Hello, Viewers!
Nearly everyone watches TV. And those that don't are often
strangely proud of it. We in America have this impression that
we are the only country to be so tele-focused. But several
studies have shown that folks around the world are just as
centered on the tube. The U.S. isn't even the country with the
biggest TV audience anymore; the People's Republic of China has a
nightly TV audience of just over 1 billion, who watch an average
of 131 minutes a day.
A recent study showed that Britons are glued to the box,
with more than a fifth spending as much time watching television
as they do working, a survey showed Friday.
And, in Iran, an astonishing number of people risk arrest by
installing rooftop satellite dishes in order to catch more
interesting programs than allowed by the local religious
authorities. (The mullahs just hate "Baywatch," though one
wonders how they know about it at all if they haven't seen it
themselves.)
There was a time when no self-respecting movie star would
ever appear on TV. But these days, television is the big show
for talent these days, mostly because it is where the real money
is. Which might explain why right-wing political pundit Rush
Limbaugh recently auditioned for a spot as a sportscaster for
"Monday Night Football." No, I am not making this up.
"I surprised myself. It was even more fun than I thought it
would be. This would really be a hoot," he told the Washington
Post.
Sadly for Rush, we hear he failed his audition because he
was unable to speak positively about any players on the left side
of the line.
Thank you credits this week include: Jerry Taff, Keiko
Amakawa, Tim McChain, Carol Becwar, Kerry Miller, Bruce Gonzo,
Bob Martens, Kathleen Beckmann, Kaori Itako, Jan Michalski, Peter
J. Adler, Laura Hong Li, Howard Lesniak, Joshua Brink, and Anna
Macareno. Also, bye (for a little while) and best wishes to
Diana Lee, who will be doing her TV watching in Holland,
Indonesia and Australia over the next few months. Now, don't
touch that dial, but stay with us for a few minutes - or at least
enough of a daypart to boost our ratings a little.
Have A Great Week,
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"For most of my life, the only thing lower than anyone
in the radio business was a circus clown. If you
weren't in the movie business or TV, you didn't even
get invited to the C-list parties."
- CBS Network CEO and radio veteran
MEL KARMAZIN, after announcing
strong revenue growth for the
broadcasting giant.
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TV FOR FUN AND PROPHET...
----------------------
In the past couple of years, there have been many stories -
mostly in newspapers and magazines - about "the death of TV."
While the rumors of that death do seem pretty exaggerated, it is
clear that the rise of cable and the Internet has had a serious
effect. For one thing, it's hard to find a national ad on TV
these days that doesn't include a reference to a website. Maybe
more surprising is that some saw this coming:
"I believe we will see a combination form of radio and
TV tied to what we might call "home computers," which
will not only enable us to get sight and sound at will,
but store and recall at out leisure all of the
enjoyment and information we could desire at any given
moment."
- George Comte, President and General
Manager of WTMJ-TV (Milwaukee, WI)
in a speech -- in 1966(!). Comte
died in 1980.
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NO, REALLY??!
----------
"Police are treating the fires at two Hindu Temples
last night as arson. In the first case a petrol bomb
was thrown at the building..."
- Announcer on BBC Radio Four's
"Today" programme.
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ALL THOSE CREDITS...
-----------------
It takes the efforts of a large number of people to put even
a local TV newscast on the air. We recognize what some of the
people do, but what about all those people behind the scenes?
Here's a viewer's guide to who does what:
All the Assignments Editor wants to know:
"How fast can you get it shot?"
All the Producer wants to know:
"How short can you make it?"
All the Photographer wants to know:
"Do I have to set up lights?"
All the Editor wants to know:
"Where are the cutaway shots?"
All the Engineer wants to know:
"Can we make all this equipment work just a little
longer?"
All the Reporter wants to know:
"Can I sell it to the network?"
All the Anchor wants to know:
"If it's a long lead-in, will I get to read it?"
All the News Director wants to know:
"Will we get sued?"
All the Station Manager wants to know:
"Will it cost us a sponsor?"
All the Newspaper TV Critic wants to know:
"Can I make fun of it?"
All the Subject of the story wants to know:
"Will it be fair?"
All the Viewer wants to know:
"Is that reporter doing her hair differently?"
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A RARE MOMENT OF SANITY IN THE NEWS
-----------------------------------
The pressures of modern television to get everything right
away take away the reflection and analysis of journalism. That's
why it was refreshing to see the honesty when chirpy NBC reporter
Maria Shriver shoved a michrophone in the face of Senator John
McCain, just after he learned that his poor showing in several
primary ballots had cost him any chance at running for president
of the U.S.
"How do you feel?" she asked, reciting one of TV's dumbest
stock questions.
"Please get out of here," was the answer from McCain.
- Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
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Will someone tell me how many days it takes before
breaking news becomes continuing coverage?
- The Vent
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APPEALING TO A WIDER RANGE OF VIEWERS...
-------------------------------------
Here in the U.S. - not all that many years ago - there were
only three commercial television networks. That has changed,
with cable, satellite, low-powered TV stations, video rentals
and, now, the Internet stealing away an increasing slice of the
audience that once was cut just three ways. That makes it ever
harder to sell the commercials that pay the bills.
But a British cat food maker may have stumbled onto the
answer - you just have to retool your advertising to appeal to a
wider range of viewers. They are, as the modern cliche has it,
'thinking outside the box.' Way outside...
The 40-second ad features pictures of fish, mice, birds and
a ball of string set against a soundtrack of meows, tweets and
mice-like squeaks. Right - this commercial is not intended to be
understood by humans, but is intended solely for their four-
footed companions. The commercial is just for cats.
Whiskas, the cat food maker, also ran a 10-second prequel to
the ad to urge owners to get their cats stationed in front of the
TV set, according to ad agency M&C Saatchi, which created the
$825,000 spot.
"One of the conundrums of pet food advertising has been that
we are advertising to purchasers who don't consume and consumers
who don't purchase," agency chief Maurice Saatchi said.
The advertisers are betting that the sight of their pets
glued to the screen will get owners to buy that particular brand
of cat food, the agency said. (Reuters)
[ So what's next? A K9 cop show for dogs? A special
edition of "The Undersea World of Jacques Cousteau for
goldfish? ]
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I'M SORRY, WE'VE DONE ALL WE CAN...
--------------------------------
Paramedics in the British town of Wolverhampton got a 999
emergency call and rushed to answer.
On arriving at the address, they found a distraut family,
and a broken TV.
"The occupants were complaining that their TV had broken
down," said a spokesperson for the West Midlands Ambulance
Service. "The family concerned seem to have misunderstood the
999 service." (Reuters)
[ Or, they may have just anticipated the
effect of them getting on each other's
nerves... ]
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IT'S ALL IN THE GAME...
--------------------
One of the "hot new trends" on TV these days is game shows.
The fact that this was a hot new trend in the 1950's is hardly
ever mentioned. That ended in scandal and cancellation for
nearly all of the game shows of that time.
But scandal hasn't stopped this new crop, not even with the
flap over the bizarre game show "Who Wants To Marry A Multi-
Millionaire?" For those of you outside the U.S., or those of you
who have been meditating in a monastery in Tibet for the past few
months, this is the show that proposed to marry a "poor but
deserving" woman to a millionaire she had never met - on live TV.
It was a kind of weird combination of a beauty contest, "Who
Wants To Be A Millionaire?," and "The Dating Game."
The show's only airing ended in controversy, especially when
it came out that the guy had been convicted of threatening a
former girlfriend and wasn't really a millionaire, strictly
speaking. Which was OK, since his new bride's first impulse on
returning from the all expenses paid honeymoon was to go to court
for an annulment, saying that she never thought of it as a real
marriage anyway. Translation: she did it for the money. The
same reason she signed a big money deal to pose naked for
"Playboy" this Fall.
As Jay Thomas, the host of the show, said, "It's funny.
When the magazine comes out, it'll be the first time [the groom]
will get to see her naked."
It may be hard to believe, but there are TV shows around
that are even worse. Even worse than Jerry Springer. In fact,
some of these make his freak show look restrained. How about:
- Two competing shows in Peru that had contestants doing
various weird stunts. How weird? Oh, like the two bikini-
clad women whose big money stunt was to lie in a vat of frog
urine. Or, the elderly man who won by wearing a diaper and
pedalling a tiny tricycle around the studio. It must have
been worth it, he won a fabulous $20 for the stunt.
- A current show on the CBS network in the U.S. called
"Survivor." This is basically a cross between "Who Want's
To Be A Millionaire," "Gilligan's Island" and "Lord of the
Flies" The plan is to maroon 16 people on an island near
Borneo and have them compete to see who is allowed to remain
until the end. The network hasn't said what they'll do if
the folks take up something inconvenient, like cannabalism.
- A Dutch TV show called "Big Brother" that took nine ordinary
people and stuck them in a house that was wired for...
Well, for lack of a better term, voyeurism. A flock of
cameras and michrophones picked up their every move.
Broadcast by Veronica, a Dutch commercial station, the
program became an overnight phenomenon, getting huge
ratings.
- A show on Japanese TV called "London Boots Love Aid
Variety," a one-hour variety program for teens. Among its
features, the show routinely presses contestants for details
of past sexual exploits and has young women winning prizes
by kissing. It was recently voted as the worst show for
kids on Japanese television. More to the commercial point,
McDonald's has pulled all advertising from the show.
- A Finnish TV dating show named "Napakymppi, where a young
woman won an all expense paid "dream vacation" with a
convicted bank robber.
"There's a kind of desperation about it," said Grant Tinker,
who served as chairman of NBC for six years in the 1980's.
"...the approach seems to be you just do something bizarre and
hope that it works."
"At the end of those two hours, if you turned down the
volume of your TV and you listened real carefully, you could hear
Western civilization crumbling around you."
- ROBERT THOMPSON, director of
Syracuse University's Center for
the Study of Popular Television, on
Fox's "Who Wants to Marry a
Multi-Millionaire" special.
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If we can't compress the awards shows into one, can we
get an "Award Show Channel" so we can ignore all of
them, all the time?
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NOW, THAT'S ENTERTAINMENT, EH?
-----------------------------
The Nationalistic New Party has been making waves in Canada
over the loss of jobs to their southern neighbor, the U.S. To
prove his case, an official of the New Party had a video made, at
a cost of $35,000, to show how many jobs had been lost.
And that he did, since he contracted to make the video with
a production company across the border in the U.S., costing
several Canadian jobs. (AP)
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RATINGS RANTINGS...
----------------
"Want to get rid of Saddam Hussein? Put him in the NBC fall
lineup."
- NATHAN LANE, unhappy that the
network dumped his sitcom "Encore!
Encore!"
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A DO-IT-YOURSELF NEWS STORY...
---------------------------
Put these items together, and use your imagination to figure
out what happened:
a). Skycam9: A camera on a rooftop in downtown Eugene,
Oregon that is controlled from a local TV station.
b). Hilton Hotel: Across the Street from Skycam9.
c). Videotape: A medium used for recording visual images.
d). Help wanted: Four positions open at a local TV
station.
Your Final Answer? ...
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© 2000 by Bill Becwar. All Rights Reserved.
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