a cable TV story as it is a Washington political one.

Jones, who was appointed by President Barack Obama to a high level position as a special adviser on "green jobs" and the environment, has been exposed in recent weeks for using coarse and reckless language in public meetings and signing a petitition that suggested members of former President George W. Bush's administration might have known about the 9/11 attacks in advance and still allowed them to happen.

The media entity that first brought much of the information to light  that led to Jones resignation -- information that the Obama administration either didn't know about or knowingly looked away from in appointing him -- wasn't NBC or ABC News or even the "New York Times." It was controversial Fox News Channel host Glenn Beck, who has a bit of a history with Jones.

What kind of history?

An organization, ColorOfChange, that Jones co-founded, launched a boycott against Beck's show -- and it has generated considerable publicity. ColorOfChange launched the boycott after Beck described President Obama as a "racist" on air.

What many initial reports of the boycott, including one I wrote on this blog, didn't mention is the connection between Jones and ColorOfChange. I didn't mention it because I didn't know about it at the time.

But even though ColorOfChange says Jones has been "inactive" for two years in the organization, he is listed as co-founder on the group. No one at Colorofchange denies that.

Not for a second am I denying the recklessness of Beck's words about the president, but the link between Jones and ColorOfChange is enough of a connection to raise questions in my mind about the propriety of an organization co-founded by an adviser to the president organizing a boycott against a broadcaster who criticized that president. Does this not sound like something out of the Richard Nixon-Spiro Agnew White House for dealing with so-called enemies in the press?

I do not know what Beck's motives were in bringing the information he did about Jones to light. There is at least one report that says Beck had questioned Jones' resume and political views before the boycott. In the end, I don't think Beck's motives matter.

What does matter is that once the information about Jones that Beck unearthed became known, it was troubling enough to enough folks in the White House for Jones to resign.

Even though the administration is surely hoping the resignation will get less play during a long holiday weekend than it might otherwise, I think those of us who write about media should ask some hard questions about how much the White House knew about the boycott activities of the group founded by Jones -- and whether there are other such organizing efforts targeting other media outlets that are critical of the president.

Posted by David Zurawik at 1:12 PM | Permalink | Comments (71)
        

On Friday, I was interviewed on CNN's "Situation Room" for a story about the AP distributing a photograph of a seriously wounded Marine in Afghanistan. The Marine, Lance Corporal Joshua Bernard, died on the operating table not long after the bloody picture was taken. He had been hit by a rocket-propelled grenade.

I am not posting the picture here, nor is the "Sun" publishing it in the paper. CNN also has chosen not to show it. In the CNN interview, I said that if I was an editor of a newspaper, I would not publish the picture. But I also said it is a complicated issue, and that I understood AP's argument for distributing it. 

Here's is a link to the "Situation Room" transcript. Here is a link to an online site where you can see the image of the wounded Marine if you want. But before you click to see the image, you should know the Marine's parents asked AP not to publish the picture -- and now strenuously object to the news service's decision to do so.

UPDATE SUNDAY MORNING: You can read the comments of Corporal Bernard's father, John, on the issue in reaction to this post by clicking on comments below.

I want to know what readers think -- especially men and women who served in the military.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates sent a letter to the AP pleading with the news service not to release the image out of deference to Corporal Bernard's family.

AP says it believes it has a "journalistic duty to show the reality of the war" in Afghanistan "however unpleasant and brutal that sometimes is."

The primary duty of the press is to provide citizens with reliable information that they can use to make sound decisions about their lives. As the debate over American involvement in Afghanistan heats up, the information in the picture of Corporal Bernard is certainly the kind of information citizens need to know.

But there are complicating factors. First, the family's plea that the image not be shown. And second is the fact, that the image was captured by an AP photographer embedded with Corporal Bernard's unit -- and all news organizations that ask to be embedded sign agreements not to publish certain information. AP says it is not violating the agreement, but there is room for an argument depending on how you read the language of that contract.

Lara Logan, chief foreign affairs correspondent for CBS News who is on her way back to Afghanistan, said in an interview that aired on CNN's "Reliable Sources" Sunday morning that embed argreements say that next of kin permission on dead and wounded military personnel is required.

Here is Logan's quote: "...And those rules clearly state that if a soldier is wounded or dies from his wounds, then you have to have the permission of the family in order to publish an identifying photograph.  If you're not going to obey the rules, you really shouldn't sign that...."

I have an interview in Sunday's "Sun" with CNN's Michael Ware who is in Afghanistan reporting on his own without the protection of the U.S. military. As highly dangerous as that it, Ware says that is the only way he can tell the full story of the war. If a news organzation signs an embed agreement with the Pentagon, I think there is a moral obligation to honor it -- or otherwise, do what Ware is doing. Does it seem like the AP is trying to have it both ways?

In the end given the family request, one has to ask if this is the only way citizens can find out about the horror of a war that is not going well. I say it isn't. I say there are many other stories and images out there, and in deference to the family's request, I would not publish. CNN said it, too, based its decision on the family's request.

But I cannot condemn AP for making it available either. Like I said, it is a complicated call. But maybe I am making it more complicated than it needs to be and letting AP off the hook. Maybe it is a simple matter of empathy or common sense, as Gates said in his letter to AP.

One more complication: is there a difference between publishing it in print or online? I think maybe there is. And just to make it even more complicated, I think this might cut straight to another argument about gatekeepers and filters and old and new media -- and why some younger news consumers say they favor the relatively unfiltered Internet over print and network TV venues.

What do you think?

Posted by David Zurawik at 7:31 AM | Permalink | Comments (42)
Categories: Cable and Network News
        

I will be on CNN's "Reliable Sources" Sunday as part of panel looking at the retirement of Charles Gibson as anchor of ABC "World News" and the naming of Diane Sawyer his replacement.

The discussion ranges from the likely replacement for Sawyer at "Good Morning America," to an assessment of how "World News" might change with Gibson gone.

On the panel with me are Tina Brown, of The Daily Beast, and Rome Hartman, the former executive producer of the "CBS Evening News with Katie Couric" who now runs the nightly news at BBC America.  

"Reliable Sources" host Howard Kurtz also has an interview with Lara Logan, chief foreign affairs correspondent for CBS News, on Afghanistan.

Posted by David Zurawik at 6:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (5)
Categories: CNN
        

Former WJZ newsman Richard Sher reports that his new "Square Off" production taped its first show Friday -- and, if he must say so himself, "it was fantastic!!!" (The three exclamation points are all Sher's, and good for him and the enthusiasm he is bringing to this project.)

The new version of the long-running Baltimore TV staple debuts Sept. 13 on WMAR (Channel 2), and a lot of folks seem to be looking forward to it.

The picture (provided by Sher) shows the one-time co-hosting partner of Oprah Winfrey standing in front of his new set. According to Sher, the set of recurring panelists on the public affairs show will include: Billy Murphy, Ed Norris, Kendel Ehrlich, Bob Ehrlich, Larry Young, Kweisi Mfume and others.

If you need me to tell you who any of those folks are, this show is probably not for you.

I will have a Z on TV preview piece in the Sun on Sept. 13.

Posted by baltimoresun.com at 6:50 AM | Permalink | Comments (6)
Categories: Baltimore Television
        

Given the incredible flood of TV following Michael Jackson's death, the relatively limited access to his burial ceremony Thursday night seemed somewhat surprising.

Maybe it was just the access that TV gave us to Senator Edward Kennedy's burial Saturday in Arlington that left me feeling like TV started something with the end of Jackson's life that it didn't -- or couldn't --  finish Thursday night.  

If you have seen nothing of the ceremony, here's a link to video from ITN that is about as good as anything I've seen -- even on the networks Friday morning: http://uk.news.yahoo.com/4/20090904/video/ven-michael-jackson-burial-stars-pay-the-cf04a8a.html

I am wondering how others like me who watched hours and hours of coverage of Jackson's death felt about what they were allowed -- or not allowed -- to see of the burial.

Maybe you thought we had seen too much to begin with -- and certainly didn't need to see more. I know many did feel that way.

Members of the Jackson family certainly have the right to decide how much they are going to share with the public of such a ceremony.

But I have to admit, I wanted more -- and some sense of closure to the TV commitment I made when Jackson died.

Posted by David Zurawik at 6:43 AM | Permalink | Comments (14)
        

Controversial radio show host Don Imus will be joining the Fox Business lineup as the result of multi-year year deal the channel announced Thursday to simulcast "Imus in the Morning" starting Oct. 5. The program will air 6 to 9 a.m. weekdays on the Rupert Murdoch owned channel.

“We’re excited to welcome a renowned broadcaster like Don Imus to the Fox Business team. His 40 years of on-air experience combined with his superb interviewing skills and capitalist sensibilities will be a great addition to our lineup," Kevin Magee, executive vice president of Fox Business, said in a statement.

According to the Fox release, the program, will will "add business news into its format which now offers a mix of current affairs, politics, entertainment and sports."

 “I love Fox. Roger Ailes [president of the Fox News Channel] is the preeminent genius of American Broadcasting. Who wouldn't want to do this?" Imus said in the press release from Fox.

Imus was fired by CBS, which syndicated his radio show, and MSNBC, which simulcast it on cable, in 2007 after making on-air remarks about the Rurgers University womens' basketball program that were deemed to be racist  by some. In the wake of the Imus remarks, advertisers bolted the show.

Posted by David Zurawik at 11:09 AM | Permalink | Comments (32)
Categories: Fox
        

MTV is embracing the topic of teen pregnancy is a major way. And while I once thought that was a good thing, I am now not so sure.

The simple reason for this post is that MTV is having a "Labor Day Marathon" of episodes of its documentary TV series "16 and Pregnant." And serving as hosts for the marathon will be some of the teanage mothers from that series who will be featured this year in a just-announced spinoff called "Teen Mom." The new series will follow the teenagers who were featured in "16 and Pregnant" as they navigate their first year of motherhood.

Which brings me to the much deeper reason for this post, and why I am starting to have serious second thoughts about MTV's teen pregnancy blitz.

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

After seeing the pilot, for "16 and Pregnant," I loved it, because it showed how lost, scared and sad the girl who got pregnant was -- and how horribly her boyfriend treated her once she stopped being "fun."

Here is a bit of what I wrote in June when the show debuted:

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

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

You can read the full review here.

So, what changed?

The documentary series became a huge hit by cable standards, and MTV looks to be turning it into reality TV with "Teen Mom."

Here is the way MTV describes the ratings in its press release for the marathon:

"16 and Pregnant," has garnered amazing ratings reaching an audience of over 71 million viewers. The series ranked #1 in its time period versus all cable competition among P12-34 and versus all television competition among F12-34. In addition, the show has improved its time period by 182% among P12-34 and 211% among F12-34."16 and Pregnant" has also found success online. Since premiering on June 11, the show delivered over 15M streams to date and was the second most streamed series on MTV.com within their time period underneath "The Hills."

It is a good and socially responsible effort to produce documentaries that show the harsh reality of being a pregnant teeanger. In fact, it's a great thing by the standards of most cable channels.

But now, in eliminating the journalistic distance of the documentary genre to bring these young women from "Teen Mom" into the studio to depict  them as celebrities, MTV runs the risk of doing the very thing that is so dangerous: Telling young people that getting pregnant is the way to become the center of attention. Instead of chronicling the rough reality of teen pregnancy, MTV looks as if it is now celebrating those girls who get pregnant by putting the teen moms in these on-screen roles to essentially promote the new show in which they appear.

Maybe I am wrong. But we have a large problem in this country with teen pregnancy, and this Hollywood message about pregnancy being a fast track for teen girls to become the center of attention is a major part of it.

The marathon begins at 12:30 p.m. Monday.

UPDATE: I am putting together a post for tomorrow and images of motherhood on TV and why teen moms and Kate Gosselin are the dominant images on TV today vs.  those of other eras. Please let me know what you think.

Posted by David Zurawik at 8:21 AM | Permalink | Comments (29)
Categories: TV and Pop Culture
        

In a major and uxexpected move, ABC News anchor Charles Gibson announced that he will retire at the end of the year, and Diane Sawyer will become the anchor of ABC's "World News."

The 66-year-old Gibson said in an email to ABC News staffers Wednesday that he had planned to retire as early as 2007, but that unexpected events in the news division resulted in him staying on. Longtime anchor Peter Jennings died in 2005, and then his replacement, Bob Woodruff, was seriously injured in Iraq in January of 2006.

Gibson, a former Congressional correspondent and co-host of "Good Morning America," has been a steadying influence on the flagship broadcast for ABC News. The 34-year veteran of ABC News says he will continue as a contributor after he steps down from the anchor desk and full time status. But the details of that contributing arrangement have yet to be determined.

When the 63-year-old Sawyer, longtime co-anchor of "Good Morning America," takes over in January, two of three networks will be anchored by women. Sawyer has certainly earned the honor of anchoring the evening broadcast in a long career at CBS News on "60 Minutes" and at ABC News with the newsmagazine "Prime Time Live" before "Good Morning America." The morning show is a solid second in the ratings to NBC's "Today" show.

"There is no one like Charlie Gibson and it is an enormous honor to be asked to join the terrific broadcast he and the great team of journalists have built at 'World News," Sawyer said Wednesday. "Until then, I'll be getting up early and spending mornings, as always, counting myself so lucky to be with Robin, Chris and Sam and the incredibly smart, talented and dedicated team of 'Good Morning America.'" 

Combined the three network evening newscasts have lost three million viewers during the last three years -- going from an audience of about 23 million in 2006 to an average of about 20 million viewers a night this month.

Given the declining fortunes of the evening news, "Good Morning America" is actually the more lucrative program, so there is some risk in moving Sawyer. But remember Gibson came from "Good Morning America" as well, and the morning show manged to hold its audience.

"World News" was reeling in 2006 when Gibson stepped in. Jennings' death left a huge void in the news opertion that ABC News President David Westin tried to fill by naming Woodruff and Elizabeth Vargas co-anchors in December of 2005, calling them anchors "for the digital age."

But Woodruff was seriously injured in January 2006, and Vargas announced in the spring that was going on materity leave. Gibson, who had been essentially passed over as Jennings' successor only a few months earlier, took over as anchor and managing editor in May, and not only brought stability to the newcast, he also gave the program a ratings boost.

"World News" has consistently finished a strong second in the ratings during Gibson's tenure. "CBS Evening News with Katie Couric" finishes third.

Couric shared her thoughts on the change at ABC News, saying, ""Ever since my days as a desk assistant at ABC News, I've always admired Charlie's work. He's a talented reporter, a gifted communicator, and a wonderful person. I wish him all the best.  Diane is one of the hardest-working people I know and this new assignment is the latest achievement in an already accomplished and illustrious career. And as I did, I'm sure she'll quickly find that she doesn't miss that early morning alarm clock."

"It has not been an easy decision to make" Gibson said in his email to colleagues. "This has been my professional home for almost 35 years. And I love this news department, and all who work in it, to the depths of my soul."

Westin said in a statement that he and Gibson have been talking about the decision for several weeks and that Gibson "has persuaded me that this is both what he wants and what is best for him."

"I respect his decision, just as I respect the enormous contribution he has made to ABC News through the years," Westin said.

"Diane Sawyer is the right person to succeed Charlie and build on what he has accomplished," Westin said in a statement.

"She has an outstanding and varied career in television journalism, beginning with her role as a State Department correspondent and continuing at 60 Minutes, Primetime Live, and most recently Good Morning America."

Here is the full text of Gibson's email to his colleagues at ABC News:

I have always been taught you should never bury the lead _ so I write to tell you that I have told David Westin I want to step down as anchor of World News, and retire from full time employment at ABC News.

It has not been an easy decision to make. This has been my professional home for almost 35 years. And I love this news department, and all who work in it, to the depths of my soul.

I have received much comment, and quite a few emails and letters referring to the signoff Eddie Pinder convinced me to use - wishing that everyone has had a good day. But the proudest part for me has been saying "...for all of us at ABC News...", since those words signify in my mind that I have been in a position to speak for an entire news department that I consider second to none.

It had been my intention to step down from my job at Good Morning America in 2007 but with Peter's illness, Bob's injuries, and Elizabeth's pregnancy, the job at World News came open in May of 2006, and David asked me to step in as anchor. It was an honor to do so. The program is now operating at a very accelerated, but steady, cruising speed, and I think it is an opportune time for a transition _ both for the broadcast and for me. Life is dynamic; it is not static.

I have told David I would like to continue in some capacity contributing occasionally to ABC News. He has been receptive to the idea - and we will be discussing what that role might be.

Here is David Westin's email to the ABC News staff announcing Sawyer's appointment as the new anchor of "World News."

Today, Charlie Gibson announced to his colleagues at World News that he has decided to step down as anchor effective at the end of this year. I attach below Charlie's full email.

I have asked Diane Sawyer to serve as the next anchor of World News, and she will assume that position in January.

Charlie and I have been talking about his decision for several weeks, and he has persuaded me that this is both what he wants and what is best for him. I respect his decision, just as I respect the enormous contribution he has made to ABC News through the years.

Most recently, he stepped in to lead World News after a difficult and turbulent time _ both for the broadcast and for ABC News over all. We suffered from the loss of Peter and then the severe injuries to Bob. Charlie came to the fore to keep us on the path of doing the first rate journalism that had distinguished World News for many years. We owe him much for the leadership he gave us when we needed it most.

Since then, Charlie has covered all the major events with the substance and grace that we all expect from him. Most importantly, he headed our coverage during a presidential election unlike any other. Now, having accomplished so much in so many different parts of ABC News, Charlie has decided it is time for him to step down. I have told him that he has an open door to continue to work with ABC News, but he's asked for a bit of time before he comes back to us.

Diane Sawyer is the right person to succeed Charlie and build on what he has accomplished. She has an outstanding and varied career in television journalism, beginning with her role as a State Department correspondent and continuing at 60 Minutes, Primetime Live, and Good Morning America.

She has interviewed every President since President George H. W. Bush up to and including President Obama. She has handled an array of breaking news special events, including on 9/11 and, most recently, the presidential election. She has done distinguished documentaries on topics as varied as North Korea, the plight of women in Afghanistan and in prisons here at home, and poverty in Camden, New Jersey, and in Appalachia.

We are fortunate to have a journalist of Diane's proven ability and passion to step into the important position of anchor for World News. She will continue with her documentaries in her new role.

Diane's presence will certainly be missed on Good Morning America. But we are fortunate that both Charlie and Diane will remain with their current broadcasts for the next four months; we will be making further announcements well before any changes are made.

Vargas, who now serves as an anchor on the newsmagazine "20/20" could be a candidate to replace Sawyer. There is no shortage of capable journalists in-house including Chris Cuomo who has become a very strong presence on the show. Kate Snow is anothjer ABC News staffer who has to be considered.

Posted by David Zurawik at 12:46 PM | Permalink | Comments (23)
Categories: ABC
        

NBC's "Today" show had Kate Gosselin two weeks ago, and now comes its chief competitor, ABC's "Good Morning America," with soon to be ex-husband, Jon. And he's breathing fire, according to excerpts ABC News released Wednesday of an interview he did with GMA's Chris Cuomo.

Complaining about how his wife treats him and her traveling while he is caring for their twins and sextuplets, the 32-year-old Gosselin said, "She'll call me like, almost like a lame fish, like I wasn't going anywhere. We'll excuse me. I'm taking care of the kids. She's on book tours. She's doing all of these things. You know, she's gone a week. You know, comes back. Packs up and leaves again."

"I'm standing there like, 'Oh, OK. Your mom's gone again.'"

Talk about dueling divas. And what a lovely stage they have selected for their throwdown in network morning TV.

Cuomo's interview with Jon wil air Sept. 8 and 9 on "Good Morning America" and Sept. 8 on "Primetime."

Posted by David Zurawik at 11:16 AM | Permalink | Comments (58)
Categories: TV and Pop Culture
        

The August ratings are out, and once again, the ratings for the Fox News Channel are phenomenal.

Rather than throwing a million pieces of data that every channel is spinning into madness, I ask you to consider just this one: On Sunday night, the third episode of AMC's highly-publicized and much-discussed series, "Mad Men," drew an audience of 1.6 million viewers at 10 p.m. when it debuted. Throughout the month of August, Fox News Channel averaged an audience of 2.29 million viewers during every single hour of prime time. And some nights, Bill O'Reilly drew an audience twice as large as that of "Mad Men."

My question for this news-savvy group of readers: Why? How does Fox News Channel keep running these kind of numbers? (And by the way, what about the relatively small size of audience for "Mad Men"?) 

For starters, forget MSNBC and CNN -- they are not in the same galaxy as the Fox folks on this discussion. Fox is the the third highest rated cable channel in prime time behind entertainment channels USA and TNT.

What's so impressive to me is that while MSNBC and CNN are down, Fox is showing huge increases from last August to this August -- and August 2008 was a high point in news channel viewing because of the national conventions and one of the most viewed Presidential election contests in recent history.

O'Reilly, for example, is up by a third in total viewership and almost two-thirds in the key news demographic of 25-54.

So, how and why is Fox doing it? Facts are facts. You might want to ignore these, but I think it is a wiser course to acknowledge and try to understand them.

I think the intensity of the health care debate helped Fox in August, but that is a partial explanation at best. Fox has been dominant for a long time. As I have written before, Fox has done the best job of serving as watchdog on the White House, and I think that has paid off with citizens who have started questioning some of President Barack Obama's not-so-well-thought initiatives.

But what do you think? That's what I'm wondering today. 

Posted by David Zurawik at 6:21 AM | Permalink | Comments (85)
Categories: Cable and Network News
        

AMC has renewed "Mad Men" for a fourth season, the cable channel announced Tuesday.

The stylish drama about Madison Avenue in the 1960s is currently into its third week of season three. 

"We always saw the potential for 'Mad Men', and believed in and supported the series because of our strategy of developing cinematic television that complements our library of the most entertaining movies, from every genre, on television," said Charlie Collier, president and general manager of AMC. 

"With this early fourth season renewal, we're excited to let our audience know the captivating world of Sterling Cooper will be back on AMC again next year."

The series debuted on Aug. 16 with an aggregate audience of 4.5 million viewers. The series has has 16 Emmy nominations, and is the favorite to win as best drama for the second year in a row later this month.

Posted by David Zurawik at 12:42 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)
Categories: TV and Pop Culture
        

Jon and Kate Gosselin really are becoming almost too much to bear.

In Monday night's "Dude Ranch and Dress Up" episode Kate took three of her sons to a dude ranch where they were the only customers, while Jon played "dress up" with the girls at their Pennsylvania "home."

My favorite moment with Jon came when he was sitting on the couch near the end of the episode by himself talking to the camera, and said how well it was working out for him living in New York.

"It's quiet and I can things get done," was one of the things he said he liked about living away from his kids.

But what is it exactly that Jon needs "quiet" for? And what is it that he needs to get "done" again?

(AP Photo / Alaric Lambert)

Last time I looked, Jon wasn't writing the history of the Roman empire or practicing psychotherapy in a home office so that he would need quiet to get things "done." Jon does nothing. His job is being a TV father on a reality show -- and he is making a hash out of that these days.

What Jon mainly has been doing the last year is running around with women a lot younger than he is and partying on the Riviera. Quiet is not a key component for any of that -- unless you are talking about morning-after hangovers.

And who would have thought we would have to endure a full hour of Kate in various cowboy hats?

I am not going to criticize Kate. I have already dissipated enough frustration, disappointment and anger as to what this show has become by going after Jon in this post.

But how many incredibly expensive trips can Kate take with these kids? Is this the new normal for "Jon & Kate Plus 8" -- Kate takes one or more of the kids to a place most people in the audience could never afford?

If that's the deal, I think TLC might want to consider re-tooling "Jon and Kate" as a high-end, luxury vacation show rather than a family series -- especially a family living the "reality" of lay-off, job-loss America these days.

I also wonder if we are going to see more segments where the worker bees either from TLC or the various luxury vacation spots the Gosselins visit amuse the kids, while Kate goes off by herself with a teacher and learns to ride a horse or shoot or gun.

And what about the egg throwing, with the kids throwing eggs at one of the worker bees? Isn't Kate teaching them well -- point the ship's guns at the photographers and throw eggs at the workers? Even if it is done with an attempt at humor, the message can still take root.

Ride 'em, Kate.

Posted by David Zurawik at 7:58 AM | Permalink | Comments (99)
Categories: TV and Pop Culture