Posted by Leo Morris on August 25, 2005 at 07:16 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack this analyst, who thinks the obituary for the network evening news is premature, though the combined audience is down to 25 million viewers from 34 million a decade ago. But I think Jeff Jarvis' vision of a post-media age that takes us back to tribal story telling is a stretch, though fascinating. It's worth remembering that Peter Jennings was once derided as anchorboy, just another pretty news reader, and ended up as a respected journalist who shaped the newscast that he hosted.
I'm not that crazy about TV news, but there's no denying its continuing inlfluence. If we're going to talk about story telling, let's not forget that not all story tellers are created equal. I'm sure the Internet will generate some great ones, but right now millions of bloggers who get a few hits each do not equal a handful of people who beam into our living rooms daily, even in the fragmented cable age.
Posted by Leo Morris on August 9, 2005 at 06:23 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack Al Gore's new TV network? Gore is aiming his programming at young people and must not think highly of their attention spans: Based on material previewed on its Web site, Current TV at first glance seems like a hipper, more irreverent version of traditional television newsmagazines. Most of its programming will be in pods, roughly two to seven minutes long, covering topics like jobs, technology, spirituality and current events.
An Internet-like on-screen progress bar will show the pod's length. Some critics say Gore's concept -- letting viewers provide much of the content -- might be obsolete before the network really gets off the ground. AOL's recent airing of the Live 8 concerts is a hint of the true cutting edge of communications, Web menus that let viewers choose from an almost limitless range of programming.
Lasica has this to say about that: lying on a couch still beats sitting at a desktop. Boy, that's not too cynical, is it? Posted by Leo Morris on August 2, 2005 at 06:23 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack William Westmoreland, the unfortunate general who oversaw the buildup in Vietnam from 16,000 troops to more than 500,000.
Lord, if you think the press is really screwing up its coverage of the war in Iraq, Westy really had his hands full. James Doohan, the actor who,as Scotty, kept saying The engines canna' take it on the original Star Trek. It's one of those roles the actor could never get over or get beyond.
You probably already knew that Beam me up, Scotty was never actually said on the show, just one of the famous lines that were never actually uttered. Gerry Thomas, who probably did more to turn us into couch potatoes (an interesting phrase, considering) than just about anybody by inventing the TV dinner. He was a salesman for Swanson and Sons in 1954 when he got the idea of packaging frozen meals in a foil tray, divided into compartments to keep the foods from mixing.
What's Westmoreland doing on the list? Because Vietnam was the first TV war. No longer did people wait for dispatches from the front, filtered through layers of military officials and civilian bureaucrats.
The war came right into our living rooms, every night, and that fact alone has changed the course of the world more than most people want to admit.
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