How to trivialize a disaster

Scott Fybush, editor of the trade publication NorthEast Radio Watch, wrote me last night after seeing some of the stunning pictures being delivered from New Orleans by cameramen for NBC and ABC:

The photojournalists on the scene are doing yeoman work under unimaginable conditions. Yet CNN, and to a lesser extent the other cable networks, insists on burying those pictures behind a screen full of redundant, useless or even insulting information. I do not need a brightly-colored banner telling me I'm watching "BREAKING NEWS" or "DEVELOPING STORY" or, as Larry King's graphics told us last night, "KILLER HURRICANE KATRINA." Nor do I need text informing me that I'm seeing "GRAPHIC IMAGES FROM NEW ORLEANS CONVENTION CENTER." What I want to see are those images, not little bits of them behind distracting graphics. I single out CNN because it's decided to leave its lower-third graphics up nonstop. It's not only an insult to me as a viewer, it's an insult to the men and women putting their lives on the line to get these pictures to us.

I won't even get into "The Situation Room," where those pictures are then rendered into a meaningless visual jumble on a wall of mismatched monitors.

Well, then, I will.

"The Situation Room" is a travesty. First, there's the sterility of it: Wolf Blitzer in his hermetic bubble, far from the crisis. Then there's the display. "Meaningless visual jumble" is exactly right, Scott. Imagine if, instead of writing a column, I copied and pasted four sets of notes and two press releases and called it a column. That's the "Situation Room" effect -- no context, no room to breathe, just a bombardment of images.  Is Condi Rice conducting a press conference worthy of a picture the same size as the other five? Then why include her?

Yes, I know they can join four pictures together to create an effect not much different from a traditional split screen. But the images I'm seeing on local New Orleans TV are so much more compelling, because they usually show just one at a time, and nobody is trying to pimp their news talent on screen.

During times like these, news directors should have a rule: One picture, one graphic at a time. Anything more creates circuit overload and emotional distance and reduces compassion.

***

By contrast, "Countdown with Keith Olbermann" (8 ET, MSNBC) has shown it understands the power of pictures. It also understands that sometimes, more is more.  I've been struck by how long Olbermann lets the tape play out. He must have done 10 minutes on the crisis at the Convention Center, and nine of those minutes were of the NBC cameraman who took the pictures. The night before, same thing -- just letting the power of pictures and words overwhelm us. Olbermann has had a sense of urgency and outrage in his newscasts all week.  He's to be commended.

***

Miracle of miracles, CBS plans to devote a small amount of its prime time schedule to report on the crisis. Good thing "60 Minutes II" is regularly scheduled (although in three weeks it makes way for "The Ghost Whisperer").

Other highlights include a telethon at 8 ET on NBC, MSNBC and CNBC. And for something different, a Discovery Times series, "Only in America," begins tonight:

Kansas City Star | Barnhart | Rule No. 1: No cameras in the fight club

And on the jump page: Where's Charlie Rose?

Not-so-quiet desperation

Ted Koppel did a fine job on "Nightline" last night grilling Mike Brown, the head of FEMA (which Soledad O'Brien then aped this morning on CNN). Brown apologized profusely for being distant, aloof, slow with help and out of touch, and promised immediately to make amends.

But as I type this, WWL-TV is reporting that FEMA has still not contacted local officials.

Right now on WWL's indispensable webcast, they're interviewing LSU's hurricane expert who is wondering why a tent city hasn't been set up yet.

"We should have by now started a refugee camp," Ivor van Heerden is saying. "The CDC is very good at setting up remote camps. People say, 'Oh, they're living in tents,' but these are tents with wood floors. Families will decorate the walls. And most importantly, they can start to have school. School is a very important part of getting back to normal." As is counseling. Van Heerden said that among refugees social problems will begin manifesting very soon: suicides, domestic abuse, drug use, prostitution.

But right now no one involved in managing the crisis is thinking that far ahead. We need chess players in charge; we're getting hackey-sack players instead.

***

If you think you've heard and seen it all, television is only scraping the surface. Read some of these recent postings from the NOLA.com hurricane weblog.

***

Dave Walker, the TV critic at the New Orleans Times-Picayune, was doing his job on Thursday -- reviewing TV coverage of the disaster -- when he saw his neighborhood on live TV. An overhead shot showed that every house was sitting under six, eight, ten feet of water. What a terrible way to find out your home wasn't one of the lucky ones. Here's his review, bottom of page A-17 (PDF).

This week, we are all haunted by waters

I wasn't the only one pouring out my thoughts in helpless frustration at being unable to do much about the suffering I was seeing on TV on Thursday (see below, “Where is the outrage?”). I received this from my friend Tom Jacobs, an accomplished producer:

Images and stories of poor Black folks don’t play as well on television as missing young white girls.  Politicians would rather cozy up to well heeled corporate special interests than respond to an underclass with little education or money.

But Katrina changed the rules.

The magnitude of this week’s disaster is of such a scale that television news has probably had more stories about poor Black folks on the air this week than they’ve had since television news began. And they’re stories that for the most part, television is woefully unprepared to cover.

Poor Black folks comprise a community that the executives who run television news divisions knew little about and rarely acknowledge. They are a segment of American society that is largely invisible in television news.  But Katrina lifted the veil. Katrina has forced television news divisions to send their best and brightest into this heretofore “invisible” community. And increasingly it’s becoming apparent, that many of the journalists covering this tragedy don’t like what they see and how this community is being treated.

Politicians say they’re responding quickly.

But what we see are pictures of dead bodies lying in the streets, an elderly woman dead in her wheel chair, a newborn infant near death because there is no formula. We hear journalists talk about watching rats eating the dead and listen to American citizens begging their government for food and water. These are stories we expect to see in some war ravaged Third World nation, not from New Orleans, not from Americans.

But they are stories that I for one, as horrific as they are, am glad to see. They show an America that needs to be seen and exposed. It is a legacy of Hurricane Katrina for which I am grateful.

Meanwhile, Broadcasting & Cable’s John Eggerton just posted his memories of the New Orleans Convention Center,  the giant box where many of us have attended television industry gatherings in the past and which has now turned into a warehouse of death and fear:

http://www.bcbeat.com/?q=node/650

And following on my earlier post about whether ABC will air the hurricane pilot of “Invasion” in three weeks, this from Brian Henke:

History Channel last night pulled a program called Isaac's Storm (about the man who warned about the 1900 hurricane that destroyed Galveston, Texas and killed 8,000 people) and showed some show about Prohibition.

On the jump page, another charity concert announced.       

TV Barn radio alert

Paul Harris is going to have me on his show this afternoon to talk about the posting below. We're live at kmox.com at 4:15 p.m. CT.

Update: It's now archived.

Where is the coverage?

Is it just me, or are the major broadcasters not paying nearly the mind to Katrina's aftermath as they would if, say, the hurricane had devastated New York City? Or Chicago?

If not for President Bush deciding to hold another press conference this afternoon, I think the networks would have gone blissfully on with their entertainment schedules, not minding at all the fact that at this point during 9/11, or the Iraq War, broadcast TV was overrun with news coverage.

Do I see this correctly -- CBS is airing repeats tonight? With no plans for Katrina coverage?

Where is the urgency? Where is the concern? Where is the social responsibility?

Once again, broadcasters want to have their cake and eat it too. They want special treatment (read: higher ad rates) from sponsors because they have wider reach and greater cultural impact. (The latter is always tricky to measure, but that doesn't stop the networks from claiming they have it.)

And yet, when having a cultural impact really could make a difference -- telling people that this is a big deal and they need to care what's going on down South right now -- they punt.

The good news is that NBC and ABC are again devoting whole hours to Katrina coverage in prime time tonight. Too bad they are overlapping hours (both airing at 10 pm ET).

***

To be sure, cable coverage has been unstinting. I've preferred Fox News' coverage to the other two, just because it seems more compelling and urgent. But all look like they're doing their jobs. (Why, though, was CNN using a videophone at the intersection of Orleans and Canal when CNBC was at the same intersection with a live crew? You'd think someone could fly or even drive one in from Atlanta.)

That's not the issue, though. The issue is that when broadcasters shunt coverage of anything off to cable, they are in effect making a comment on that story's newsworthiness.  By shunting Katrina coverage off to cable, they are saying it is not that much of a concern for the rest of America.

By contrast, after 9/11 dozens of broadcast and cable channels aired continuous coverage for three days, some for nearly a week, before returning to regular programming.

As I argued in 2004, it doesn't matter if the coverage can be found somewhere else. When it's offered by broadcast networks, more people are informed and the overall sense of urgency rises. This is what happened in 9/11. It happened in the war. It didn't happen during the Democratic Convention last year -- hence, an estimated 10 million people missed Barack Obama's coming-out party. (I'm sure there are Republican equivalents, but the Obama snub was so striking.)

Coverage = importance. That's what makes broadcasting broadcasting.

In Kansas City, "Nightline" is airing at its regular time period all week. Which is to say, on a 90-minute delay. After "Seinfeld." After "Will & Grace." After (gasp) "Extra."

In Kansas City, KCPT has suspended pledge and will resume normal programming. That includes a rebroadcast Friday night of a story that predicted a major disaster should a hurricane come near New Orleans, and explained why. It'll appear on "NOW," along with an update (check local listings).

"In deference to the other fundraising efforts currently underway surrounding the tragic events unfolding along the Gulf, KCPT will suspend its membership drive until after the Labor Day holiday. The thoughts and prayers of the KCPT staff are with the victims of this tragedy," said KCPT general manager Victor Hogstrom in a statement.

Our public broadcaster is the only broadcaster that has done anything that indicates that somebody there gets it, and is acknowledging the unprecedented tragedy on our home soil.

What exactly is at stake here? Those screamingly high HUT levels during the last week of August?

Broadcasters that air a single repeat this week when the magnitude of this disaster is so painfully clear should be ashamed of themselves.

It's telethon time

Link: NBC UNIVERSAL ANNOUNCES “A CONCERT FOR HURRICANE RELIEF” - BENEFIT TELETHON TO AID VICTIMS OF HURRICANE KATRINA.

Well, of course. Television is very good at this. However, I'm now interested in what lessons we can learn from the deluge of gifts that poured into New York City after 9/11.  This is not about the American Red Cross, which will be the beneficiary from Friday's telethon, but about other efforts, which were not well organized. How widespread was the waste?  Were there, as some said, grave inequalities in distribution of charity?  Is there anything we can learn from our experience with 9/11, which is getting invoked a lot today on the cable news channels?

And will any of our fine TV news organizations step forward to investigate?

Update: On the jump page, Viacom raises the ante -- and tells you by how much.

The best of timing, the worst of timing

ABC publicist Jeff Fordis confirmed just now that I am not the only one wondering: In light of the devastation along the Gulf Coast, does the network go ahead with "Invasion"?

That's the series, scheduled to air Sept. 21, that begins with a hurricane sweeping through south Florida. It doesn't look like much of a deluge on camera, and once it's done, the ground goes dry and life seems to return to normal fairly quickly. That, of course, is nothing like the aftermath that the real life Hurricane Katrina is inflicting on New Orleans and other communities in that region.

Given the current estimates of it taking three to six months just to dredge out the floodwater, let alone get people's lives back to normal, that means "Invasion" will be coming on the air while people are still fragile and the tragedy is still a lead story on the nightly news. Especially if the death toll is catastrophically high, as some officials are saying today it could be.

ABC is airing a news special at 10 ET tonight (NBC is, too, at 9 ET). But the show will go on in three weeks -- at least that's the word. "There are no plans to reschedule the premiere," Fordis said.

They're trying to wash us away

Surfing the critics:

• With New Orleans teetering on the verge of complete collapse, my friend and colleague, Dave Walker, TV critic at the New Orleans Times-Picayune, has evacuated with a half-million other locals. From near Baton Rouge, he's observing what will likely become the country's first sustained mass experiment in webcasting. Some local TV stations cannot broadcast because their towers are down, but even those still on the air must use the Web to reach viewers who will be living outside the area for the next three to four months. Dave's report is on page A-12 of today's Web-only edition of the Times-Picayune, itself an involuntary test of Web journalism.
• Earlier, my counterpart at the Miami Herald, the irascible Glenn Garvin, had to put up with flooding and power outages in South Florida as Katrina whizzed through there. He writes about that and asks the question: Is it me or are we getting more of these every year? (Your kansascity.com ID will work there.)
• Tim Goodman is back from vacation. I've got to take me one of those.
• Gail Pennington in St. Louis -- home of Missouri's only Major League Baseball team -- notes a fact that might otherwise have slipped our minds amidst the deluge of real news: Martha Stewart gets her anklet off today.
• And Lisa de Lectable is back from her post-TCA break as well, with a ratings rundown that all fans of scripted TV and reality hatahs should enjoy. Even I learned something: HBO really does care about the ratings.

Shiny discs: "Twin Peaks," "Simpsons Season 6"

It's DVD Tuesday, which is as good an excuse as any to link to this blogpost from last year from Joe Kissell's Interesting Thing of the Day site. He's explaining the complicated video history of "Twin Peaks," most of which I was unaware of. Like the fact that the pilot episode is owned by a different company than the one that owns the remaining 32 hours. And why you shouldn't watch the last ten minutes of the pilot.

I'm not the world's biggest "Simpsons" fan. But I was so charmed by the packaging of the "Simpsons Complete Sixth Season" DVD that I started watching it. As has been done apparently with all DVD collections of the show, there are audio commentaries for every episode. Which is kind of like taking a Communiversity class in "Simpsons 101." The typical commentary has Matt Groening, at least one of the four principal voicers, the showrunner and the writer and director of the episode all chiming in. And since they're old pros at it, they (mostly) avoid the self-congratulatory backslaps that are a tipoff that you're listening to a bad DVD commentary. In fact, some even came with material, like Mike Scully, who wrote an episode that featured the voice of guest star Winona Ryder: "She steals the show!"

I've gotten through eight commentaries so far and the two voices I've yet to hear (besides, of course, the late Phil Hartman) are Hank Azaria or Harry Shearer. Azaria's got an excuse. As for Shearer, if things are so toxic between him and the rest of the crew, why don't they just call him in on a Saturday to record a commentary or two, solo, for the season seven collection?  It's not like he doesn't know how to talk into a microphone and be entertaining for 22 minutes, or even 59 minutes, all by himself.

Also, I have first editions of every record Kansas made.

I have a confession to make.  A couple of weeks ago, I turned on "Rock Star: INXS," even though I never really liked INXS or E!'s Brooke Burke. (Dave Navarro just frightened me.) 

And I liked it.

Link: Kansas City Star | 08/30/2005 | ‘Rock Star: INXS’ has found its groove.

And there's more: In today's TV Barn Radio segment of my KMOX show, Aaron Barnhart and I talk about the coverage of Hurricane Katrina and the debut of the new Fox series, "Prison Break." (Harrisonline.com)

What did ever happen to RuPaul?

Click - click - click:

• Why do we even bother with TV ratings? This weekend OLN assigned a "TV-G" rating to the Kansas City installment of its "All-Star BBQ Showdown," even though a member of one team blurted out the F word when she learned they had scored enough points to attend the showdown finals in New York City. Doesn't matter that OLN masked it: An "F" followed by a bleep is worth at least a "TV-PG" rating, no matter the context.
• GLAAD counts only 16 "series regular” and recurring gay, lesbian and bisexual roles (there continue to be no transgender characters) scheduled to appear on 14 different scripted programs (out of 110 total) on the broadcast networks. While this number is up from the 11 characters counted last season, the lack of representation is still cause for concern. “Out of 710 ‘series regulars’ that will appear this season on the broadcast networks, gay, lesbian and bisexual characters make up less than 2%,” says GLAAD Entertainment Media Director Damon Romine. “This is a shocking misrepresentation of reality and of the audience watching these programs.” (GLAAD PR) Wait a minute -- that's two different things. GLAAD is asserting (a) that 2 percent is too low an estimate of the nation's GLBT population and (b) that the audience wants higher representation in its entertainment programs. I think most viewers will buy the latter point, but not the former.
• The UK will finally be able to watch entire episodes of "The Daily Show," not just Web clips. Channel 4 signed a deal to air the programme nightly on More4, its new digital channel. Next stop should be Germany, where Jon Stewart could become the next Harald Schmidt. (Apologies for that background; it was 1995 and we were young and foolish.)
• Over the weekend I notice that Gmail had upped me from 50 allowable invites to 100.  So that means that pretty much anyone who wants a Gmail account and doesn't have one can get one through me. Let me say this about Google's webmail service: I always liked it. I always marveled at its ability to acclimate itself to new mutations of spam and keep them out of my Inbox without taking down legit mail as well. But that 1-gigabyte ceiling on mail was ridiculous. I used it up in about three months.  So I switched back to Apple Mail for a while, but nothing blocks spam as easily or as well as Gmail. And when I discovered Google had opened up the limit on email storage -- basically it's the National Debt Clock of storage, at 2544.38545 megabytes (and counting). So I'm with Gmail again, and if you'd like to join me, send email.
  

And you can surf while listening to "Like a Hurricane"

Is this the beginning of the end for television news coverage of hurricanes? After all these years? Well, maybe.  Maybe not.  And I'm sticking by that.

Kansas City Star | Barnhart | Web coverage of Katrina blew TV away

Ad annoyeds: All we are is grist for the mill

We'll return to our regularly scheduled commercials in a moment. First, a word about some commercials that have been getting on my nerves lately.

• Busch Light. So there're these good looking young adults, right? Good enough to put on television. And they're in the Grand Canyon, climbing up rocks.  No gear, no helmets, just a bunch of kids looking for a great view, cheap. Nice music. Cue the announcer: "Just a reminder that many national treasures aren't found in museums." The view? Awesome.  And then ... out comes the beer. Buscccccch.  Uh, just one question: Would you recommend climbing down those huge, smooth red rocks after putting a Busch Light or two under your belt? What's the difference between DWI and RCWI, other than one's illegal?

• Miller's "Camp Miller" and Capital One "Pillagers' New Jobs." These two ads ran consecutively during ESPN's Sunday Night Baseball (Capital One's a big sponsor and Miller is Miller). Both are documentary style ads, with a straight-faced interviewee explaining some Preposterous Circumstance as though it were real. Not only that, but both ads were spoofs that referenced prior ad campaigns.  The Miller spot riffs off of earlier spots where NFL-like referees penalized beer drinkers in public for sipping Bud. Capital One ad showed medieval pillagers -- who in earlier ads wreaked havoc on holders of credit cards with sky-high interest rates -- trying, ineptly, to hold down jobs like valet and ice cream server because a certain brand of credit card had put an end to their rampages. All that was needed was a "This is SportsCenter" spot and ESPN would have had a trifecta of self-referencing, lookalike ads.  This kind of ad makes sense if you're ESPN, which is simply looking to reinforce its brand. But I'd think the other two would want to avoid doing these. Isn't the point to expose your brand to a mass audience, not just the fraction that are fans of your old ad campaigns? Then again, I've never gotten Miller's "Good Call" campaign, which is clearly not aimed at Boulevard drinkers.
• Subaru Tribeca. Does anyone else besides me reach for the remote the instant this spot comes on? In it, a Subaru SUV drives through town and country. Every time it encounters another SUV, poof, that other guy's car disintegrates. (Tagline: "It's the end of the SUV as we know it.") What's most jarring about the ad is the gruesome special effects -- watching a car instantly turn into a beater is no more pleasant than watching a supermodel morph into an old hag -- but a close second would have to go to the music selection. "Dust in the Wind" by Kansas? You're using that song to sell your SUV? Are the Pavlovs of consumer culture so hard up for ideas that they must appropriate one of the few songs from the 1970s that doesn't seem hopelessly hokey or dated and turn it into some kind of ironic retro-comment (which, despite the attempt, it is not)?

River rose all day the river rose all night

Forget the peppy-dramatic theme music being used by the hopeless shills at The Weather Channel.  This morning, I've got Randy Newman's "Louisiana 1927" on the brain.

• In case you haven't been reading John Higgins' weekly columns in Broadcasting & Cable, here's a kick in the pants to do it. Even though his "Money Talks" column is ostensibly about the financial side of the TV business, you learn a lot by what's on the tube by following the money ... as any TV Barn reader knows. This week, Higgins examines the mess at NBC and answers the question I asked a few weeks ago: "why it's (Kevin) Reilly's neck on the line when his boss, Jeff Zucker, has been at the network a lot longer and has a far less impressive track record."
• I've just read a draft of an essay being prepared by Reese Schonfeld, the first president of CNN and one of the smartest guys I know when it comes to cable news. "It’s time for some American network, maybe CNN, to offer a news channel covering Iraq and Iraq related stories, twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. ... Our goal in creating the Iraqi network is to provide the American public with the information it needs to make an intelligent decision about what we should do in Iraq – stay in, get out, or increase our forces. We should make sure the audience knows this is a high-stakes game with results that will last for centuries. After that it’s all up to the Americans who are spending lives and money on this effort. There are at least two questions: Is the war worth waging? And if it so, are we waging it effectively, are we going all out to win?" What makes the proposal worth considering is that it comes from a man who thinks the war on Iraq is worth fighting. He believes an all-Iraq news channel could probe beneath the surface and inform viewers better than a headline service, which is essentially what CNN is now (except when covering hurricanes and doping allegations against retired bicycle riders). And yet, as someone who doesn't see the war anything like Schonfeld or Christopher Hitchens or any of its defenders do, I too would welcome a 24/7 Iraqi channel. As Justice Brandeis (I think) once said, sunshine is the best disinfectant. Schonfeld would set aside time for telling the "good news" from Iraq as well as explaining, for instance, that "all of Shiism is divided into at least four parts," a fine detail TV doesn't bother with. Schonfeld is looking for someone to print his article, so contact him through his website if you're interested.
• Some weekly archives aren't working like they should. Use the master archive instead.
• And kudos to Salon's Heather Havrelisky for naming what was on the tip of my tongue while watching the first four hours of HBO's "Rome": Atia is just like "The O.C.'s" Julie Cooper!

You give us 22 hours, we'll give you the world

It's official -- America has reached overload on paint-by-numbers procedurals. Now the influence of "Lost," "The O.C." and other serial dramas is being felt, as a new crop of serials (led by Fox's "Prison Break," photo) comes your way this fall. Here's my lookahead.

Kansas City Star | Barnhart | A story in 22 hours

And here's my review of Monday's "Prison Break":

Kansas City Star | Barnhart | Fox opens season with captivating "Prison Break"

Also this weekend, I reviewed HBO's newest mega-series, "Rome," and in the course asked the question: Has HBO bitten off more than its viewers can chew?

Kansas City Star | Barnhart | 'Rome': HBO's imperial hubris?