Mr. Smith's Neighborhood

It's a beautiful day in the Neighborhood for teachers everywhere! Anything and everything is fair game!

Shock Jocks, The Media, Rush Limbaugh and to HELL with NOW December 18, 2007

Filed under: ABC,aging,America,Australia,boobs,botox,CBS,Chet Huntley,CNN,David Brinkley,Democrats,Drudge Report,George Soros,Hillary Clinton,Hillaryland,Journalism,Media Matters for America,moose turd pie,National Organization of Women,NBC,New York City,news,Nightline,NOW,piercings,Presidential election,primary election,radio,radio advertising,Republicans,Roone Arledge,Rush Limbaugh,Shock Jock,silicon,steroids,Ted Koppel,Utah Phillips,WABC,Walter Cronkite,WCBS,WNBC,WNET,WNEW,women,WOR,WPIX — bluboo @ 10:30 pm

Pulling the Plug on Electronic and Print News

Having spent a few years on this planet (just enough, not too many), I had the joy of growing up as television evolved in the 1960’s. I had a chance to watch some of the gods of television news during my youth: Chet Huntley, David Brinkley, Walter Cronkite and others. I don’t remember Edward R. Murrow, but I learned of him studying journalism in college.

Through the 1970’s and into the 1980’s, the forces that made television news reliable and balanced began to mutate. One memorable event was when Roone Arledge, the genius behind ABC’s Wide World of Sports, became the news guru for the network. This marked a progression from news as a public service to news as entertainment (and a profitable source for advertising revenues).

Another memorable moment (in the midst of tremendous sadness) was when the American Embassy in Tehran was stormed in 1979 and ABC began running an 11:30 PM review of the day’s events called America Held Hostage: Day xx with Ted Koppel. Although we were later spared the indignity of this ridiculous title when the program was renamed Nightline, we have since been subjected to a never-ending stream of ludicrous monikers for heart-breaking news events and boring news stories (doesn’t AMERICA DECIDES sound so wonderfully thrilling?).

The final event worth noting was the birth and expansion of cable/satellite TV and the swelling of available channels into the hundreds. As a kid growing up outside New York City, we were blessed with ABC, NBC and CBS along with three independents (WOR, WPIX, and WNEW) plus WNET, the PBS station. How the heck did we survive with so few choices?

Network news programs at 6:00 PM were soon preceded by local news. Local news programs expanded to an hour. Ted Turner launched CNN. Before we knew it, we had talking heads shouting news and fluff at us 24/7 on dozens of channels, each competing for advertising revenues and audience shares by shoving every conceivable story under our noses. Thus, the mutation of true news stories into “no-news” news, sound bytes, spin and every imaginable human interest story possible.

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