To prove the point, let’s briefly review the history of network news in prime time:
In 1954, when TV was young, viewers could see a half hour of Edward R. Murrow’s legendary “See It Now” (where he took on Sen. Joseph McCarthy), a half hour of Murrow’s “Person to Person” (where he interviewed Marilyn Monroe) and a half hour of an NBC news show called “Big Story” for a total of one and a half hours of prime-time news programming a week.
In 1964, amid the golden age of documentaries, the first-rate “CBS Reports” ran for an hour each week, and the excellent “NBC White Paper” aired occasionally when sitcoms flagged, for an average total of well under two hours a week.
In 1974, the official prime-time schedule indicates no regular news programming at all. “60 Minutes” had debuted in 1968 but was often broadcast too early for prime time as it was then defined. In this era-, “CBS Reports” ran irregularly and NBC made failed stabs at news magazines for an average that was still under two hours a week.
In 1984, with ABC News’s “20/20” in its fifth season and NBC still hunting for a news magazine, the total remained under three hours a week. though by now “Nightline” and CNN were expanding the news horizon.
Now, in 1994, there are 10 weekly hourlong network news magazines in prime time, not counting cable or syndicated shows. This also doesn’t include occasional hourlong specials on important issues anchored by Peter Jennings. Ted Koppel, Dan Rather or Tom Brokaw. That’s nine or 10 times as much news and news-feature programming as in earlier decades. Nobody uses the word “documentary” anymore, but long-form treatment of news stories survives. ’two shows-CBS’s “48 Hours” and ABC’s “Turning Point”-devote a full hour each week to one topic. Often they feature predictable grabbers (serial killers), but sometimes they cover topics that Americans don’t usually see in prime time (political correctness on “48 Hours” and an upcoming hour on South Africa on “Turning Point”).
Let’s assume that three quarters of this programming is really entertainment masquerading as news-or vice versa. That still leaves viewers far ahead of where they were in past years. But the ratio is actually better than that-perhaps half respectable human-interest journalism to half celebrity puff or freak-of-the-week ratings bait. Much of the solid work is smaller-bore than the weighty documentaries of the past, but hardly worthless.
An expose of Girl Scout cookies obviously isn’t as important as Bosnia. But it’s not as if Bosnia isn’t getting enough attention on the news. And the more focused, almost local stories, while often cheesed up with hidden cameras and “point of view” production values (for instance, driving a jerky car past a murder scene at night), are sometimes more influential than the news of old, even if the influence is hard to measure. “Eye to Eye” went after bad doctors who move from state to state-exactly the kind of significant consumer issue that Murrow would have found beneath him. “PrimeTime Live” nails junketeering congressmen. “20/20” provides sound health and child-rearing advice (e.g., why spanking kids isn’t effective) to 20 million Americans who might otherwise not get it. “Dateline,” “Now” and “Front Page,” while focused on the sizzle, have all also done important stories on children. “Day One” showed some guts in blasting the tobacco industry (for which ABC is now being sued), and it did a fine hourlong reconstruction of one especially bloody battle in Vietnam. In fact, TV news magazines in general have done much to bring Americans to terms with that war.
The biggest thing wrong with these shows is that they are structured to convey drama and narrative more than information. But this problem is not just about tabloidism; it’s inherent in the medium itself TV is often maligned for being geared to those with short attention spans. Actually it requires a longer (though more languid) gaze to watch one of these shows than to skim a newspaper. How many articles take 15 minutes to read?
Last week, for instance, “PrimeTime Live” led its broadcast with the ultimate dog-bites-man story. It was about dangerous inbred dogs that can seriously wound children. The story referred to a newspaper ranking of dog breeds by viciousness (this, like almost all news-magazine stories, TV and print, originated in a smaller-circulation publication), and it showed that a judge would do nothing to protect a child from her neighbor’s dog. That was almost all of the information-as opposed to emotion-contained in the story, which just took you at most 10 or 15 seconds to read. On TV, the pieces lasted 10 or 15 minutes.
But if TV news magazines are an inefficient means of conveying information, they certainly convey more of it than the alternative-which is entertainment programming. When this fad for news-tabloid and otherwise-passes, TV audiences will know less about their world than they do today. It sounds depressing, but a few years from now the early 1990s may look like the true golden era of television news.
