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Hollywoodland
Magazine won't let princess rest in peace
Cult of personality, without the personality
The People are always wrong
BROWSE THE
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Sam and Cokie____________
DESPERATE TO BURNISH
ITS SAGGING RATINGS,
ABC DRESSES UP ITS
MILLIONAIRE CELEBRITY
HOSTS AS "REPORTERS."
BY ERIC ALTERMAN | The pundit-sitcom universe took another strange turn toward implosion last week when ABC News undertook a series of desperate measures designed to improve its sagging reputation. The ratings for both "ABC World News Tonight With Peter Jennings" and the newly renamed "This Week with Sam and Cokie" are in the toilet. David Brinkley decided to embarrass his old colleagues by accepting a job as pitchman for Archer Daniels Midland, the sleazy corporation that advertises almost exclusively on what used to be "This Week with David Brinkley." ABC's response: Send Sam Donaldson back to the White House, ship Cokie Roberts to Capitol Hill and put Brinkley even further out to pasture. (The show will no longer run the commercials.) On the face of it, sending Sam and Cokie back to work as honest journalists is a welcome sign that reporting will be valued in the pundit-pontification business. The wrinkly Brinkley may have been able to pull off the Avuncular Wise Man act, just as Jack Klugman is playing to sold-out crowds in a remake of "The Sunshine Boys," but Sam and Cokie do not cut it in the charisma category. Sam's shtick is loud-mouthed obnoxiousness; Cokie's is self-satisfied smugness. Given that Sam provided more than enough of the former in his previous incarnation as a panelist, and George Will supplied plenty of the latter when Cokie was still laboring only in the poor-but-virtuous vineyards of National Public Radio, "This Week" became almost unwatchable. Who would willingly invite smug big mouths to Sunday brunch week after week? Since it is nearly impossible to fire such Big Feet, the only solution was to try to make Sam and Cokie more palatable to their audiences. Returning them to work as ABC reporters is an obvious attempt in that direction. The plan has the further virtue, in the minds of the ABC honchos, of adding star-power to the Jennings show, which has been outflanked by Dan Rather on the hard-news front and Tom Brokaw in the news-friendly department. The move was deemed so important it was obviously undertaken in panic. John Donovan, the veteran White House correspondent, and John Cochran, the major congressional correspondent, were dumped from their jobs without even a cover story about "new assignments." Donaldson, meanwhile, will continue as co-anchor of "PrimeTime Live," and Roberts will continue writing her column with her husband, Steven Roberts; both Donaldson and Roberts will continue the duties they share as co-hosts of the Sunday morning kibbitzathon. All of this has been covered as Big News in the media navel-gazing business, where I work. ABC is running full-page ads. Donaldson's return to the White House was covered by both the Post and the Times, offering up the now-familiar spectacle of reporters covering reporters covering pseudo-events. Presidential spokesperson Mike McCurry issued a statement and the 63-year-old Donaldson issued a mock-challenge to his new colleagues, most of whom are about 30 years younger than he is. "Watch out," he warned, "you bright young men! When you get to the White House Monday morning around 9, we'll already have been there since 7 and we [he and senior UPI correspondent Helen Thomas] will have the coffee ready for you." (Are there no women working in the White House press office these days?) Amidst all the hoopla, a few questions have gone unasked: First, does anyone remember any important story that the fabled reporters, Sam and Cokie, ever broke during their long careers? Unfair question, because they are commentators? OK, anyone remember anything of significance either one has ever said? Here's another. Didn't these people already have full-time jobs? How is it that they can simply tack the responsibilities of White House and Congressional correspondents to their already busy schedules? Is it because they were not really journalists in the first place, but paid celebrity hosts, jetting between speaking engagements at about $25,000 per and using their false titles merely to enhance their alleged "credibility" before corporate fat-cat audiences? And why is everyone so pissed at David Brinkley? He quit being a journalist and now he wants to be a corporate pitchman. Given the duties involved hosting a Sunday show, the hours are about the same and I'm sure the pay is even better. Does David all of a sudden have conflicts of interest he didn't have when the ADM influence-peddlers were merely paying for his show, rather than directly paying his salary? Why does eliminating the middleman suddenly make you a whore? What about the idea of five millionaires telling the rest of America what's good for the middle class every Sunday? Does it help that the Sunday pundits are paid by the stockholders of a corporation that is buying up congressmen to soak tax-payers for billion-dollar ethanol subsidies? Does that strike anyone as a scandal? ABC News says it canned the Brinkley ADM spots because of "the potential for confusion among our viewers." I think Brinkley's move has the potential to end that confusion.
Nation media columnist and MSNBC contributor Eric Alterman says he has nothing against obnoxiousness on TV per se. |
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