Magister ([info]discreet_chaos) wrote,
@ 2006-12-27 02:09:00
Previous Entry  Add to memories!  Tell a Friend!  Next Entry
Entry tags:boston legal, consumer news, media

Pardon the Interruption
With about ten minutes remaining in tonight's rerun of Boston Legal, ABC News jumped into programming with a "Special Report", where Terry Moran told us that Gerald Ford had died. I'll admit that the death of a former President is news, but the man was of an advanced age, he was the longest living former President and he has not been well for a while.

Perhaps, if ABC had simply said that Gerald Ford had died and told us to stay tuned for our late local news or for additional coverage on Nightline, I could be giving them credit for possibly being first, but that's not what they did. Instead, Mr Moran did a phone interview with someone I don't remember, then via a telephone report, they reminded us that Charles Gibson is the only anchor old enough to have been working at the time and he only said stuff that most people already know.

There was only a few seconds left in the primetime broadcast, when Mr Moran tossed it back to Nightline for viewers in the eastern time zone, where he said there would be extended coverage. At no point in his broadcast did he say to stay tuned to the late local news for further information, something which would've been relevant to viewers in the other three time zones, nor did he say that they'd be doing another edition of Nightline for the remainder of the country.

Admittedly it was news, but nothing was said that couldn't wait, it was mostly just an exercise in being first and a way to promote Charles Gibson. The story may have warranted an interruption, but the bulk of the message could've been communicated in a minute or two, which would've allowed everyone not in the eastern time zone to finish the program, they had been watching.

In my opinion and with all due respect to the late President, the performance of ABC News mostly showed their lack of regard for everyone not living in the east and for the time we had devoted to watching one of their programs. A quick spin of the dial because they weren't saying anything new, showed that no other broadcast network was pre-empting the full final minutes of any show.

ABC News may or may not have been first, we won't know until later. But, I am willing to bet that their extended interruption, where they simply rehashed ancient history did the network's entertainment division no favors, nor did it serve the local affiliates by failing to mention their upcoming coverage and in the area of viewer loyalty, it could have done more harm than good.


(Post a new comment)


[info]eparchos
2006-12-27 10:42 am UTC (link)
you should check out the metafilter thread about it... one guess which username I'm using.

(Reply to this) (Thread)

[info]discreet_chaos
2006-12-27 11:13 am UTC (link)
Dude - I'm not going to beat up the former President because in my book, ABC News and Terry Moran showed poor judgement last night and if they're so inclined, they can still fight back.

Though after reading through that entire thread, I do find it odd that there's been no mention of "WIN" buttons and the ridiculous attempt to form a Reagan/Ford co-presidency to try and make Ronnie more palatable.

(Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

[info]eparchos
2006-12-27 11:25 am UTC (link)
I'm not beating up a former President for anything less than what the fuck that piece of crap deserves. On the other hand, I'm not one of those mealy-mouthed inbred retards who thinks democracy is so dead that it's OK to idolize dead formerly elected officials. *barfs on Reagan's corpse*

(Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

[info]discreet_chaos
2006-12-27 12:48 pm UTC (link)
I generally only look at Metafilter when someone points me in that direction, so I don't really know, but I'd venture that most of those commenting only know Gerald Ford as the guy who pardoned Nixon and from Saturday Night Live reruns. He really hasn't had much of a public life after leaving the White House, mostly he's served on several corporate boards and played a lot of golf, so most of those commenting probably only know him from the scant information in their history texts.

(Reply to this) (Parent)

[info]aquarian_lefty
2006-12-27 08:37 pm UTC (link)
The part that bothers me about all of this is the articles sprouting all over the internet lionizing this man. Correct me if I'm wrong, but was he not a fairly inept president, and was he not the only man to hold the office without being elected or re-elected to it? It's like back when Nixon died. All of his many many failings and vices were glossed over and he was remembered by many as "reformed" and as an "elder statesman of the party." But he was a crook, plain and simple. I'm not saying Ford was a bad man, but let's keep some perspective.

And yes, interrupting a television program to report that a man who hasn't been president in 30 years, and was only in the office then through sheer fortune, has died is fairly pointless.

(Reply to this) (Thread)

[info]discreet_chaos
2006-12-27 09:58 pm UTC (link)
In my own defense, I have to say that it wasn't so much the interruption, but that it pre-empted all off of the final minutes of the program, nothing was really added to the conversation and you can't say that the news wasn't expected. In response to your comment, I just did some googling for a page describing a similar situation which happened in 2004. In that instance, a producer actually violated some network policy when they decided to overwrite the final minutes of a CSI: New York to report on the death of Yassar Arafat and as a result, they were subsequently fired and the CSI was rebroadcast during a weekend overnight.

And my complaint isn't entirely with the interruption, though it was very poorly timed and pretty useless from an informational perspective, but when Mr Moran tossed it back, he didn't say to stay tuned to this ABC News station or for more information go to abcnews.com. Instead, he just tossed it back to his own program "for those in the eastern time zone", pretty much ignoring the rest of the country and those on the east coast who get Nightline on a delay.

As for Gerald Ford, I'd have to describe him as benign because he was a pretty ineffectual President. He didn't have any constituency of his own except for some voters in Grand Rapids, no mandate whatsoever and if memory serves, he had a divided Congress. Earlier, I made the easy joke about "WIN" buttons and referenced somebody's trial balloon from the 1980 Republican Convention, but those are the easy things that come to mind when you think of him and because he wasn't nearly as wealthy as those who preceded him in office, he pretty much cashed-in post-presidency to better his family's position.

I know that [info]eparchos and some others on that Metafilter thread wants to fault him for his pardoning of Nixon, but he didn't pardon an impeachment, he pardoned against a criminal trial. At the time, we were coming off of the deep divisions from the Vietnam War and the late 60/early 70s revolution which had swept the globe. All in the Family, with its weekly debates on many of the issues before our nation was one of the most popular shows on television and even in my house, where we watched the program religiously, there were deep divisions when the conversations carried from the screen into our living room. Nixon had done everything to cover-up and stonewall the Watergate investigators, he even fired the Special Prosecutor for trying too hard.

Senator Sam and his hearings had dominated daytime television and Watergate was the focus of the news. We all knew that Nixon had done wrong and I don't know that any good would've come from a criminal trial and because we had been so divided as a nation, before our mutual hatred of Nixon brought many of us back together, an actual trial may have done more harm than good. Yes, in retrospect, we survived Clinton's impeachment, but a criminal trial of a former President was something pretty unprecedented and because the nation had been teetering on a precipice for almost a decade, I don't know that it would've done any good. So, as one who vividly remembers that point in our history, I can't really fault the man for doing what he felt best.

When we needed him, he did serve, but in all honesty, he was mostly a seat-filler.

(Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

[info]eparchos
2006-12-27 11:14 pm UTC (link)
A digest of what I actually wrote in that thread:
The pardon of Nixon (and yes, I know it wasn't for an impeachment, and I clarified that several times in that thread) says to the American people, who were very divided and generally low on faith in their own government, that former Presidents are above the law. This did not help establish faith in government and it did nothing to heal the wounds created by Vietnam and Nixon. In fact, it exacerbated those problems. Ford didn't appear to even be TRYING to represent the people of this country, only the interests of his own little country club of criminals.

(Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)
Obviously, it'd help if I properly coded the link
[info]discreet_chaos
2006-12-29 08:47 pm UTC (link)
It's a couple of days later, but in case it hasn't crossed your desk, I thought I'd toss you this link to a Bob Woodward article about Ford & Nixon because you'd probably appreciate it.

(Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)
Re: Obviously, it'd help if I properly coded the link
[info]eparchos
2006-12-29 08:52 pm UTC (link)
Off topic a bit, but did you see this?

(Reply to this) (Parent)
Re: Obviously, it'd help if I properly coded the link
[info]eparchos
2006-12-29 08:52 pm UTC (link)
Oh, I found it, neat stuff. Thanks.

(Reply to this) (Parent)

(Anonymous)
2006-12-28 12:10 am UTC (link)
I do kind of see your point... but Boston Legal was a REPEAT, CSI: NY in 2004 was new. Big difference.

(Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

[info]discreet_chaos
2006-12-28 12:29 am UTC (link)
Yes, it was a repeat, but I hadn't seen it. I had seen those prior and most of those after, but though the case summations are usually quite dramatic, Boston Legal is primarily a comedy and stand-alone episodes are worth watching. Otherwise, if the episode was considered so disposable by the network, why did they bother to show it?

IOW: I can't really argue that a rebroadcast may be necessary in this case, but I decided fairly early in the evening that I'd do a bunch of chores and then settle into my chair for BL. I had sat there and watched all of the episode prior to the interruption, then when it was obvious that Mr Moran had nothing of any value to say, I flipped around and caught the end of an old Friends.

If there hadn't have been the extended interruption, I might have stuck around and watched the late news on my local ABC affiliate (KOAT). Instead, while I was flipping around, I saw a tease for the late news on our CBS affiliate and though nobody in the house had watched that station earlier in the evening and it's a place that I generally only go for specific stories or in response to a good tease; I did not return to KOAT for anything other than the final ten seconds of Boston Legal.

So, in effect, the ill-timed "Special Report" not only irked me as a fan of David Kelley, but it also most likely cost my local ABC affiliate a viewer for their late news.

(Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

[info]discreet_chaos
2006-12-28 12:42 am UTC (link)
PS) Because this post was linked from other places around the web, I realize that you may not be familiar with my work.

Therefore, please let me assure you that it wasn't the fact that the "Special Report" was "news" that bothered me, as you can see from my taglist in the sidebar, I'm a news and politics junkie. My complaint about the length of the interruption was more about the fact that all the "Special Report" really said was that 93 year old man had died, he had been President for a short time, his widow had released a statement and that he pardoned Nixon. It could've been dealt with via a shorter break and then a live feed for the late news, or they could've taken CBS's tactic of just running a crawl across the bottom of the screen.

(Reply to this) (Parent)

[info]somanesa
2006-12-27 09:11 pm UTC (link)
oddly, enough, I first saw it at http://isc.sans.org/diary.php?storyid=1978&rss

really, the last place I would expect to hear news of a celebrity death. More odd firstyness I guess

(Reply to this)


[info]artificialpuppy
2006-12-28 12:26 am UTC (link)
James Brown of Gerald Ford, which old dead guy is more important?

Nixon, was a bastard, but he was a bastard who did a lot to smooth out the Cold War, mostly by positioning people, who were smarter than he was, so they could influence things for the better. His motives were seldom pure, but the outcome was a good one. As far as thefts, crookery and abuse of official institutions is concerned, is it a crime to steal from thieves? The answer to that is yes, but it is also a matter of context as to whether or not one should really care; unless one has an ulterior motive, in which case, one really should be honest about it.

His anti-Communist credentials made it possible for him to break the ice with Stalin. Of course these also made him no friends amongst Communists themselves.

(Reply to this)

Create an Account
Forgot your login or password?
Login w/ OpenID
English • Español • Deutsch • Русский…