The Network Evening Sewing Circle

Finally, someone stood up for at least a modicum of integrity in television journalism.



If you haven't seen it yet, check out the above video from earlier this week. MSNBC reporter Mika Brzezinski has a mini-breakdown of sorts when producers keep trying to make Paris Hilton's release the lead story on the Morning Joe program. Good for her. It's insane that network and cable news have been hijacked by an item that should have never left the general vicinity of Page-Six.

A similar situation was alluded to recently in a Washington Post story about Dan Rather and his remarks regarding the Katie Couric era of The CBS Evening News.

Not that I really care that much though. I can't tell you the last time I watched a network news broadcast; maybe Couric's first day. Not only is it ludicrous to think that thirty minutes is enough to discuss a given day's happenings, but to waste that condensed interval with stories that have zero to little effect on any one's daily lives is borderline criminal. Men and women are dying in a desert half-way around the world, all three branches of the government have simultaneously decided that now is a great time to be incompetent, and China is apparently going out of its way to try and poison us and our pets. I can't think of a better time for in-depth reporting on a scatter-brained socialite's "bad luck".

Perhaps it's a conspiracy. Every minute that these sewing circle talking heads spend gabbing about Paris Hilton is one less minute we get to see how inept our elected representatives are at actually representing us. Who knows, maybe the real reason VP Cheney is keeping a lid on his documents is because he doesn't want it known that he ordered Hilton's arrest in an attempt to change the topic.

Of course, we the viewers are probably as much to blame as the producers, or at least says another Post columnist, Lisa de Moraes. But regardless of whose fault is is, is it really that hard to figure out why network news ratings are tanking?

"The Closer" Re-Opens

The third season of the The Closer started this week. Though it can sometimes feel a little too formulaic, this has always been a strong show, primarily due to the cast and their portrayal of characters that the writing team has developed quite fully within the limited boundaries of the show's format. My main complaint has been the tendency of the show to be a little gory with it's murder victims, and the new season premiere was no different. I didn't really think it was necessary to focus twice on the corpse of a twelve year old girl who had been stabbed multiple times. In fact, I think it probably could have been a more powerful scene had we not seen her at all, but instead focused more on the reactions of the detectives. We could have gotten as clear a feel for of the situation without having to see the details.

For an example of what I mean check out the final scene of Clint Eastwood's Unforgiven. When Eastwood's character kills Gene Hackman's at point blank range, the camera is from Hackman's point of view looking up the barrel of the gun at Eastwood. Before, during, and after the fatal shot we see nothing but Eastwood's face and it is a much more intense scene than it would have been if we had been forced to witness Hackman take the bullet.

In a different manner, Seinfeld did a similar thing by going out of their way to talk about TV-taboo topics in ways that would pass the censors and not lower themselves to the style of humor that makes Two and a Half Men unwatchable. They did such a good job with those situations that the scenes involved were actually funnier than they would have been it they had gone with the shock-approach.

I'll keep watching The Closer because it's a good show overall, I'll just have to close my eyes for the first few minutes of each episode. I guess there are some advantages to sticking to formula.

Playing Plinko WIth My Heart Strings

And thus endeth an era. I just finished watching Bob Barker's final episode as host of The Price is Right. When I was a kid - and by kid I mean all the way through when I was in high school - I remember watching this show every weekday I happened to be home at 11am.

There's something kinda cool about how quick you unwittingly get sucked into sharing the contestants' excitement. Every ounce of my cynicism was temporarily drained away as I found myself involuntarily smiling and actually enjoying someone elses's good fortune; something you don't get to do with a lot of television these days. It's a feeling I had almost forgotten until I tuned in today; the first time I've watched the show in probably fifteen years.

There's another reason I was glad I tuned in today. It brought back one of my fondest memories of being young - watching The Price is Right over lunch with my grandfather whenever I happened to be visiting. We'd set up in the living room with our TV trays, my grandmother would bring us lunch, and we would spend the next hour guessing prices, discussing prizes and generally just having a good time.

Farewell Bob, and thanks for a least a few minutes of feeling like a kid again. The show won't be quite the same without you.

Putting the "F" in FCC

Who do you root for in a case where everyone's motives are misguided at best and disingenuous at worst?

A federal appeals court in New York has ruled that the FCC overstepped it's authority when it fined the FOX network for airing "fleeting expletives" during separate broadcasts of the Billboard Music Awards. The specifics of the case can be found at all the major news sites. What it boils down to is that the FCC got reprimanded for changing it's policy regarding flying-f*&^s without providing adequate justification for doing so.

Let's just assume for a second that any of the seven people who actually watch the Billboard Music Awards on FOX was actually offended. The odds that the thin-skinned viewer actually wrote the FCC? ZERO. Our friendly special interest groups, who believe their taste and judgement trumps everyone else's, employ individuals whose sole job it is to sit and watch TV all day looking for something they can label "offensive". They then jump on these instances and, through the virtue of their mailing list, convince a lot of people who never actually saw the "offensive" moment to complain to the FCC, thus creating a media firestorm which helps them with their primary goal, which is getting their names in the paper. Oh yeah, and there's also that meaningless fine that doesn't really change anything, but that's just icing. The Simpsons did a great parody of this situation in it's recently broadcast 400th episode, using Ned Flanders, of course, as the watchdog viewer.

Based on that premise the court's decision should be considered good news right? Well, not really, and that's because the issue isn't as much about free speech as the networks and studios would like us to think. It's about them being able to use shock-value to generate publicity and viewers when they need to. If you're gonna fine CBS for letting Janet Jackson's breast slip, then you also have to fine CBS News and all the other outlets who aired it ad-nauseum for the following three weeks.

So, when most of the players involved are little more than publicity craving [deleted fleeting expletive]s, the court's ruling feels less like a win for those of us in favor of personal responsibility and more like yet another opportunity for the media whores to turn some tricks.

Unfortunately, in this decorum-less age where we're blistered with f-bombs while simply walking through the mall, live television will always run the risk of a fleeting-expletive here or there. If they really wanted to change the landscape, the networks would pass the cost of their fines along to the actual offenders. If the Bonos, Janet Jacksons, and Nicole Ritchies of the world were stuck with a bill for displaying their lack of tact, then maybe others might pick up a copy of Emily Post now and then.

Post-script: The New York Times take on this was interesting. Apparently, the court based some of their decision on the fact that President Bush and VP Cheney aren't afraid to let the expletives fly in public:

If President Bush and Vice President Cheney can blurt out vulgar language, then the government cannot punish broadcast television stations for broadcasting the same words in similarly fleeting contexts.

But the judges said vulgar words are just as often used out of frustration or excitement, and not to convey any broader obscene meaning. “In recent times even the top leaders of our government have used variants of these expletives in a manner that no reasonable person would believe referenced sexual or excretory organs or activities.”

Adopting an argument made by lawyers for NBC, the judges then cited examples in which Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney had used the same language that would be penalized under the policy. Mr. Bush was caught on videotape last July using a common vulgarity that the commission finds objectionable in a conversation with Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain. Three years ago, Mr. Cheney was widely reported to have muttered an angry obscene version of “get lost” to Senator Patrick Leahy on the floor of the United States Senate.

Thwngk!!!!

Okay, so the title of this post probably makes no sense unless you try to pronounce it phonetically. Go ahead, give it a try. Still have no clue what I'm talking about? Why it's the sound signalling the return of Top Chef of course; or at least my underwhelming attempt to somehow articulate the show's signature sound of a knife being unsheathed.

Get ready to hear more of that sound, because season three is coming our way on June 13th. In this week's issue of EW, Producer/Head Judge Tom Colicchio promises a more mature group than the socially retarded troupe we had in season two. Thank goodness for that. This show has always been better when it's been more focused on the food and the competition rather than the contestants. Kudos to the producers for recognizing that as a big part of the show's charm and getting the enterprise back on the right track. In fact, according to the same article, most of this season's crop of contestants are relatively well-established in their own right, which leads me to think of how cool a Top Chef: Celebrity Chef Edition might be. How awesome would it be to see the likes of Emeril, Wolfgang Puck, and Cat Cora on the business end of the judges' table? Not much different from Iron Chef: America you say? Guess again my friend. For all it's strengths, Iron Chef has never asked it's contestants to come up with something brilliant given only 30 minutes and $2 for the vending machine.

Also added to the recipe for season three are a new judge and a new locale. A frequent guest judge in seasons past, Ted Allen has signed on to a full-time judging role. His style and humor will be a welcome addition to what is already a respectable judges' table. A table that this season will be located in Miami. It will be interesting to see if the change in coasts has any effect on the sorts of dishes the contestants create.

As a sort of amuse-bouche prior to the start of the new season, Bravo is bringing us a one-night (June 6th) sudden death round of Top Chef featuring a face-off of the top-shelf contestants from seasons one and two. My money is on any team which includes season one winner Harold Dieterle. Ilan and his sidekick Winged Hairdo Boy I'm sure will each prove too much of a distraction to the other for their season two teammates to overcome.