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With all three network nightly newscasts in flux, the viability of the form remains remarkably uncertain. Over the past two decades, 24-hour cable channels have battled the big three networks for a share of the broadcast news audience, and the voice of God has grown hoarse. Brooke looks forward into the future of nightly news.
Every so often, purveyors of live TV confront one of the biggest perils of the enterprise: foul-mouthed talent. During a football game between Navy and Duke last weekend, it happened again. Appalled by a referee call, NPR contributor and Naval Academy football commentator John Feinstein forgot where he was and uttered exactly what was on his mind. Which at the moment, happened to be the f-word. He chats with Bob about the lapse.
Pornography is a form rife with easily-recognizable tropes. Strategic lighting, hokey music, and close-up camera angles all are a part of creating the aspirational and idealized world of porn. In October's Harper's Magazine, Frederick Kaufman takes a closer look at the cable channel he thinks is the most pornographic of all - The Food Network. Kaufman explains to Brooke how peach-pitting is made tantamount to foreplay.
In our March 5th, 2004 show Brooke did an interview with Joseph Medawar and Alison Heruth-Waterbury, executive producer and costar of a new - or so we believed - television drama titled "DHS: The Series," premised around derring-do inside the Department of Homeland Security. Seventy investors, $5 million and a few well-chosen lies later, turns out the two would-be TV entrepreneurs were a fraud.
Even as the death toll from Katrina continued to climb, TV news by Monday was already focused on Rita. The catastrophe of three weeks earlier infused the new Technicolor swirls with a sickening menace. But with or without Katrina, those satellite images were already well fixed in the TV lexicon. Bob discusses the history of hurricane reporting with weather historian David Laskin.
Bob ruminates on media saturation in a world where passengers trapped on a damaged airplane could watch real-time newscasts about their harrowing flight.
With DVR-enabled "time shifting" and the alternative distribution channels of the Internet, the future of network television is looking grim. Bob sees the obsolescence of broadcast TV as the first step in the collapse of mainstream media's advertiser-driven business model. But Washington Post staff writer Paul Farhi disagrees. He tells Bob that though the networks might change, they won't go away.
On Tuesday, ABC will premiere the new drama Commander in Chief. The show promises a heaping helping of politics, though it may not be politics as usual. The central character is a president with no party affiliation, and also happens to be a woman. Brooke considers the real-world implications of Geena Davis' ascendancy to a fictional Oval Office.
