Back from a time of little blogging! I’ll attribute the minimal content of this blog recently to two factors: My increasingly-tiring full-time job (which is in a field completely unrelated to the print media, or of writing of any sort) and a short trip to California.
Upon returning home, I did start perusing the tree-killing news carriers that arrive in my driveway every morning. In Monday’s (8/15) paper there was an article by AP television writer David Bauer that just deserved a blogosphere response. While Bauer is obviously nostalgic about the “old days” of TV network news, he overromaticizes the impact of the nightly network news anchor. As I am nearing the age of 40, let me disclose that I never, at any time in my adult life, made a regular habit of watching an evening network newscast.
Never.
I hit early adulthood while in college, and watching any TV on a regular basis simply wasn’t a pattern I or any of my acquaintances followed (save for Monday Night Football and other NFL games). I wasn’t inclined to keep up with the news during those years anyway. Toward the end of my college days CNN was the ruler of the broadcast news media, and I watched it along with most everyone else. Then I began my radio news career and TV news functioned as almost something of an enemy. Fast foward to the present day and my TV news comes mainly from the Fox News Channel and 2 or 3 local newscasts.
Bauer compares Brokaw, Rather, and Jennings to father figures but for me that is pure folderol. Particularly in the case of Rather, whom I am more likely to compare to the quirky, oafish, or even slightly insane great uncle that the whole family tolerates only out of blood obligation.
The last sentence is the most telling: “No one fills dad’s empty place at the table immediately.” In my household, the meal has ended and the family has left the table.
Time to see what’s on the satellite dish.
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