‘NCIS’ Again Skunked—Except by the People

by Walter Brasch

      Once again, as expected, the people who give out Emmy nominations skunked NCIS.

      No nominations for acting. None for writing. Not one for directing or producing. Not even a nomination in what the industry calls the minor awards—sound editing, stunt coordination, and dozens of others.

      The one-hour drama, with light overtones, is the most-watched drama in television, but the Industry doesn’t think it’s worth any awards. And yet, every one of its primary actors, led by Mark Harmon, could give acting lessons to those who were nominated.

      It took years for TV Guide’s haughty editors to give major stories to NCIS or even highlight individual episodes. Perhaps it’s because NCIS appeals more to the people who don’t live in L.A. or New York.

      Also skunked were USA’s Royal Pains and TNT’s Major Crimes, both excellent light dramas that, like NCIS, are well-acted, well-written, and well-directed.

      Also overlooked by the Industry when they were in production were several outstanding light dramas, among them USA’s White Collar, Burn Notice, and Psych and TNT’s Leverage and The Closer.

      There may be several reasons why these shows, and others, aren’t nominated.

      First, the actors work on their craft, show up on time, rehearse, deliver excellent performances, and then go home to their families and friends. They don’t do a lot of TV guest appearances on the morning and late night shows. Most don’t go to the Hollywood parties, where they can schmooze and cuddle up with fellow performers who can cast just the right kind of votes. And, most important, the actors of NCIS, NCIS: New Orleans, and the USA and TNT shows generally don’t appear regularly in the tabloids.

      Writers and directors tend to stay in the background, melting into the scenery. None are asked to appear on talk shows; very few are even asked to appear in court. Nevertheless, the writing and directing of the overlooked shows is easily among the best that Hollywood has to offer.

      Another reason is that the studios and networks that these shows appear on don’t do much to promote them. CBS, which could have spent a few hundred thousand of its millions of profit promoting NCIS, CSI, and Criminal Minds, seems to think the money is better spent promoting Two Broke Girls and the last remains of Two and a Half Men. USA is owned by NBC/Universal, which pushes its NBC shows, paying premium rental prices for Sunset Blvd. billboards and for ads in major show-biz publications. And, of course, NBC shoves the actors onto the talk shows, especially the ones broadcast by NBC.

      Royal Pains is a drama of concierge medicine in the Hamptons. But, USA snuck the seventh season of the popular show onto the air with almost no promotion, and stuck it into a 10 p.m. slot, possibly hoping it would flatline and leave a vacancy for another one-hour drama.

      For some reason, the Industry doesn’t like light drama, a perception also emphasized in the Oscars. And, it doesn’t seem to like actors who don’t overact, but subject themselves to the quality of writing.

      Last week, when NCIS, about to begin its 13th season in September, was overlooked, it was 4th in the Nielsen ratings. And that was for a re-run.

      [Dr. Brasch is a journalist and multi-media writer/producer. His latest book is Fracking Pennsylvania, an overall look at the process and effects of high-volume horizontal fracturing.]

Sitcoms are No Laughing Matter

     

by Walter Brasch

      Neil Simon’s “The Odd Couple” didn’t need a laugh track when it debuted on Broadway in 1965. It didn’t need a laugh track when it became a movie three years later.

      In the first of five seasons as a TV series (1970–1975), it had a laugh track, primarily because the show was taped without a live audience. However, stars Jack Klugman and Tony Randall insisted upon a live audience. Beginning the second season, the show was taped before a live audience, with mild post-production sweetening from what became known as the “Laff Box.”

      “The New Odd Couple,” with black actors and an enhanced laugh track, lasted 18 episodes in the 1982–1983 season.

      The latest version debuted two weeks ago on CBS. It has a laugh track. A loud, annoying, intrusive laugh track. A laugh track that has little variation and makes it obvious the live-audience reaction at the tapings were muted in deference to forced canned laughter.

     The laugh track is so intrusive that the few quality writing lines and the acting are obliterated by what producers think is funny. And, funny comes at least every other line. By decree.

      This “Odd Couple” is not much different from many current 30-minute TV situation comedies.

      For some reason, writers and producers think sitcoms are a series of one-liners, with minimal plot that need artificial and intrusive laugh tracks. Even the Oscars and Emmy awards shows, broadcast live but with a seven-second delay in case anyone violates network standards and practices, use enhanced laughter to try to make the TV audience believe that lame jokes are really comedy.

      Producers of the better classic comedies either didn’t use laugh tracks or made sure the “sweetening” wasn’t intrusive. There was no laugh track for “I Love Lucy.” There was canned laughter and no audiences for the first two seasons of “Happy Days”; by the third season, production switched from single-camera to multi-camera, and audience reaction dominated analogue audio enhancements.

Several now-classic sitcoms—think of the “The Dick Van Dyke Show,” “The Carol Burnett Show,” “Newhart,” “Taxi,” “Cheers,” “All in the Family,” “Friends” and dozens of others—were defined by brilliant writing, strong direction, and excellent acting. Even “M*A*S*H,” one of the best comedies on TV, toned down its laugh track and used it sparingly after the first season. “Sex and the City” didn’t use a laugh track; “Welcome Back, Kotter” used it sparingly. Artificial laughter also wasn’t necessary for “The Simpsons,” “The Rocky and Bullwinkle Show,” and “The Muppets.”

      No experienced TV Suit has yet demanded a laugh track for the better one-hour TV dramas—among them “NCIS” and “Castle”—that have an undercurrent of well-written humor, slipped seemingly effortless into the show. Further, the well-written, acted, and directed one-hour light dramas on the USA network—“Monk,” “Psych,” “Necessary Roughness,” “Royal Pains,” “White Collar,” and many other original series—have proven that laugh tracks are useless when quality supersedes contrived mechanical laughs. TV audiences know what’s funny and when to laugh, snicker, chuckle, or even guffaw.

      It’s harder to write quality comedy than tragedy and drama. So, maybe, that’s why the forced laugh tracks are necessary—especially for lines that are dry and uninspired.

      If the current “Odd Couple” plans to be around next season, it needs to strengthen its writing—and allow genuine audience reaction be its primary laugh track.

      Perhaps, TV audiences have become so accustomed to mediocrity they now believe that average productions are models of excellence. What else would explain the existence of the one-joke salacious “Two Broke Girls” and “Two and a Half Men”?

      If you want to hear non-intrusive laughter and clapping on a show with excellent writing and delivery, just tune into “The Daily Show with Jon Stewart.” It doesn’t need artificial laughter.

SitComs Not Always a Laughing Matter

by Walter Brasch

      My favorite new TV comedy is “Growing Up Fisher.” 

      It’s the story of a blind lawyer, his 12-year-old son, a mid-teen daughter, and an ex-wife who is trying to return to her adolescent years. The show is based upon the experiences of D.J. Nash.

      J.K. Simmons portrays Mel Fisher; for most of his life after he became blind at 12, he tried to make others believe he wasn’t blind. Jenna Elfman  is his ex-, Joyce Fisher, who extends the role she played on the hit series, “Dharma and Greg.”

      Because television is a repetitive medium, “Growing Up Fisher” has the look and feel of “The Wonder Years,” complete with a love interest for its pre-teen child.” In this newer SitCom, instead of an older Kevin Arnold (voiced by Daniel Stern) narrating the story of his younger self (portrayed by Fred Savage), it’s an older Henry Fisher, narrated by Jason Bateman, who reflects upon his own younger self, portrayed by Eli Baker.

      In “Growing Up Fisher,” as in “Dharma and Greg” and “The Wonder Years,” the father/husband is conservative and strait-laced; the wife is more of a free spirit,”  common in many comedies, including Neil Simon’s “Barefoot in the Park,” which had a half-season run on ABC in 1970 after being a successful Broadway play and film.

      The pilot of “The Wonder Years” aired on ABC following SuperBowl XXII; the pilot for “Growing Up Fisher” aired on NBC following the Olympics. Network executives counted on dragging the huge audiences into strong ratings for the neophyte comedies.

      It’s not for the similarities I like “Growing Up Fisher.” Nor is it for the acting, directing, and writing, all of which are above average for a modern TV comedy. Or even because of Elvis, the Guide Dog. It’s because “Growing Up Fisher” doesn’t have an annoying laugh track.

      Charley Douglass, a CBS-TV sound engineer invented the first laugh machine. Its purpose was to improve the studio audience laughs, some of which were raucous and too overbroad, some of which were far less than what the producers wanted. With the change from comedies airing live to the use of tape delay, post-production, including canned audience reaction, became critical for how the producers wanted audiences to perceive the finished product. Ever since the early 1950s, most TV comedies have used a laugh track, even when the show was “taped before a live audience.”  Eventually the Douglass “Laff Box” had more than 300 different canned laughs.

      Instead of developing plot and character, many TV comedies are little more than a series of one-liners stuck together by writers and producers who are too young to know and appreciate the writing of James L. Brooks,  Sam Denoff, Larry Gelbart, David Isaacs, Ken Levine, Bill Persky, Carl Reiner, Gene Reynolds, and dozens of others who were craftsmen. 

      The laugh track now shows up every one or two lines, even if the line isn’t funny.  And it’s not just subtle laughter or mild chuckles. Even the lamest line gets an all-out decibel-popping presence.

      The escalation of the laugh track has become the producers’ way to manipulate the audience to believe every word is a gem, every sentence uttered is golden. In the past few years, the laugh track has become invasive. On “Two and a Half Men,” a lame but popular rip-off of “Three’s Company,” and “2 Broke Girls,” both of which push sexual suggestiveness to the edge of lewdness, the laugh tracks make the shows almost unwatchable. They’re not the only ones.

      At first, the insertion of canned laughter was non-intrusive. Some comedies, including “My Three Sons” and “The Brady Bunch” used less laughter; others pumped laughter at almost every line. Several comedies went without laugh tracks. NBC reluctantly dropped the laugh track mid-way through the second season on “The Monkees,” after all four actor-musicians demanded it, according to historian Paul Iverson. CBS had required “M*A*S*H” to use a laugh track, over the protests of its creators. However, as the comedy’s ratings and subsequent advertising revenue increased, CBS executives relented a bit—laugh tracks during scenes in the operating room were optional, and other laughter was toned down.

Almost none of the classic cartoons had laugh tracks; they didn’t need it—the audiences knew when and how to laugh, even if network business executives, few of whom were ever in the creative part of show business, didn’t.

      Also not needing much “sweetening” are “The Daily Show, with Jon Stewart,” “The Colbert Report,” and the late night talk shows. Although all are taped a few hours before airing, live audiences provide the genuine laughter and applause, with the hosts reacting to it rather than delivering a line and waiting a couple of seconds to allow digital laughter to be inserted in post-production.

      For “The Wonder Years” and “Growing Up Fisher,” which first aired more than two decades apart, the producers wisely decided that comedy, if good, will bring its own laughs; the merit of the show will rise or fall based upon writing, acting, and directing, not upon forced laughter.

      [Dr. Brasch is an award-winning journalist, satirist, and author. His latest book is Fracking Pennsylvania, an in-depth investigation into the process and effects of hydraulic horizontal fracturing.]

Tragedy in the 24/7 News Media

by Walter Brasch

      CNN is the 24/7 media trumpet for news about Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 that is presumed to have crashed in the Southern Indian Ocean, southwest of Australia. On that flight were 227 passengers and 12 crew members.

      CNN grabbed every iota of information, pumped it full of digital frequencies, and broadcast it to what it thought was a world salivating for every syllable of thought.

      When there was news, CNN broadcast it. When there was no news, CNN broadcast it. When there were outrageous theories, CNN was the source to find out who was saying what. When there was a rumor, CNN broadcast that, only to have to retract it hours later. Through chatter and repetition, CNN kept the story alive.

      This wasn’t the first time the media became fixated on a story. It certainly won’t be the last. There was non-stop coverage of the death of Princess Diana, the O.J. Simpson and Michael Jackson trials. Fox News grabbed onto Obamacare, President Obama’s alleged birth in Kenya, and the Benghazi story, even when the facts didn’t support its preconceived conclusions. More recently, MSNBC’s evening anchors have given non-stop wall-to-wall coverage of the Chris Christie “Bridgegate” story, another story that was hyped by constant repetition.

      “All News-All Day” isn’t new. During the Yellow Journalism age and circulation wars in the late 19th century, media giants William Randolph Hearst and Joseph Pulitzer often sent to press several editions a day. Hearst, whose jingoistic determination helped bring about the Spanish-American War in 1898, was not adverse to publishing as many as 30 editions a day to “update” his million subscribers and millions more readers of the New York Journal, all of whom were willing to pay three cents per edition to get even more news each day.

      In the early 1960s, the radio medium developed all-news stations. However, the news package was often a prepackaged cycle that ran every seven, nine, 11, or 20 minutes, with new content every now and then.

      The 24/7 news cycle, as we now know it, was initiated by CNN more than three decades ago, and became a necessary part of information dissemination during the first Gulf War in 1990-1991. CNN had correspondents in Baghdad; the coverage was critical in keeping Americans, especially family members of combat troops, informed of the reasons for the war and numerous issues that developed from that war, as well as hour-by-hour coverage of the war itself.

      Since then, the CNN concept of all-day coverage, which had been spoofed and held as an example of what not to do in news, has been successfully copied by MSNBC, Fox News, other cable news operations, and dozens of web-only news-commentary operations.

      Newspapers, which have often lagged in innovation, began to go 24/7 by a combination of once-a-day print production and continuous updates in their web editions. Reporters at one time wrote a story, turned it in to the “desk,” forgot it and went to other stories. Copyeditors often improved the story, gave it a headline, put it onto the page, and sent it to the “back shop” where it became a part of pre-press composition and the “press run.” However, in the “we want news right now—and make it short because we don’t have the attention span” world, reporters are writing the story for the print edition, while also recording it on cell phones and digital cameras, sometimes narrating the footage, for the web edition. If anything changes during the day, the reporter then spends the rest of the day juggling other stories and updates on the original story.

      But there is a major problem when the media—print or visual—become fixated upon one story, such as Flight 370. Other stories are swept aside. The mudslide near Oso, Wash., that killed 30, with at least a dozen still missing, is one of those stories that should have dominated the news media. The cascade of a 600-foot hillside is the most deadly landslide in U.S. history. Yet, it was often the second or third story on evening news, behind what still wasn’t known about Flight 370.

      Dozens of stories, both breaking news and features, could have—and should have—been written and broadcast. While local media did exemplary work in keeping the story fresh, the national news media—apparently believing Washington state is only on the fringe of the continental United States—gave significantly less coverage to the mudslide than to the missing flight or the latest Hollywood gossip.

      Among stories that should have been reported, but were either given minimal coverage or shoved aside for the airline story, were reasons why the hill collapsed and the ecological and environmental harm it caused. There should have been stories about why the hillside wasn’t protected and the political reasons why. There should have been stories directed to people in other parts of the nation on how to protect yourself against various kinds of natural disasters. There should have been stories about the emergency management agency and its responsibilities, about the first responders and the 400 search and rescue workers, including their training, what they were doing, how they were doing it, and how they overcame innumerable problems. There were dozens of unreported stories about the work of the Red Cross, Salvation Army, and other social service agencies. There should have been extensive reporting about the psychological trauma affecting workers and residents. There should have been stories about the city itself, its businesses, and how they responded. There should have been stories about the effects of the mudslide upon the schools, and how the youth unselfishly helped. Yes, there were dozens of stories that could have, and should have, been reported to a national audience.

      Both Flight 370 and the mudslide are tragedies. But, CNN was fixated on a missing airline, taking a few hours off to cover the Fort Hood shootings; Fox was fixated upon attacking President Obama; and MSNBC was fixated upon a New Jersey scandal.

      Not one of those stories matter as much as what was happening in Oso, Wash.

      [Walter Brasch is an award-winning journalist and author. His latest book is Fracking Pennsylvania, an in-depth investigation into the process and health and environmental effects of horizontal hydraulic fracturing to mine gas.]

The Good Wife v. The Bad Congress

by Walter Brasch

      For almost a year, the people of the critically-acclaimed and popular CBS drama, “The Good Wife,” kept a secret, one so powerful that viewers were shocked by the abruptness of what happened on screen, March 23.

      Will Gardner (portrayed by Josh Charles), one of the major characters, was killed by his client during murder trial. Within seconds, even before the show’s conclusion, viewers were texting and tweeting, shocked and confused and angry and upset and sad, all at the same time. There was no hint in the entertainment media that Will would be killed off.

A Television Snow Job

  by Walter Brasch

     With more than a foot of snow, sleet, and ice falling over much of the nation, the television news teams went into overdrive. This may be an accurate description of one of those minute-by-minute broadcasts.

     “I’m Harry Hansom. Co-anchor Polly Prattle just called. Her car slid into a ditch about eight miles from the studio. Fortunately, she had her roller-blades, and is skating furiously to get here so she doesn’t lose a day’s pay. We begin our Team Weather Coverage with chief meteorologist Hugh Miditty.”

     “Based upon detailed computer analysis and extensive satellite monitoring, available only through our exclusive Poplar Eye-Witless Weather Watch System, we can report that the high temperature this day was set way back in 2008. It was 50 degrees then. Wow! That’s real high. The low was set in 1994 when the temperatures plummeted to a minus 8. But with any luck, we’ll be able to break that low point today our tomorrow. The cause of this record-breaker is an upper level atmospheric low-pressure system that formed just east of Phoenix, traveled north to I-80, then cruised east where it hit dead-center with another low-pressure system coming north from Spring training in Florida. Or, maybe it began in New Jersey, and then ran a doughnut of isobars around Pennsylvania. As you know, a lot of bad things begin in Jersey. It’s also possible it began in Canada, because all bad weather begins in Canada. Anyhow, before the storm leaves our area to drop two feet of hail on Bermuda, we’ll have anywhere from five inches to three feet of snow and sleet. Or, maybe, we’ll just have a foot or so of acid rain that’ll burn the paint off every car in a hundred mile radius.”

Depth Takes a Holiday in Mass Media

 by Walter Brasch

      The mass media have a fixation upon throwing up lists.

      Sports editors run innumerable lists of the “Top 10” high school and college teams.

      Arts and entertainment editors run lists of the top books, movies, songs, and even video games.

      Financial and business editors tell us who they believe are the “most important” moguls, and rank each on a scale that has no meaning to anyone, especially the moguls themselves.

      Fashion editors love making lists of “best dressed” and “worst dressed” celebrities.

      News editors love making end-of-the-year lists of the “Top 10 Headlines.” Like the other editors, they don’t tell us why their pick of the top news story was more important than the No. 2 story—or why the No. 10 story was any more important than the thousands that did not make the list.

      TV Guide also loves lists. This month, it threw out a list of what some of their editors irrationally believe are the “60 Greatest Shows on Earth,” complete with a sentence describing each show. And, like most lists, it’s little more than annoying static.

Government Should Not Define What a Reporter is—or Isn’t

by Walter Brasch

      Sen. Diane Feinstein and a horde of members of Congress of both parties want to decide who is and who isn’t a reporter. Sen. Feinstein says a “real” reporter is a “salaried agent of a media company.”

      She mentions the usual suspects—New York Times, ABC News. She dismisses part-time staff. She dismisses freelancers. She dismisses those who write, often without pay, for the hundreds of alternative publications, and often break news and investigative stories well ahead of the mainstream media. She dismisses anyone who, she says, “have no professional qualifications.”

America’s Uncivil Phone Manners

 

by Walter Brasch

Wednesday, I called the newsrooms of Pennsylvania’s two largest newspapers.

            All I got were disembodied voices telling me no one was available and to leave a message.

            It was 11 a.m., and I thought someone—anyone!—should have answered their phones. But, with publishers doing their best to “maximize profits” by cutting news coverage and reporters, I figured they either didn’t have anyone capable of answering a phone or figured no one would be calling with any news that day.

            So I left a message. It was a routine question, specific for each newspaper and related to verifying information from their papers for a book I was completing.

            I left another message the next day. I would have called individual assignment reporters, but unlike the websites of many smaller newspapers, the metros’ websites didn’t have that information. Apparently, they don’t want readers to know who does what at their newspapers.

The Fluff Factor: Today’s Journalism

by Walter Brasch

Will someone please buy gags for Hoda Kotb and Kathie Lee Gifford?

            It makes no difference what the color is. Plain or polka-dotted. Painted or sequined. Scented silk, Egyptian cotton, or an auto mechanic’s oil-soaked rag. Just as long as it can be stuffed into their mouths.

The Mugging of SpongeBob SquarePants

by Walter Brasch

            SpongeBob SquarePants may be hazardous to your mental development—if you're a four-year-old. At least that's what two psychologists at the University of Virginia claim, based upon a study they conducted that may have as many holes as the average sponge who lives under the sea.

            In the first paragraph of an article published this week in the academic journal Pediatrics, Angeline S. Lilliard and Jennifer Peterson set up their study with a pick-and-choose somewhat slanted view of television. According to these psychologists, "correlational studies link early television viewing with deficits in executive function . .  . a collection of prefrontal skills underlying goal-directed behavior, including attention, working memory, inhibitory control, problem solving, self-regulation, and delay of gratification." Translated into English, we conclude that psychologists don't speak English.

            To make sure no one misreads the study as anything but pure empirical science, they toss in "covariant assessment," "covariate," "posthoc analyses," "backward digit span," "encoding," "cognitive depletion," and something known as the "Tower of Hanoi," not to be mistaken, apparently, for the Hanoi Hilton, or the Tower of Babel, which this study seems most likely to emulate.

            For their subject group, they rounded up four-year-olds from "a database of families willing to participate." Three groups of children were given the same four separate tasks. Those who watched a truncated version of a "SpongeBob" cartoon, which has scene changes an average of every 11 seconds, fared worse in the measurements than did the groups that watched a more "realistic" and "educational" PBS cartoon ("Caillou") that had an average scene change of 34 seconds. The third group (known as a "control" group) drew things and participated in all the tasks. On all four tests, "SpongeBob" lost. The fact the researchers labeled "Caillou" as educational could reveal pre-conceived bias; even a cursory look at "SpongeBob," although primarily entertainment, reveals numerous social and educational issues that could lead to further discussion.

            The pre-schoolers were mostly White, from middle-class and upper-class families. Thus, there was no randomly-selected group, something critical in most such studies. The researchers do acknowledge this, as well as a few defects in the study itself. Possibly salivating over future grants, they tell us that "further research . . . is needed."

            The reality may not be that four-year-olds who watch "SpongeBob" and similar cartoons had developmental defects but that they are far more interested in the cartoon than in other activities and temporarily suspend those "good quality" activities while they remember the cartoon and think of other events or issues that SpongeBob and the cast got into. The researchers measured the students' responses shortly after watching the cartoons; perhaps measurements a few hours or a week later might have given different results.

            Nevertheless, the researchers—hung up on standard deviations, regression analysis, and Cronbach's Alpha, among other empirical tests—didn't do the most basic of all research. They didn't ask the children what they thought about the cartoons, nor any questions leading to why the children who viewed "SpongeBob" may not have performed as well the other two groups on tests that may or may not be of value. It's entirely possible that watching fast-paced well-written tightly-directed animated cartoons may be more fun—and more productive—than watching slower-paced educational cartoons. But we don't know because the research was quantified.

            The wounded response by Nickelodeon, which airs "SpongeBob Squarepants," isn't much better than the academic study. Squeezed into a sentence, the comment is that the cartoon is for 6–11 year olds, not the four-year-olds who were tested. The Nick PR machine wants us to believe that even if everything the researchers said was true, it doesn't matter because the cartoon isn't aimed at four-year-olds.  Apparently, even if older siblings are watching "SpongeBob" or their parents are watching horror, adventure, or war movies it doesn't matter because those forms of entertainment aren't for four-year-olds.

            For more than eight decades, animated cartoons have come under fire by all kinds of academic researchers and certain "we-do-good" public groups. From 1930 to 1968, the Hays office, ensconced in Puritan ideals of morality, censored films and cartoons for all kinds of reasons. By the 1960s, academic researchers began questioning the violence in cartoons, focusing primarily upon the Warner Brothers characters. For a few years, television programmers, either believing themselves to be great pillars of morality or afraid of losing sponsors, forcibly retired many of the most popular cartoons from the screen.

            At least half of the studies concluded that watching violence could be one of the factors that lead to violent acts. Another group of studies showed little correlation. But, stripping away the academic verbiage, the most logical conclusion of all the studies that denuded a small forest was that persons pre-disposed to violence may become violent if exposed to violence in cartoons. Certainly, watching Roadrunner/Wile E. Coyote cartoons won't cause a Quaker to go out and mug Baptists.

            The mugging that SpongeBob (and other characters in quick-sequencing action) got is another attempt to quantify life by exorcizing a small part of life, running tests, and trying to explain human cognition and development without understanding humans.

           

[Walter Brasch has a Ph.D. in mass communication. That means during his career he has been subjected to more than his fair share of annoying academic studies. Among his 16 books, he is the author of Cartoon Monickers: A History of the Animation Industry, and Before the First Snow, a novel about the history of America and its counter-culture between 1964 and 1991.]

Blood on the Lens

                                                    

                                  by Walter Brasch

            “If it bleeds, it leads” is local TV’s aphorism that dictates its belief that fires, car crashes, and shootings lead off the nightly newscast. These stories, of course, are more “visual” and easier to cover than poverty, worker exploitation, and the health care crisis.

            But, now and then, it’s hard to find an assortment of adrenaline-enhanced stories. And so it was that WOW-TV’s panicked station manager met with his news director late one afternoon to go over the final line-up for the 6 O’clock news, which, with few variants would be the same news the station would run in its “expanded news coverage” shows over the next 24 hours. The station manager wasn’t happy.

            “What do you mean leading off the news with a report that some jokers at the Public Health Service found the cure for AIDS? Weren’t there any accidents? Fires? Murders!”

            “Sorry, Boss, there’s nothing out there.”

            “NOTHING?! ‘Nothing’ as in ‘no accidents,’ or ‘nothing’ as in ‘You’re about to get a job at Kwik-E-Mart’?!”

            “Boss, we really tried. I have five camera crews running around right now.”

            “Think you can get two of them to run into each other? We’d pay the hospital bills.”

            “Boss, don’t you remember? The union made us agree to a six-month moratorium on stories that involve us maiming our crews just for the sake of ratings?”

            “Some union,” the station manager huffed. “Doesn’t even want its members to get more air time.”

            “It’s only for six months,” said the news director. “After that, maybe we could cut the brake linings on Unit 3 and have Unit 4 cover it. But for right now, the news scanner is dead.”

            “What happened to that fatality on Honeysuckle?”

            “By the time we scrambled the chopper, the drivers had exchanged insurance numbers and left.”

            “Left!?” thundered the station manager. “No one leaves when there’s a camera crew on the way!”

            “Best we could figure out, it was just a few paint scratches.”

            “Any of the cars red? If you got there faster, it might  have looked like blood. Check the cops again. They might be covering up something.”

            “Sorry, Boss. Even Philly’s not reporting any murders in the past 24 hours.”

            “Then go out and shoot someone!” the station manager demanded.

            “Sorry, Boss, I can’t do that.”

            “Yeah, you’re right,” said the station manager. “Tell Susie Sweetwater to do it. Her ratings are down. This should help.”

            “Susie’s in the middle of her reading class right now, and you know how she hates to be disturbed when she’s learning new words.”

            “Then Heartthrob! Audiences salivate whenever he’s on. The public would back him even if he had assault weapons and made welsh rarebit out of the Easter Bunny.”

            “It’s an hour until air,” the news director reminded the station manager. “Hearthrob’s already in Makeup. They’re darkening his hair tonight.”    

            “Celebrities!” shouted the station manager. “Audiences love train wrecks, and celebrities do it better than anyone! Find me Lindsay Lohan!”

            “We have two crews on her now,” said the news director, “but all she’s doing is drinking and partying. Besides, we’ve done that story five times this month.”

            “What about the Jersey Shore morons.”  

            “They’re currently destroying what’s left of the Roman civilization, and we can’t afford to send a crew.”

            “Get me a fire! Forest. Trailer. Stove. I don’t care!” the station manager demanded, smashing his coffee mug against his desk, and cutting his wrist. “BLOOD!” he shouted. “We have blood!”

            “It’s only a scratch,” said the news director.

            “It’s blood! And it’s good for a grabber. Grab a producer. Come in with an extreme close-up full-frame, and then pull back to a medium shot. Dissolve to some of the footage of the Vancouver fans rioting when their team lost the Stanley Cup. Here’s your lead: Violence in Canada leads to blood-letting in America.” He paused a moment. “Make sure you run teasers on this every five minutes.”

[Walter Brasch, who once worked with TV, says it’s much safer in print journalism. His latest book is Before the First Snow, which is receiving critical acclaim for its look at the American counterculture.]