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The rise and fall of television news: no more father figures |
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(To read about Jon's mega-collection, The Matrix Revealed, click here.)
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The rise and fall of television news: no more father figures
When network television news was created in the late 1940s, no one in charge knew how to do it. It was a new creature.
Sponsors? Yes. A studio with a desk and an anchor? Yes. A list of top stories? Yes. Important information for the public? Yes.
Of course, "important information" could have several
definitions---and the CIA already had a few claws into news, so there
would be boundaries and fake stories within those boundaries.
The producers knew the anchor was the main event; his voice,
his manner, his face. He was the actor in a one-man show. But what
should he project to the audience at home?
The first few anchors were dry sandpaper. John Cameron Swayze
at NBC, and Douglas Edwards at CBS. But Swayze, also a quiz show host,
broke out of the mold and imparted a bit of "cheery" to his broadcasts. A
no-no. So he was eventually dumped.
In came a duo. Chet Huntley and David Brinkley. NBC
co-anchors from 1956 to 1970. Chet was the heavy, with a somber
baritone, and David was "twinkly," as he was called by network insiders.
He lightened the mood with a touch of sarcasm and an occasional grin.
It worked. Ratings climbed. Television news as show biz started to take
off. At the end of every broadcast, there was: "Good night, Chet." "Good
night, David." The audience ate it up. They loved that tag.
However, rival CBS wasn't standing still. They offloaded
their anchor, Douglas Edwards, a bland egg, and brought in Walter
Cronkite, who would go on to do 19 years in the chair (1962-1981).
Walter was Chet Huntley with a difference. As he grew older, he emerged
as a father, a favorite uncle, with an authoritative hills-and-valleys
baritone that created instant trust. Magic. A news god was born.
Despite many efforts at the three major networks, no anchor
over the past 40 years has been able to pull off the full Cronkite
effect.
The closest recent competitor---until he was fired for lying
and exiled to the waste dump at MSNBC---was Brian Williams. Williams
artfully executed a reversal of tradition. He portrayed the youthful
prodigy, a gradually maturing version of a newsboy who once bicycled
along country roads, threw folded up papers on front porches, and knew
all his customers by name. A good boy. A local boy. Your neighbor under
the maple trees of an idyllic town. Cue the memories.
By the time Williams took over the helm at NBC, television
news was decidedly a team operation. There were reporters in the field.
The technology enabled the anchor to go live to these bit players, who
tried to exude the impression they were actually running down leads and
interviewing key sources on the spot---when in fact they could just as
well be doing their stand-ups from a hot dog cart outside 30 Rockefeller
Plaza, the home studio of the network---because most of their
information was really coming from inside that studio.
Nevertheless, the team was everything. The anchor was a
manager, and his job was to impart an authentic feel to every look-in,
from the White House to Paris to Berlin to Jerusalem to Beijing to a
polar bear on an iceberg.
And local television news was blowing up to gargantuan
proportions. Every city and town and village and hamlet seemed to have
its own gaggle of hearty faces delivering vital info of interest to the
citizenry. Branding and shaping this local phenomenon evolved into:
FAMILY. Yes, that was the ticket. These bubbly, blown-dry, enthused,
manic news and weather and sports hawks were really "part of the
community." News was no longer shoveled high and deep with an air of
objectivity. "Aloof" was out. Share and care was in. What that had to do
with actual news was anyone's guess, but there it was. "Hi, we're your
team at KX6, and we feel what you feel and we live here with you and we
know when the roads are icy and the wrecks pile up on the I-15 and our
friends the cops arrest someone for cocaine possession and when the
charity bake sale is coming up to pay for [toxic] meds for seniors at
the nursing home and when your cousin Judy passes away we mourn as you
do..."
News for and by a fictional collective.
Disney news.
A caricature of a simulacrum of an imitation.
The discovery was: the viewing audience wanted news as a cartoon.
The problem is: this model deteriorates. The descending IQ of
the news producers and anchors and reporters undergoes a grotesque
revolution. Year by year, broadcasts make less sense. Even on the
national scene, NBC hands its prime anchor spot to Lester Holt, who
plays the old Addams Family living corpse, Lurch.
ABC, always looking for a new face, goes all in with David Muir, a Sears underwear-model type.
CBS counters with a youngish cipher, Jeff Glor, after ridding
itself of Scott Pelley, who, true to his on-camera persona, might show
up on The Young and the Restless as a lunatic surgeon doing operations
without anesthetic.
The networks are losing it.
It's a sight to behold.
Cable news is even worse. The longest surviving anchor is
Wolf Blitzer at CNN. Wolf's energy level tops out as a man in a tattered
bathrobe, in his kitchen, chatting with his cousin while they play
checkers.
Meanwhile, independent online news comes on like a storm.
Turns out it fills a need that has been there since the beginning of television.
You can fool some of the people all the time, and all of the
people some of the time, but between those two extremes, there are
millions and millions of people who recognize the so-called real news
has been fake for a long time.
They've left that bubble.
The artfulness of network news has disintegrated and failed.
Pop goes the weasel.
Major media long ago built their wall. The wall protects
everyone from bloated corrupt government institutions, mega-corporate
partners of government, and major banks, to street thugs. Now, as these
media fail to magnetize minds as in days of yore, the wall is crumbing.
Therefore, what is behind it is being exposed.
More importantly, people are coming to see their thoughts and
constructions of reality are imports, not their own. The tonnage of
pictures fed to them, along with voiceover, were forgeries.
WHAT IS, was the business of the news. That business has lost its traction.
To some, this amounts to bubbling confusion. To others, it is
a fresh clean breeze blowing through an empty house, which imagination
can remake in more bracing forms.
The future is open, unscripted.
A new day, if we recognize it.
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Use this link to order Jon's Matrix Collections.
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Jon Rappoport
The
author of three explosive collections, THE MATRIX REVEALED, EXIT FROM
THE MATRIX, and POWER OUTSIDE THE MATRIX, Jon was a candidate for a US
Congressional seat in the 29th District of California. He maintains a
consulting practice for private clients, the purpose of which is the
expansion of personal creative power. Nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, he
has worked as an investigative reporter for 30 years, writing articles
on politics, medicine, and health for CBS Healthwatch, LA Weekly, Spin
Magazine, Stern, and other newspapers and magazines in the US and
Europe. Jon has delivered lectures and seminars on global politics,
health, logic, and creative power to audiences around the world.
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