Entries Tagged 'television' ↓

A little while back, NYT film critic Manohla Dargis, writing about her earliest passions, explained (without intending to) why most of us are not addicted to, say, PBS’s NewsHour and NPR but rather to, say, the Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer and Countdown with Keith Olbermann—that is to say: we’re drawn to infotainment rather than “the news.”

It has to do with the human need to let our imaginations roam free with the aid of storytelling:

… Comic-Con [is] where people can give physical form to the passions that the rest of the year remain safely hidden from the cruel world. This is where you let your freak flag fly without getting beaten up by the playground bullies. …

I never became a comic book geek; then, as now, I got my fix from watching movies. [e.a.]

Whatever form of narrative we’re addicted to, we all need our fixes. We are all suckers for a good story. Marketers of all stripes, marketers of everything—from Viagra to the iPhone to the Iraq war to the Bourne Ultimatum to jihad to celebrity gossip—take advantage of our love of spectacle and our desire to suspend disbelief and our need to abandon ourselves to the pleasure and pain of feeling for someone else so that we will be alleviated, if for just a little while, of the burden of being ourselves.

When it comes to TV, the news as a narrative form just doesn’t do it for people; sensational storytelling—infotainment—does.

The garishly red, white, and blue Fox cable “news” channel may not be fair and balanced, but it sure is popular, TVNewser reports:

Fox News Channel had 13 of the top 15 shows on cable news in May, and 9 of the top 10 in the 25-54 demo, the program ranker shows.

Larry King and Lou Dobbs are CNN’s only shows in the top 15.

Here’s the complete May 2007 cable “news” program ranker.

Meanwhile, over on the broadcast network side, things look particularly grim for NBC:

Numbingly low Nielsen ratings for last week made it clear why NBC this week hired a new team to oversee its prime-time entertainment department.

The once-proud Peacock network averaged only 5.6 million viewers last week, less than half of prime-time leader Fox. Since 1991, NBC has had only two weeks with fewer viewers, and they were both during network TV’s summer slumber.

Ouch. However, if you look at the top ten shows of last week, you can see a winning formula (perhaps NBC just hasn’t hit on it; perhaps something else is to blame—who knows?): five out of ten are competitions. [ e.a.]

For the week of May 21-27, the top 10 shows, their networks and viewerships: “American Idol” (Wednesday), Fox, 30.74 million; “American Idol (Tuesday), Fox, 25.33 million; “Dancing With the Stars Results (Tuesday), ABC, 22.96 million; “Dancing With the Stars” (Monday), ABC, 20.19 million; “NCIS,” CBS, 14.14 million; “Lost,” ABC, 13.86 million; “CSI: Crime Scene Investigation,” CBS, 13.79 million; “Heroes,” NBC, 13.48 million; Movie: “Jesse Stone Sea Change,” CBS, 13.01 million; “The Bachelor,” ABC, 12.67 million.

The inherent tension of competition is of course the very lifeblood of entertainment. Waiting in anticipation to find out who will win American Idol is an experience that was shared by 31 million people last week. In a “mass of niches” culture, that’s a lot of people who are choosing good old-fashioned spectacle.

Still, it’s a dog-eat-dog world out there in the early 21st century and pop culture purveyors are stretching to anticipate what the audience will crave next.

In the Netherlands, some producers are choosing to slake the audience’s apparently voracious appetite for sensationalistic fare with rancid, rotten meat.

he Big Donor Show, a reality show that will air as a single episode on Dutch broadcaster BNN this upcoming Friday, will follow a 37-year-old woman in need of a new kidney who picks one from three potential donors based on their history, profile and conversations with their families and friends, Reuters reported Tuesday. In addition, viewers will reportedly be able to text message the woman during the live show to help her determine the best donor. …

“It’s a crazy idea,” Joop Atsma, of Dutch’s ruling Christian Democrat Party, told BBC News on Tuesday. “It can’t be possible that, in the Netherlands, people vote about who’s getting a kidney.”

Remember when I said the world is upside down? That’s what I meant. But some folks think it’s A-okay that “up” is “down”:

However some see The Big Donor Show — which is produced by Endemol, the recently-sold global reality TV and game show giant behind reality shows like Big Brother, Extreme Makeover: Home Edition and Fear Factor — as a way to raise awareness about the shortage of viable kidney donors in the Netherlands.

Yes, that would be the PRopaganda (TM) pitch. I’m not buying.

They just won’t reject Rudy, goddammit. (He may play the Theme Song from 9/11 everywhere he goes, but they don’t know him like we know him, says New York magazine.)

Enter the Politico: Fuggedabout Rudy! He’ just too liberal for you!

Giuliani-Appointed Judges Tend to Lean to the Left

When Rudy Giuliani faces Republicans concerned about his support of gay rights and legal abortion, he reassures them that he is a conservative on the decisions that matter most.

“I would want judges who are strict constructionists because I am,” he told South Carolina Republicans last month. “Those are the kinds of justices I would appoint — Scalia, Alito and Roberts.”

But most of Giuliani’s judicial appointments during his eight years as mayor of New York were hardly in the model of Chief Justice John Roberts or Samuel Alito — much less aggressive conservatives in the mold of Antonin Scalia.

A Politico review of the 75 judges Giuliani appointed to three of New York state’s lower courts found that Democrats outnumbered Republicans by more than 8 to 1.

Scared yet? Well, McCain just announced. Sorta. In the “newly usual way” (according to the NYT’s Adam Nagourney): on Letterman.

How old school (hat tip: BuzzMachine).

This is rich.

Margaret Hodge, a British cabinet minister who claims to have disagreed with Tony Blair’s foreign policy since 1998, has accused him of following a policy of “moral imperialism”—i.e., “exporting British attitudes and ideas to other countries,” according to The Times (London), which also reports that she later denied having made this remark.

Whether or not she actually said this is, frankly, irrelevant. It’s what Blair has been challenging, in speech after speech, as stubborn and bizarre Western “opinion.” Implicit in Hodge’s controversial remark is her perspective—that the West’s values are alien and unwelcome in the rest of the world and that we’re bullying people and trying to shove these things down “their” throat.

I was going to write a high-toned, morally outraged post, with links to Tony Blair’s most recent speech in defense of Western values and Shelby Steele’s Essay “White Guilt and the Western Past.” Oops—I guess I just did.

Perhaps I can make amends by offering up an example of what I consider to be moral imperialism: MSNBC’s breathless Special on Scientology, featuring TomKat, the Camera-ready Castle at Bracciano, fashions by Giorgio Armani, guest list by [insert name of Cruise's PRopaganda (TM) Team here: they have just earned themselves a gigantic bonus, 'cause The Glamorous Scientology Wedding of TomKat has totally hijacked the airwaves], with stupendously reverent questions by anchor Alex Witt and soothing responses from the Rev. John Carmichael (”Church of Scientology”)

scroll down for an update

Well, I think you’re wrong. I’m not saying CNN is conservative or anything (though after you read the rest of this post, you might well think the network is trying to improve its bona fides—you know: just in case things don’t go their way…down the road…).

What I’m saying is that the agenda of CNN and every other purveyor of “news” is to grab your attention and to entertain you—any way it can. To provide infotainment for your viewing pleasure…or displeasure. Take your pick.

For example, there’s this [you need to click on the link to get the essence of this post], which was heavily promoted on Paula Zahn’s program last night[emphasis mine]:

ZAHN: Let’s talk about a special you have on…extremism in the [Arabic language] media. …

BECK: You know, I — I really, truly believe that the media in general has been this close to criminally negligent on reporting the truth on what’s going on. They’re not showing us images that we need to see. …

ZAHN: Wait. You are them [i.e., "the media"].

BECK: I know. Isn’t that…

(LAUGHTER)

BECK: That’s sick, isn’t it?

(LAUGHTER)

ZAHN: So, you’re — you’re inflicting some blame on yourself.

BECK: No. No, I’m not — but I’m not a journalist. I’m — I’m — you know, I’m a rodeo clown. You know that.

And, when I’m sitting here in a media source, and I see videotape that I have never seen before, and I say, well, gee, how come I’m not seeing this? This is important stuff, images that will shock and horrify you.

Like, I am going to show you a tape — a piece of a tape here. This is in one piece of the special tonight about what is happening to the children in the Middle East and how they are being brainwashed. This is a three-and-a-half-year girl — three-and-a-half-year-old girl.

They go on to show a clip, courtesy of Hezbollah TV, of a little Muslim girl describing Jews as “monkeys and apes.” Shocking, I know—unless you’ve been reading LGF since its inception. Which most viewers of CNN have not been doing, so it’s new to their audience. Which is the whole point.

There’s a whole new sub-genre of nfotainment: the kind that’s designed to get your blood boiling. At least Glenn Beck owns up to being a “rodeo clown.” A certain pompous someone over on MSNBC

should get a clue.

[On the other hand: there's this serious conversation, which I haven't yet read, about "blurring the line between news, comedy, and commentary," in which Mr. O features prominently. Right up my alley. I'll report back after I've read it.]

update: When I posted this earlier today, I had no idea that there is a mini-war going on between Olbermann and Beck—or, rather, that Olbermann took aim at Beck yesterday for being the “Worst Person in the World.”

Anyhow: he did just that, for a segment in which Beck interviewed the first Muslim to be elected to the Congress, Keith Ellison. Read all about it here on Media Matters (which is on Olbermann’s “side” in this “debate”).

The only people you ever seem Olbermann interviewing are people who agree with him. Why is it that Olbermann always attacks people from behind the camera and never face-to-face? Could it be that he wouldn’t know how to have a dialogue with someone who disagrees with him? Just wondering…

In Lebanon, there are six licensed television stations—one that speaks for Maronite Christians, one for Sunni Muslims, one for Shia who don’t belong to Hezbollah, Al Manar (HezbollahTV), a communist station, and the government-backed station. Here’s how they report:

Because of the high degree of politicization of Lebanese society, current political events are covered in a way that supports the views of each television station with no respect for professional codes and ethics. An early published version of the report by the UN international commission to investigate the assassination of Rafiq Hariri noted that “certain Lebanese media had the unfortunate and constant tendency to spread rumors, nurture speculation, offer information as facts without prior checking and at times use materials obtained under dubious circumstances from sources that had been briefed by the Commission, thereby creating distress and anxiety among the public at large.”

Sounds like great infotainment!

Read the whole article—it’s fascinating. Among the tidbits I learned:

Television dominates the flow of information in Lebanon. According to recent figures by an authoritative study, about 65 percent of Lebanese adults view two to four hours per day, and about 82 percent of the population views television on a daily basis, …

In 2003, terrestrial television penetration was at approximately 99 percent of all households. Cable television penetration is among the highest in the world, and is estimated to be as high as 79 percent of all households.