Pam Linn
Howard Rosenberg’s May 6 L.A. Times TV column, “UPN-13 News for Dummies,” skewered KCOP’s 10 p.m. show as “a newscast for lobotomies” and its “goosed-up reporters” offering “crime and sex galore” in a “thick style smothering a thin Frisbee of content.” Amen.
Furthering the ongoing debate over entertainment versus hard news, visuals versus veracity, Rosenberg suggests, “What about watching for farce? Where is a laugh track when you need one?”
I couldn’t resist taking a peek, though the program conflicts with several shows I watch regularly at 10 p.m., the theory being that children should be in bed at that hour. It’s hard to figure out what age group KCOP is going for here with such daring exposes as “L.A. Werewolves” and (last Thursday) reporter Gina Silva’s brush with “L.A. Witch Doctors” who, she said, “prey on Latinas and lead to fraud and sexual abuse.” Silva “went undercover to expose an actual exorcism” and visited a witch doctor (three times at $100-plus a pop), setting up a secretly filmed session at a local hotel where the witch doctor was going to bathe Silva to cleanse her spirit. Silva bailed before stripping down, shoved a microphone in the WD’s face (He was sitting fully clothed on the closed toilet.) and accused him of what? Not doing anything of any interest to anyone? What a snore.
But the dumbing down of news programs in general and local news in particular, at the behest of TV execs who apparently believe people watch news to be titillated at ten and enlivened at eleven, is still an issue. Hence the recent failed attempt by the Mouseketeers at ABC to replace Ted Koppel with David Letterman. Even on public television, where efforts to make “Washington Week in Review” edgier were hooted down by subscribers, Louis Rukeyser has been replaced on “Wall Street Week.” What’s next? Jay Leno replaces Charlie Rose? Surely KCET subscribers wouldn’t hold still for that. At least I’d demand a refund on my membership.
What the suits seem to be missing here is that there’s plenty of entertainment value in straight-ahead news. If they don’t see the hilarity in the antics of elected officials and inept criminals (sometimes these are different folks), they haven’t the sense of humor to recognize life imitating artless newscasts. For instance, the mail box pipe bomber, Luke Helder, who waved and smiled at arresting officers and picked targets to form a smiley face on the map. And Botox injections that can eliminate a smiley face along with the wrinkles it produced. And animal rights activists who protest the release of a zoo’s medical records claiming that would infringe on the privacy rights of a dead giraffe. They may also join the push in the state Legislature to ban animal names as well as American Indian and other ethnic names from school sports teams. So Bears and Cubs may go the way of Redskins and Braves.
One news program that sees the entertainment value of just about everything news worthy is a news quiz show on National Public Radio (Saturday mornings in most markets) that is a laugh riot with, obviously, no visuals, no car chases, bombs, sex, lies or videotape.
Questions: Who is President Bush sending to East Timor for its Independence Day celebration? Who gave grooming tips such as “You should wear your hair like mine” to the President at the White House Correspondents Dinner? What sports hero was eulogized as having “never challenged somebody else’s idea” when he died last week at 28? Answers: Former President Bill Clinton, Ozzy Osbourne and Seattle Slew (last surviving Triple Crown winner).
Other questions-such as the Listener Limerick Challenge, where the call-in listener has to fill in the last word of a limerick written by Wait, Wait staffers-were taken, not from hyped-up TV newscasts, but from stodgy old newspapers. One involved Yale’s conference focused on how chickens have shaped the course of world history. Turns out chickens have a complicated social structure. If there is no rooster in the hen house, the hens reportedly stop laying eggs and one hen will crow and strut and generally behave like a rooster. Sound familiar? Question: At the chicken conference, scholarly papers are to be given featuring what fowl feature? Answer: Thinking like a chicken. Perhaps the scientists should have interviewed the folks at UPN-13.