NewsCommonsense

“This Week” Is Brain Dead

Why not just let Rush Limbaugh host “This Week.”

Baring All for Science

Exposing a woman’s breasts on mainstream media programs is not supposed to happen, short of a “wardrobe malfunction.”

But in a four-part report on [breast cancer] beginning Thursday night, WJLA, Channel 7 in Washington, will break TV's unspoken taboo by showing two women fully exposed on its late-afternoon and evening newscasts.

The station claims there isn’t enough, ahem, detail shown about how women should examine their breasts to catch the cancer early.  Oh, OK.  Well, if there’s a good reason….  In fact, there is a really, really, very good reason.

The reports will air on the first two days of TV's traditional "sweeps" month, a period in which stations air their most eye-catching stories to boost ratings that are used to set advertising rates.

Eye-catching, indeed. Nonetheless, station manager Bill Lord said that’s just a coincidence.  And besides,

Lord said he did not expect many viewer complaints, in part because the reports will be preceded by "viewer discretion" disclaimers. Further, he said, WJLA's 5 p.m. newscast follows "The Oprah Winfrey Show" and its 11 p.m. newscast on Thursday follows the ABC medical drama "Private Practice," both of which have audiences largely made up of women. On Friday, the 11 p.m. news follows "20/20," a news program that has an older following.

“[A]udiences largely made up of women”?  Not those nights, baby.  And the guys won’t be complaining.

Reportedly, next ratings period, the station is going to demonstrate, in detail, how you can catch syphilis. (OK.  That’s not true, but I’ll let you know if the station calls me to thank me for the idea.)

Salaries Out of Whack

No, we’re not talking about bank CEOs.  Mike Messing is talking about salaries of network news anchors.

Katie Couric’s annual salary is more than the entire annual budgets of NPR’s Morning Edition and All Things Considered combined. Couric’s salary comes to an estimated $15 million a year; NPR spends $6 million a year on its morning show and $5 million on its afternoon one. NPR has seventeen foreign bureaus (which costs it another $9.4 million a year); CBS has twelve. Few figures, I think, better capture the absurd financial structure of the network news.

I have no particular beef with Couric.  How could I; I’ve never watched her show from beginning to end.  In fact, since she’s been on the air at CBS, I’ll bet I have seen 10 minutes of her show.  I am an NPR fan, though I don’t get to hear it but occasionally. 

The network signature news programs each night are losing their audiences in droves.  Young people rarely listen to them.  As with newspapers, many of which continue to follow the political gamesmanship rather than give readers information they can use, network news hasn’t changed the product in a meaningful way in decades. 

The networks are in a death spiral, yet they keep airing the same tired product. Could they do things differently? Has the anchor system perpetuated the problem? What changes might succeed in luring new viewers?

You can’t really blame the anchors, but you can’t credit them with anything either.

So why do they continue to pay anchors multi-million salaries when there is no evidence they improve the product or increase the audience?