STRICTLY PERSONAL

PVE BEEN working in TV
for a few years now. Thank
God I still get to write, is all I
can say.

‘Television is an unbelievably
» frustrating. medium. If you think it’s
_ maddening to watch, you should
see behind the scenes.

“Generally speaking, the amount
of time left to néws crews to come
up with time-sensitive stories for
the six o’clock news is maybe five

- hours, That’s including time lining
up interviews, getting to locations
.and back, trying to find parking, .
/-bucking traffic, going up and down
" in elevators. ' .
o. After all, virtually by definition,
“ ‘television news has to be something
tiat happened today. Ideally, late
this afternoon. .

vand there’s history. That’s it!

‘or effect, but I’m talking ‘about -
a ‘gritty urban North American televi-
“sion newsgathering. ;

“Like newspapers, television sta-
ns,on this continent tend to be
ore oF less the sarne. Check out

in the reix gets imitated, and in the
ditall blurs... >

One of my clienits i is a station

that strives ferociously to be differ-

: entirely a matter of Style. ..-: -

: "Otherwise, all the bells and: ~,
whistles are the same. . ‘
personally think it’s mainly.

4- Wednesday, May 25, 1994 - North Shore News

TV news — t!
video

In television news, there’s today |

You will think I’m exaggerating ;

‘the’ programming. Whatever works *

‘ent; but even there; the difference is:

‘because television hasn’ t developed ©
an air-time niche similar to newspa- |,

per columns, but you'll note that
nobody ever scems to take a swing
or the little sereen.

The anchorpersons are careful to
play it neutral, the reporlers stick to
reporting, and the talk show egos
circle like giant moons in their own
time slots,

There's no spikiness, No edye.
News is generally almost as bland
us the sitcoms and quiz shows, and
how does one express the inanity of
that?

1 mean, if Roseanne Barr is still
one of the “stars,” we're beyond
talking about a cultural wasteland.

Contemporary television pro-:
gramming can only be compared to
an intellectual biomass crash.

When I began reporting in tele-
vision, the average Story on Tape

‘ (SOT) was two minutes long,

sometimes two-and-a-half.

Now we're down to a minute
and 30 seconds. This is rapid-
paced, even by industry norms, but

66 There's no
spikiness. No edge.
News is generally as
bland as the sitcoms
and quiz shows... 99

it is the pace the networks will all
eventually embrace, because it ”
mysteriously “works.”

Television is like Hollywood. |
Nobody really knows why anything
works, but they all recognize when

. it does, and they all try to do it that
-.. way, the object, pure and simple,

being to up ratings to make more

“money from advertising.

The net effect is that it seems

_ like TV itself is on speed,

The CBC, which thought it
could laze along at its own digni-
fied —- some would say sleepy —
pace, survives in the modern fast- -
forward world thanks strictly to the .
taxpayers, because the great mass
of viewers appear to be in a White

" Rabbit-like hurry, and what’s fast is

what works. .
This isn’t necessarily to say, that

it’s a great thing, this speeding up

of reality on the tube.
[hate it, myself.

\OFiZOl

The shorter the amount of air
time you are able ta devote toa
subject, the shallower your cover-
age is inevitably going to be, that’s
all there is to it.

The answer that comes back is
pretly hard to argue with, namely
that the growth of competition on
the dial has forced broadcasters to
go for the quick clip and the slam-
bam visuals, otherwise nobody"
be watching.

So it’s all quite academic. The
oarkel decides.

And it has decided that it likes
the tabloidization of television
news ~— which, incidentally, suits
TV tora “T,” let's say.

Even when two-minute epics
were in vogue, it was tough to get
at the complexity of any given
issue.

Television has a major weak-”
ness: it is lousy at communicating
what cannot be shown. It is visuals-
dependent to the point where the
pictures it does present cannot help
but distort, just because so much is
feft out.

It isn’t just the visuals that dice
tate content, either. The concept of
“time sensitivity” weighs in nearly
as heavily in news programming,
and this narrows the definition of
TV news even further.

A media event not only has to
have great viz and give good clip, it
has to begin and end within the
midday window of shooting oppor-
tunity.

It would be easy to dismiss elec-
tronic journalism as a collection of
huge headlines with virtually no
stories attached, except for the fact

that billions of people plug into TV. ©

worldwide, and the very way they
think is shaped by what they are
shown and what they are told on
the tube.

The 90- second visual explosion
stimulates emotions, but does little
to develop the habit of reason or
logic. Politicians complain bitterly
— and fairly — that television’s
inability to cover complex issues!
without reducing them to banal
simplifications makes it harder to
get unpopular but necessary things
done.

If television was a brain, it
would be all thalamus, no cortex.
Feelings, not ideas. °

! don’t think that newspapers,
magazines or books are going
extinct, after all.

Simmer

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