Which leads us to this week's question: just how do programs go about getting sponsorship? Here to provide the answers, in a very funny article that contains more truth than I suspect we might think, is Robert Leonard. Leonard is a man who should know, having spent ten years as Vice President in Charge of Television at one of Madison Avenue’s biggest ad agencies. It was his job to sell prospective programs to sponsors looking to finance the season's next big thing, which would just so happen to provide the sponsor's product with the best possible platform for exposure to the millions of viewers who, until this very moment, had no idea that said product was so essential to their quality of life. There are, Leonard says, four basic types of pitches known to the industry, one to cover each type of program the agency might encounter; in the right hands, each of these pitches guarantees sure-fire results every time.
The safest kind of program to pitch, according to Leonard, is the "Likewise, I'm sure" kind of show. You know the kind: a show that"carbon-copies some other well-rated program as closely as the laws of infringement permit." Imagine, if you will, a show starring "an outspoken housemaid." You can't call it Hazel, of course, but what about Ethel? It's the perfect response for the sponsor who demands something on the order of, say, Bonanza. "You might come right back at him with a drama called Briganza that takes place on a big Oregon ranch called The Sequoia, which is owned by Bill Wheelwright who has four sons. ('A real switcheroo, eh, Harry?')" I'm sure we've all seen an example or two of this kind of program over the years, haven't we, Dick Wolf?
Then, there's something called "integrated programming." In this kind of program, the commercial is practically a part of the show; imagine, Leonard proposes, a series called D.S.C., featuring the brave men of the "Department of Street Cleaning." Sounds exciting, right? Well, maybe not to you or me, but what if you were in charge of ad buying for a company famous for its detergent products. See where we're going here? Each week, "exciting episode after episode takes us into the everyday lives of the men who preserve our sanitation; their hopes and fears, their home life; the things they have inside their homes that they’ve collected in line of duty." All brought to you by the company that makes their uniforms sparkle!
What if, however, your program lacks that certain je ne sais quoi? The kind of show that "Doesn’t aim very high, so it can’t fall very far." It's still on the market, even though it's been on the air for a few weeks. "The network is desperate. The packager is frantic. The price is slashed! And the concessions you get! Quick-escape clauses! Extra commercial positions!" Sounds good—but, you might be wondering, why hasn't someone bought it up yet? "Maybe it's a real stinker. Maybe everyone who saw the pilot threw up." In that case, it's not that the's show's bad; it's just offbeat, not for everyone, victim of a bad timeslot. Don't look at it as a bad show; think of it as a good bargain.
And so there you have it, the concise explanation for how your favorite (or least-favorite) show got its sponsor. There's only one last detail remaining: the Return on Investment, here expressed as the CPM: cost per thousand homes per minute of commercial. You arrive at this by taking the weekly average audience from last season, and add 25 percent "to prove you have confidence in the new vehicle you picked." Divide that by the sponsor's cost per episode, and then again by the number of commercial minutes per episode. And that is your magic number, the one that enables you to close the deal. However, Leonard offers this warning in conclusion: "Don’t dare put the CPM in writing. Because when your television turkey is staggering around next spring just asking to be slaughtered, the CPM can get your neck, too."
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During the 60s, the Ed Sullivan Show and The Hollywood Palace were the premiere variety shows on television. Whenever they appear in TV Guide together, we'll match them up and see who has the best lineup..Sullivan: In Hollywood, Ed's scheduled guests are Sid Caesar; actor Sean Connery; the singing McGuire Sisters; singer Pat Boone; the rock 'n' rolling Animals; comics Guy Marks and Totie Fields; and the Fiji Military Band. (Note that according to the episode guide, Connery was a no-show, while Caesar was joined by Joyce Jameson (who also sings) in a sketch, and musical group Sam the Sham and the Pharaohs and tumbling group The Gimma Brothers also appeared.)
Palace: Host Frank Sinatra welcomes Count Basie; comic Jack E. Leonard; dancer Peter Gennaro, choreographer for Perry Como and the recent Andy Griffith special; West German singer-dancers Alice and Ellen Kessler; and Colombian high-wire acrobat Murillo.
What I enjoy about this week's matchup is that it shows off the extremes of my own musical tastes: The Animals (singing "The Work Song") and Pat Boone ("Night and Day" among other selections) on Sullivan, and Frank Sinatra and Count Basie on the Palace. And despite the temptation to push it, I'm going for The Palace, but in this pre-DVD era watch for Sullivan on reruns.
From 1963 to 1976, TV Guide's weekly reviews were written by the witty and acerbic Cleveland Amory. Whenever they appear, we'll look at Cleve's latest take on the shows of the era.
This week Cleveland Amory demonstrates that there was, in fact, such a thing as life before Columbo for Peter Falk. Falk, of course, knew this well; prior to donning the lieutenant's rumpled raincoat, he'd received two Academy Award nominations for Best Supporting Actor, won an Emmy for "The Price of Tomatoes," and had starred in the subject of this week's review, a series which he's called his favorite, Trials of O'Brien. And Cleve has some news for you: "If you think that Peter Falk is an overrated young man who looks like the late John Garfield and acts like a road-company James Cagney—and that, furthermore, he is inclined to make a federal case out of saying 'hello' and yet plays a big scene as if it should have been handled in small-claims court—then you are not going to like this show." On the other hand, if you think he is the coolest, hippest, In-est actor to come along since The Birth of a Nation, then you are going to love it. For, make no mistake about it, this is Falk’s show."
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Meanwhile, Meet the Press (4:30 p.m., NBC) interviews the three major candidates for mayor of New York City: Republican John Lindsay, Democrat Abe Beame, and Conservative William F. Buckley, Jr. Buckley's stated reason for entering the race is an attempt to deny victory to the liberal Lindsay (indeed, Beame may well be less liberal than Lindsay), and although he fails (Lindsay wins with 43% to Beame's 39% and Buckley's 13%), WFB does get off the best line of the campaign: declining his rebuttal time during a debate, he remarks that "I am satisfied to sit back and contemplate my own former eloquence."* Would that there was even one candidate of this caliber running today.
*I've used this line many times over the years myself. Although there are those who would have preferred I stop with "I am satisfied to sit back."
There's no guest listed for Face the Nation (9:30 a.m., CBS), but a quick Google search reveals that it was Alabama Attorney General Richmond Flowers, who's there to discuss the trial of KKK member Collie Leroy Wilkins for the murder of civil rights worker Viola Liuzzo following the march from Montgomery to Selma. Wilkins' first trial ended in a hung jury, and the moderate Flowers, a proponent of civil rights legislation, has announced that he will personally take over the prosecution of the retrial because, as state AG, he won't be subject to the pressures that local prosecutors might face. The sensational case has drawn worldwide attention, as well as a move to have the KKK investigated by the House Un-American Activities Committee. Wilkins is never convicted by an Alabama court (thus escaping the electric chair), but is found guilty of civil rights violations in a subsequent Federal trial.
*Fun fact: Flowers' son, Richmond Jr., was a football player at Tennessee and went on to play in the NFL for the Dallas Cowboys and the New York Giants. (He chose Tennessee over Alabama because of his father's controversial politics.) He was also a star hurdler, a contender to make the 1968 Olympic team (a torn hamstring prevented him from qualifying), and was known at the time as "the fastest white boy alive."
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Let's continue with the sports theme for a moment. The World Series has ended, and now the spotlight turns fully to football. (Another sign of how the times have changed; today, it's the World Series that fights for a place in the spotlight.) The college game of the week on Saturday features a Southwestern Conference showdown between two of the nation's top teams, #1 Texas and #3 Arkansas (1:00 p.m., NBC). Arkansas, after blowing a 20-0 lead, rallies to defeat Texas 27-24. Four years later, the two teams will play "The Game of the Century" for the national championship; once again, Arkansas jumps out to a lead, but Texas rallies in the fourth quarter to win the game and the national title, 15-14. Today, the SWC is but a distant memory, while the two teams compete in the Southeastern Conference.
On Tuesday, CBS presents master documentarian David L. Wolper's adaptation of Theodore White's best-seller The Making of the President 1964 (9:30 p.m.). Neither the book nor the documentary have quite the cachet of White's original 1960 book (and subsequent documentary), but it's still a valuable portrait of the tumultuous 1964 campaign, as LBJ tries to step out of the shadow of JFK. As with the previous documentary, stage actor (and frequent What's My Line? guest panelist) Martin Gabel provides the dignified narration.*
Barbra Streisand burst onto the television scene in April 1965 with her special "My Name Is Barbra," and CBS repeats the Emmy-winning show on Wednesday night (10:00 p.m.) It tops off a night of great variety that started with the 15th season opener of Hallmark Hall of Fame (7:30 p.m., NBC) and its original drama "Eagle in a Cage," the story of Napoleon's exile to the island of St. Helena and his plot to return to France, starring Trevor Howard and James Daly. (Admit it: can you see Hall of Fame showing something like that today? Not enough of a chick flick, I'd say.) That's followed by a Bob Hope Special (9:00 p.m., NBC), with Bob and his guests James Garner, We Five, Carol Lawrence, and Phyllis Diller.
I couldn't possibly get through this week's music programs without stopping on Thursday to see the unexpecdted spectacle of Hedy Lamarr hosting Shindig (7:30 p.m., ABC), with the Dave Clark Five, the Kingsmen, Joe Tex, Brenda Holloway, and Lulu and the Luvvers. Over on NBC, Dean Martin (10:00 p.m.) has a stellar lineup with Louis Armstrong and his combo, Robert Goulet, Lainie Kazan, the Kirby Stone Four, the dance team of Brascia and Tybee, and the comic contortionists Trio Leema. And if you didn't get enough Frank Sinatra on The Hollywood Palace, there's more, with the network TV premiere of the original Ocean's 11 (9:00 p.m.), the Rat Pack romp co-starring the aforementioned Dean Martin, Sammy Davis Jr., Peter Lawford, Joey Bishop, Angie Dickinson, and a movie-stealing Cesar Romero.
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Some interesting feedback in the Letters to the Editor section regarding a writer's roundtable featured in an issue that I wrote about many years ago. There's an interesting response from Howard Bell, the NAB Code Authority Director, who takes issue with the idea that the Code is responsible for the decline in TV drama. "[T]he TV code is not designed to stifle creativity in writers, nor does it do so in actual practice," Bell writes, quoting extensively from Section 1 of the Code: "It is in the interest of television as a vital medium to encourage and promote the broadcast of programs presenting genuine artistic or literary material, valid moral and social issues, significant controversial and challenging adult themes." While the Code isn't responsible for television's premier dramas, Bell writes, neither has it been a deterrent. If there has been a decline in the quality of television drama, there are undoubtedly reasons for it, but "from the Code Authority point of view, the excuse of censorship through the TV Code is misleading."
Leo Monaghan of Springfield, Massachusetts, also sees the issue of censorship as a straw man, pointing out that "Movies, paperbacks and magazines have amply shown that elimination of censorship is not the answer to mediocrity, but merely an invitation to degradation." According to Monaghan, the answer is not license, but talent. And while Maureen Bendich of Saratoga, Colorado, says that the article was "appalling and stimulating," suggesting that she sympathizes with the writers, she says it also "confirms my impressions that there is no room left for creativity." Finally, Robert Shaw, a "visiting Briton" writing from Jamaica, New York (the Robert Shaw, perhaps?), finds the whole thing ironic, having "been lectured on the 'evils' of government-controlled TV [i.e. the BBC] compared to the free enterprise system, as practiced here where 'no censorship exists.'" It's not clear whether Shaw finds the complaining or the assertion of no censorship to be the most humorous.
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The networks lost a combined $10,000,000 in revenue during their coverage of Pope Paul VI's historic visit to New York City earlier in October, but it was worth it, as Henry Harding reports they "rose magnificently to the occasion." The networks devoted virtually all of October 4 to coverage of the papal visit, with 90 pool cameras broadcasting images to over 140 million viewers during the 14 hours of coverage, including a high point of 70,000,000 at one point. Compared to "the esteem and gratitude of millions of viewers," the loss of revenue may be well worth it.
And they could use it, according to Samuel Grafton, in the first of a three-part series on how television covers the news. His question: does TV news really give the viewer the whole story? His answer: no. It's quite interesting, and another indication of how times have changed, that the article is full of comparisons between television and newspapers. NBC's Reuven Frank, for example, says that "A television news show is a front page. It is not a full news service, like a complete newspaper." Washington correspondent Clark Mollenhoff, who covers the capital for the Des Moines Register and Tribune and the Minneapolis Star and Tribune, says, "They touch the surface," but to do anything further would take "depth knowledge of a subject, which they don't have, or don't have time to acquire." Even Walter Cronkite, in a recent interview on the educational station WNDT, admits that "I do not think we cover the news"
Grafton compares the newspaper reporter, who "works through contacts he develops over the years, with many people, great and small," with the television reporter, who "comes through like a parade, with his truck and his cameras." Complicating things is television's fear of boring viewers, requiring them to reduce stories "to a small enough compass so that the viewer can take all of it," unlike the newspaper reader who commits himself to a thorough review of the daily paper. For the same reason, television news avoids stories that lack mass attention—"news of music, of the theater, paintings and new books." As Frank says, although "[t]here's no subject that can't be covered on television," it should only be covered if it's of interest to the layman—"not if it is interested only in a specialist's way."
By comparison, local television news is seen as a strength of the medium. Now, most sane people today consider local news to be pretty much, not to put it too delicately, crap. The "if it bleeds, it leads" mentality, combined with the boy-girl happy news anchor teams, most of which look as if they're auditioning for a fashion runway rather than the newsdesk, has heavily influenced network television. However, the advantage that local news had in the mid-1960s was that its audience was interested—these were stories that had a direct impact on viewers, ranging from commentaries to reviews of new plays.
The lack of commentary on television news is particularly striking, since the three major anchors—Cronkite, Huntley, and Brinkley—all have five-minute daily radio spots in which they often make pointed comments. Why radio and not TV? Huntley acknowledges that "We're still feeling our way on television. We'd feel naked on TV doing a one-and-a-half-minute think piece." Lacking commentary, there's always hard-hitting reporting, but even here, television falls short. According to Raymond Brand, an editor at the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, it's because TV newsmen are too worried about their own images, too "dignified" and respectful, to lower themselves into the muck. CBS's Fred Friendly hopes this changes; "We want yeast. We want savvy. We want what comes out of a reporter's deep experience. Our reporters are going to dig, not just read."
Much as was the case with that drama writers' roundtable, the main obstacle to television news seems to be a sort of censorship, a reluctance to go beyond self-set limitations. But with expenditures of over $100 million annually, it's clear that television news won't remain static.
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MST3K alert: The Amazing Transparent Man (1959) A scientist enlists a convicted safecracker to help him steal radioactive material using the scientist's newly-developed method for turning a person invisible. Marguerite Chapman, Douglas Kennedy. Typical of the time, this sci-fi non-epic concludes with military personnel contemplating the prospects of an all-invisible army. Would that they had made the short, the Union Pacific safety film The Days of the Years, invisible; it's fortunate for the nation's economy that Union Pacific is better with the railways than with filmmaking. TV
What I enjoy about this week's matchup is that it shows off the extremes of my own musical tastes: The Animals (singing "The Work Song") and Pat Boone ("Night and Day" among other selections) on Sullivan, and Frank Sinatra and Count Basie on the Palace. And despite the temptation to push it, I'm going for The Palace, but in this pre-DVD era watch for Sullivan on reruns.
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From 1963 to 1976, TV Guide's weekly reviews were written by the witty and acerbic Cleveland Amory. Whenever they appear, we'll look at Cleve's latest take on the shows of the era. And what this is is a legal drama laced with a liberal dose of comedy; in fact, it might not be a stretch to view Danny O'Brien, Falk's character, as a distant relative of Columbo, one of those familial characters that keep popping up in the stories the lieutenant tells suspects as he's luring them into his trap. He is, as the American Bar Association disparingly described him in a complaint to CBS, a man who "(1) plays the horses, (2) parks his car in a no-parking zone, (3) throws his brief case, crammed with important papers, into the back of his open convertible and (4) is divorced and, apparently worst of all, is behind on his alimony payments." In addition, they don't like his habits, manners, and dress. All of this, the ABA claims, combines to bring the legal profession into disrepute and suspicion. (As if they weren't capable of that on their own.)
To all this, Amory replies, the network should "throw the American Bar Association out of court." Yes, make him pay his parking fines, but the back alimony points to one of the strongest parts of the series, O'Brien's relationship with his ex-wife Katie, played by Joanna Barnes, whom Amory calls "the brightest new spot of the new season." "[E]ven if the writers make her act mean, she doesn’t really mean to be mean—she’s not all on the side of the Bar Association." Falk, in fact, is surrounded by a strong supporting cast; in addition to Barnes, there's Elaine Stritch, Ilka Chase, and David Burns, and guest-starring appearances by Herschel Bernardi, Robert Blake, Buddy Hackett and Cloris Leachman. But, as will be the case with Columbo, the center of gravity at all times is Falk, who is on screen 90 percent of the time and can "tough-guy it and hard-heart it with anybody but the Supreme Court." And the network itself; despite a positive reception (even from critics not named Cleveland Amory), the series ends after a run of 22 episodes.
For political junkies, the Sunday interview shows are a feast. With the death of President Kennedy last year, former President Dwight Eisenhower is seen even more as the elder statesman of the presidency (along with Harry Truman, to a lesser extent), and on Issues and Answers (1:30 p.m., ABC), he sits down for a one-on-one interview with White House correspondent Bill Lawrence from the Civil War battlefield at Gettysburg. General Eisenhower* analyzes military tactics in the Vietnam War, discusses the final volume in his memoirs, and talks politics, including "a plan for limiting Senate and Congressional terms of office." Ah, Ike always was a man ahead of his time.
*As a five-star general, Eisenhower was given the choice as to what title he wished to use following his presidency. He always chose to be referred to as "General" rather than "President."
*As a five-star general, Eisenhower was given the choice as to what title he wished to use following his presidency. He always chose to be referred to as "General" rather than "President."
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| From left: Beame, Lindsay, Buckley |
*I've used this line many times over the years myself. Although there are those who would have preferred I stop with "I am satisfied to sit back."
There's no guest listed for Face the Nation (9:30 a.m., CBS), but a quick Google search reveals that it was Alabama Attorney General Richmond Flowers, who's there to discuss the trial of KKK member Collie Leroy Wilkins for the murder of civil rights worker Viola Liuzzo following the march from Montgomery to Selma. Wilkins' first trial ended in a hung jury, and the moderate Flowers, a proponent of civil rights legislation, has announced that he will personally take over the prosecution of the retrial because, as state AG, he won't be subject to the pressures that local prosecutors might face. The sensational case has drawn worldwide attention, as well as a move to have the KKK investigated by the House Un-American Activities Committee. Wilkins is never convicted by an Alabama court (thus escaping the electric chair), but is found guilty of civil rights violations in a subsequent Federal trial.
*Fun fact: Flowers' son, Richmond Jr., was a football player at Tennessee and went on to play in the NFL for the Dallas Cowboys and the New York Giants. (He chose Tennessee over Alabama because of his father's controversial politics.) He was also a star hurdler, a contender to make the 1968 Olympic team (a torn hamstring prevented him from qualifying), and was known at the time as "the fastest white boy alive."
Let's continue with the sports theme for a moment. The World Series has ended, and now the spotlight turns fully to football. (Another sign of how the times have changed; today, it's the World Series that fights for a place in the spotlight.) The college game of the week on Saturday features a Southwestern Conference showdown between two of the nation's top teams, #1 Texas and #3 Arkansas (1:00 p.m., NBC). Arkansas, after blowing a 20-0 lead, rallies to defeat Texas 27-24. Four years later, the two teams will play "The Game of the Century" for the national championship; once again, Arkansas jumps out to a lead, but Texas rallies in the fourth quarter to win the game and the national title, 15-14. Today, the SWC is but a distant memory, while the two teams compete in the Southeastern Conference.
I discussed musical tastes earlier in the "Sullivan vs. The Palace" feature; Monday night offers us plenty of the same, beginning with Hullabaloo (7:30 p.m., NBC), where host Paul Anka welcomes the Supremes, Leslie Uggams, the Back Porch Majority, and jazz dancer David Winters. Later, it's the 18th season premiere of Perry Como's Kraft Music Hall (9:00 p.m., NBC), with Perry joining singer Nancy Ames in a look back at the radio days of Kraft Music Hall, beginning with the Bing Crosby and Al Jolson days of the Thirties and Forties, and through the Fifties, when Perry himself took over. And I'll bet you get plenty of fall recipes during the commercial breaks.
*Elsewhere in this week's issue is this ad for the John F. Kennedy half-dollar coin set, a valuable collectors item as silver is being phased out of coin-making. Is the placement a coincidence? And what about that Dallas mailing address?
I couldn't possibly get through this week's music programs without stopping on Thursday to see the unexpecdted spectacle of Hedy Lamarr hosting Shindig (7:30 p.m., ABC), with the Dave Clark Five, the Kingsmen, Joe Tex, Brenda Holloway, and Lulu and the Luvvers. Over on NBC, Dean Martin (10:00 p.m.) has a stellar lineup with Louis Armstrong and his combo, Robert Goulet, Lainie Kazan, the Kirby Stone Four, the dance team of Brascia and Tybee, and the comic contortionists Trio Leema. And if you didn't get enough Frank Sinatra on The Hollywood Palace, there's more, with the network TV premiere of the original Ocean's 11 (9:00 p.m.), the Rat Pack romp co-starring the aforementioned Dean Martin, Sammy Davis Jr., Peter Lawford, Joey Bishop, Angie Dickinson, and a movie-stealing Cesar Romero.
Awards shows haven't quite progressed to the point where they're stand-alone programs. The Golden Globes, for example, were a feature for several years on The Andy Williams Show, and on Friday night the Country Western Music Awards are handed out on The Jimmy Dean Show (10:00 p.m., ABC). Buck Owens, Merle Haggard, Norma Jean Beasler, Del Reeves, and the team of Roy Drusky and Priscilla Mitchell are among the performers, and Tex Ritter and Roy Acuff are on hand as presenters. The show runs the typical one hour; nowadays, it seems as if there's a Country music awards show every other week. What's that? You say there is?
Some interesting feedback in the Letters to the Editor section regarding a writer's roundtable featured in an issue that I wrote about many years ago. There's an interesting response from Howard Bell, the NAB Code Authority Director, who takes issue with the idea that the Code is responsible for the decline in TV drama. "[T]he TV code is not designed to stifle creativity in writers, nor does it do so in actual practice," Bell writes, quoting extensively from Section 1 of the Code: "It is in the interest of television as a vital medium to encourage and promote the broadcast of programs presenting genuine artistic or literary material, valid moral and social issues, significant controversial and challenging adult themes." While the Code isn't responsible for television's premier dramas, Bell writes, neither has it been a deterrent. If there has been a decline in the quality of television drama, there are undoubtedly reasons for it, but "from the Code Authority point of view, the excuse of censorship through the TV Code is misleading."
Leo Monaghan of Springfield, Massachusetts, also sees the issue of censorship as a straw man, pointing out that "Movies, paperbacks and magazines have amply shown that elimination of censorship is not the answer to mediocrity, but merely an invitation to degradation." According to Monaghan, the answer is not license, but talent. And while Maureen Bendich of Saratoga, Colorado, says that the article was "appalling and stimulating," suggesting that she sympathizes with the writers, she says it also "confirms my impressions that there is no room left for creativity." Finally, Robert Shaw, a "visiting Briton" writing from Jamaica, New York (the Robert Shaw, perhaps?), finds the whole thing ironic, having "been lectured on the 'evils' of government-controlled TV [i.e. the BBC] compared to the free enterprise system, as practiced here where 'no censorship exists.'" It's not clear whether Shaw finds the complaining or the assertion of no censorship to be the most humorous.
And they could use it, according to Samuel Grafton, in the first of a three-part series on how television covers the news. His question: does TV news really give the viewer the whole story? His answer: no. It's quite interesting, and another indication of how times have changed, that the article is full of comparisons between television and newspapers. NBC's Reuven Frank, for example, says that "A television news show is a front page. It is not a full news service, like a complete newspaper." Washington correspondent Clark Mollenhoff, who covers the capital for the Des Moines Register and Tribune and the Minneapolis Star and Tribune, says, "They touch the surface," but to do anything further would take "depth knowledge of a subject, which they don't have, or don't have time to acquire." Even Walter Cronkite, in a recent interview on the educational station WNDT, admits that "I do not think we cover the news"
Grafton compares the newspaper reporter, who "works through contacts he develops over the years, with many people, great and small," with the television reporter, who "comes through like a parade, with his truck and his cameras." Complicating things is television's fear of boring viewers, requiring them to reduce stories "to a small enough compass so that the viewer can take all of it," unlike the newspaper reader who commits himself to a thorough review of the daily paper. For the same reason, television news avoids stories that lack mass attention—"news of music, of the theater, paintings and new books." As Frank says, although "[t]here's no subject that can't be covered on television," it should only be covered if it's of interest to the layman—"not if it is interested only in a specialist's way."
By comparison, local television news is seen as a strength of the medium. Now, most sane people today consider local news to be pretty much, not to put it too delicately, crap. The "if it bleeds, it leads" mentality, combined with the boy-girl happy news anchor teams, most of which look as if they're auditioning for a fashion runway rather than the newsdesk, has heavily influenced network television. However, the advantage that local news had in the mid-1960s was that its audience was interested—these were stories that had a direct impact on viewers, ranging from commentaries to reviews of new plays.
The lack of commentary on television news is particularly striking, since the three major anchors—Cronkite, Huntley, and Brinkley—all have five-minute daily radio spots in which they often make pointed comments. Why radio and not TV? Huntley acknowledges that "We're still feeling our way on television. We'd feel naked on TV doing a one-and-a-half-minute think piece." Lacking commentary, there's always hard-hitting reporting, but even here, television falls short. According to Raymond Brand, an editor at the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, it's because TV newsmen are too worried about their own images, too "dignified" and respectful, to lower themselves into the muck. CBS's Fred Friendly hopes this changes; "We want yeast. We want savvy. We want what comes out of a reporter's deep experience. Our reporters are going to dig, not just read."
Much as was the case with that drama writers' roundtable, the main obstacle to television news seems to be a sort of censorship, a reluctance to go beyond self-set limitations. But with expenditures of over $100 million annually, it's clear that television news won't remain static.
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