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| Home Front: Culture Wars |
| Mark Steyn watches CBS News |
| 2007-03-07 |
| I’m no network genius but my sense is that the CBS evening news viewers (I use the plural speculatively) want the conceit maintained. They want macho music with a butch voice announcing “The CBS Evening News from the CBS News Desk at CBS All-News World Headquarters with grizzled hard-hitting veteran news anchor Ted Baxter …er, Dan Rather at the CBS News macho anchor desk, where hard news is good to find”, and then Dan comes on sitting in front of a map of the world with flashing lights showing CBS bureaus around the globe that were all closed in 1988 when they gave his hairdresser a raise and barks gruffly, “Here’s one of the toughest reporters in the business. You’ve been pounding pavement and working your sources all day, John Roberts. What have you found?”, and then John does a feature about how the new nose hair pill may increase your risk of incontinence. But, starting with Hugo Winterhalter and a 1,001 Cascading Strings playing “Thank You For Being A Friend” and then a soothing voice saying “The Katie Couric Show – It’s newsy but woozy! And in such soft focus you won’t even notice the health feature has merged into an item about Iran’s nuclear program and, if you do, don’t worry, it won’t last very long before we get to our new feature American Uplift: Heartwarming tales of everyday people just like that nice family that used to live next door to you until they sold the lot to a Saudi-funded madrassah”, doing it that way just gives the game away. The CBS viewer (I use the singular advisedly) wants his lifestyle features with a veneer of gravitas. If I were the news division president, my motto would be: “CBS. Soft News Hard.” |
| Posted by:Mike |