Opening Arguments: Television

Four down, 20 to go

People have been bugging me to give 24 a try for five years now, but I've resisted, not wanting to risk liking it and having to commit to 24 episodes of something in a row. This year I gave in, watching the two-part, four-hour season premiere Sunday and Monday nights. My fears were justified -- it is compelling television, and I'm probably hooked for the rest of the season.

How can you not be caught up in a show whose first two episodes start with a bus blowing up and death by biting out of the carotid artery and end up with a nuclear bomb going off in Los Angeles?
I don't know what the earlier seasons were like, but the show does not seem like the conservative love fest some have said it is. It is refreshing to see mass entertainment willing to actually acknowledge that there are muslim extremists who want to kill us in our own country, but the series doesn't seem to be merely gung-ho, kill-the-terrorists escapism.

People have to make terrible choices in response to the terrorism, and they suffer because of those choices. It looks to me like there is plenty to make liberals and conservatives and everybody in between squirm. seems about right:

Then there's Bauer (Kiefer Sutherland), who has seen his wife killed, executed an innocent man to stop an attack, tortured people (sometimes mistakenly), been tortured and spent two years in a Chinese prison.

Unlike James Bond, who just gets younger and tougher, by the new season Bauer is tired, disillusioned and wondering how much longer he can fight the Long War. His scars are not only physical; his work has cost him relationships and perhaps some part of his humanity. He has been changed and damaged by every compromise he has had to make.

By extension, he forces us to ask if we have too.
He keeps fighting, of course (he has 24 episodes to fill), but for people, not politics. 24's ideology--Jack Bauerism, if you will--is not so much in between left and right as it is outside them, impatient with both A.

C.L.U.

niceties and Bushian moral absolutes.

24 is a rare combination of compelling entertainment and thought-provoking story lines and characters. I'm glad I finally gave in.

Posted by Leo Morris on January 17, 2007 at 05:33 AM | Being otherwise occupied at the Bob Dylan concert Tuesday night, I'm afraid I didn't catch the historic first broadcast of the CBS News with Katie Couric as anchor. Sounds like I didn't , though:

After Katie Couric was introduced on her first night as CBS Evening News anchor by a Walter Cronkite voiceover, she delivered a fast-moving newscast that the legendary newsman might have found unrecognizable.
In almost breathless fashion, she zipped through a handful of headlines: a corporate turnover at Ford, mourning over the killed crocodile hunter -- all before the first commercial.

Just what we need in today's complex world, news readers who zing the news by us at breakneck speed so we have even less time to assess its implications. This, I thought, was very telling:

Couric's only real nod to her newbie status came at the end, with a joking report on her difficulties coming up with a signoff. She showed clips of Cronkite, Chet Huntley, Dan Rather, Ted Baxter and even fictitious movie anchorman Ron Burgundy giving their final words, then invited viewers to submit suggestions via the CBS News web site.

She wants viewers to suggest a signoff? Something she can say night after night so it's burned into our brains, remaining long after what she's reported has become a blur? That ain't news -- it's show business.

Posted by Leo Morris on September 7, 2006 at 05:33 AM |

Sound off!

Now, here's an -- news that will include commentary, but not just from the news professionals :

CBS Evening News will include a regular commentary segment called Free Speech after Katie Couric debuts as anchor on Sept. 5, the network said Thursday.

Anyone from an average viewer to current anchor Bob Schieffer will participate in the segment, which CBS is keeping open-ended in terms of topics that will be covered.

I know those of us in the dinosaur print media tend to pooh-pooh TV news, but here's an idea we can borrow to broaden our appeal. Let's see, we'll invite all our readers to comment on anything they want to, and just to make the point that it's opinion we're seeking, we'll run them on the editorial page.

Ooh, ooh, I know, and we'll call them letters to the editor. What do you think?
If they really do this, I might have to stop the way I watch the CBS News, with the sound off and some appropriate music going full-blast.

Posted by Leo Morris on August 7, 2006 at 05:34 AM | seems to want to hold onto the network anchor as the stars of our news consumption, but that ship has sailed:

ABC News said it's changing the name of its evening newscast to reflect both new anchorman Charles Gibson and an expansion into the digital realm, including an afternoon webcast.
The change from World News Tonight to World News with Charles Gibson occurred Wednesday evening.

The network is right, though, in one part of its reasoning:

With a webcast downloaded up to 2 million times a week through the Internet and iTunes, a network blog updated throughout the day and Gibson's participation in a 5 p.

m. EDT ABC News Radio broadcast, `World News' is not on only at night, Banner said.

I confess that, except for an occasional peek, I really haven't watched network news for about five years now.

Am I leaving myself ill-informed, or have others joined me in that choice?
Wonder if I could get the newspaper to change the name of our editorial page to Leo Morris presents the Evening Forum ?
Posted by Leo Morris on July 21, 2006 at 05:34 AM | TAMPA - That hallmark of Internet life - the pop-up ad - may be coming to a TV screen near you.

Cable and satellite TV companies serving the Tampa Bay area have begun experimenting with onscreen features and advertising that are more interactive and, they argue, helpful for TV viewers and clients.
More interactive? That means you will have to click something on your remote to get rid of the things.

Helpful for TV viewers? No, you've just been using TiVo to skip the ads, and that can't be tolerated. Love this:

Still, not all cable companies are sold on pop-up ads.

We tried this in test markets and, frankly, it was not well-received, said Michael Thompson, director of marketing for Knology Inc. cable systems, which provides cable in parts of Pinellas County.

Now, there's a shock.

I see this never-ending struggle in our future. We keep figuring out how to avoid annoying, intrusive ads in every area of our lives, and they keep coming up with ever more clever ways of bombarding us with them.
Posted by Leo Morris on June 26, 2006 at 05:26 AM | Nerds of the world, unite; we may slowly be taking over.

ABC decided to put the finals of the . It didn't exactly draw American Idol numbers, but 9 million people watched:

Perhaps one intellectual athlete -- and finalist in the 2004 competition -- best summarizes the importance and purpose of the event. The bee teaches you a lot about competition and life, said Akshay Buddiga, who infamously stepped up to the mic during '04's Round 6, received his word, fainted, got up and proceeded to spell the word correctly.

You don't always win, but you always have to work hard to get what you do win.

Posted by Leo Morris on June 9, 2006 at 05:42 AM | Finally, that doesn't involve Red State-Blue State polarization:

Like desperate shoppers fighting over a hot toy on Dec. 24, rival shopping networks QVC and HSN are waging war over the slogan Christmas in July.

Both networks promote shows with that title in July, offering viewers a chance to stock up early on a $53 porcelain holiday cat or $36 lighted wreath. Now they are competing over the name in U.S.

District Court in Philadelphia.

Personally, I'm waiting for the Independence Day in December specials. Get me some of them snazzy and now legal fireworks, slip 'em in the fireplace and give Santa a big surprise.

Posted by Leo Morris on May 25, 2006 at 05:31 AM |

February 20, 2006

Don't know how I got so lucky, but I happened to catch the beginnings of two of those half-hour infomercials on WANE-TV yesterday (at least we know the local TV networks still take that day of rest stuff seriously). At the beginning of each of them was a text advisory something to the effect of, This is a paid advertisement, and the endorsement of WANE-TV should not be implied. Or inferred, either, I'm guessing.

Posted by Leo Morris on February 20, 2006 at 05:06 AM | If you like , it never got much better than this on TV. What made it special, other than the commanding presence of Peter Falk, was the central premise. Viewers knew from the beginning of the episode who committed the murder; the joy was not just watching Columbo catch up with us as he built a case, but also learning what it was that made him zero in on the right suspect despite a lack of any obvious evidence.

(Note to you know who: I know this isn't on my Amazon list, but I wouldn't be heartbroken to find it under the Christmas tree.)
If a code of ethics is ever created for bloggers, I probably just violated 90 percent of it. That's OK.

I didn't do it, you can't prove anything, nobody saw me, I was somewhere else at the time, it depends on what is is. What's that? You have just one more question before you move on .

. . ?

Posted by Leo Morris on August 25, 2005 at 07:16 AM | Ouch, this hurts: The evening news, a tradition born at a time when evening newspapers were important, has one of television's oldest audiences.
I don't know that I'd be as optimistic as , 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 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 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 | Well, are you going to call Comcast and demand that it carry ? 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. But digital-media expert J.D.

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 |

Beam them up, by threes

It is said that the deaths of famous people come in threes.

And it happens just often enough to make it a good ghoulish game. Bob Hope dies, or the pope, or a former movie star you thought was dead already, and the death watch starts: Who will be next? It especially adds to the believability of the Myth of Threes when there are themed deaths -- three musicians, three politicians, three people who made sex tapes with Paris Hilton.

This week, we've had three TV-related deaths:
, 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.
, 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 that were never actually uttered.
, 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 .

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.