Perhaps the greatest indictment of television is that people who know nothing about the business beyond the on-off button could not make more neglectful moves or illogical decisions than many of those at the wheel, the professionals.
This past July Fourth was one of those days when the common sense of network shot-callers was not visible to the naked eye.
We’ll start with the Syfy Channel, which presented its popular holiday standard: A “Twilight Zone” marathon.
The original, black-and-white Rod Serling-produced and hosted “Twilight Zone” episodes, 1959-65, were loaded with actors famous and no-so famous, superstars before they were even minor stars, character actors and actresses you’d seen so many times before, but, darn, his/her name escapes you!
“Twilight Zone” had no opening credits, thus to read the closing credits would be essential to many viewers for many reasons. You don’t have to be an executive producer to know that.
But when the credits ran, Syfy shrank them to roughly one-fourth the full screen, making them nearly unreadable. The lion’s share of the screen was then devoted to promos for future programs, promos Syfy could have run at many other times.
A greater betrayal of common sense and art appreciation is hard to find . . . unless one tuned to NBC to watch the “Macy’s Fourth of July Fireworks Spectacular.”
NBC has sense issues with live holiday telecasts. In its national coverage of the Rockefeller Center Christmas tree-lighting, a few years ago, NBC missed it. That’s right, instead of focusing on the tree as the crowd counted down from 10, NBC focused on celebs in the crowd, returning to the tree only after it had gone electric.
NBC actually missed the one shot that the entire show was built on and built to; the only shot NBC could not miss became the shot NBC missed!
This past July Fourth, NBC decided that the best way for America to see fireworks from NYC was to place a large “Live” graphic in the upper right corner of the screen, a graphic accompanied by a large computerized/animated sparkler. “That’s right,” writes reader Mark Burnell of Queens, “an animated firework logo telling us that the broadcast was live, ran the entire show — superimposed over real fireworks!”
Pretty weak thinking . . . unless one turned to the Biography Channel on July Fourth.
What could be easier programming for the Biography Channel to program for the Fourth of July? Just reach into the video library. Give us Dolley Madison, Thomas Jefferson, Sgt. York, Gen. McArthur, Teddy Roosevelt, Colin Powell — even the bio of George M. Cohan, the song man who wrote “Yankee Doodle Dandy,” would work.
But Bio Channel chose to present a “Gene Simmons’ Family Jewels” marathon, a bawdy family frolic “reality show” starring Gene Simmons of glam-rock KISS fame.
Not that we should have been surprised. On Memorial Day, Bio Channel told no stories of war or war heroes. Instead, it presented bios of musical acts, including Metallica, Black Sabbath and, rather than Ben Franklin, Aretha Franklin.
I submit to you that this past Fourth of July, three national networks would have been in wiser, more discriminating hands had they been in just about anyone else’s.
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Here’s to CNN/Headline News’ intrepid trailer-trash trailer Nancy Grace.
Every time a kid goes missing or is found murdered — the Casey Anthony case, her latest — Grace steps into her scowling, indignant, populist ghoul character.
She’s so determined to grab morons by the gut that they may not realize that her TV career has become reliant on easy viewers and genuine horrors. She’d be lost without both.