The sellout of ABC News to parent company Disney continues, no apparent shame attached.
Last week’s ABC News “Person of the Week,” as announced and saluted by anchor Charles Gibson, was Kenneth Ortega.
And who, reader John Siciliano of the Bronx writes to ask, could Kenneth Ortega be? Kenneth Ortega, war hero? Kenneth Ortega, firefighter? Kenneth Oretga, crime fighter? Kenneth Oretga, who shelters the homeless and feeds the hungry?
No, Kenneth Ortega, choreographer.
And what did he choreograph?
He choreographed Disney’s “High School Musical 2,” which, we were told, premieres that very night on the Disney Channel.
Not that such Disney-diving on “ABC’s World News Tonight” is unprecedented.
Frank Gehry is a famous architect. Starting in the mid-1970s, he has designed many beautiful buildings. But he didn’t become ABC News’s Person of the Week” until October of 2003, the week The Disney Concert Hall, designed by Gehry, opened in Los Angeles. The late Peter Jennings handled that one.
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So last month, you might recall, PepsiCo Inc., the company that owns Aquafina bottled water, fessed up to what a lot of people suspect about a lot of fancy-named and priced bottled water: Aquafina is common tap water.
Or, as Aquafina labels now tell us, “Public Water Source.”
And so Aquafina, in order to let America know that Aquafina is very special water, just the same, has launched a TV advertising campaign. The new ads boast that Aquafina undergoes a seven-step process; it’s filtered once, filtered a second time, then purified, then filtered three more times, then purified again.
That’s something to brag about? Apparently, if such a process is necessary, Aquafina starts with dirty tap water, its purifiers don’t work all that well and its filters need changing.
Hey, if you’ve got to shower seven times to get clean, it stands to reason that you’re either pretty dirty or your soap doesn’t work.
Reminds us of the commercials for those Gillette five-blade “Fusion” razors (up from four blades, and before that three blades, and two blades, before that), the razor that claims to provide the closest shave, ever. If their first four blades can’t do the trick . . .
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I’ve never been quite sure why fictionalized crime dramas make it big on the major networks when some second-string cable networks – A&E, Court TV, The Discovery Times Channel – are loaded with the real things and the real good stuff – “Forensic Files,” “City Confidential,” “The First 48,” “Cops.”
Dialogue? No script can beat the real stuff. On a recent “City Confidential,” the story of Johnny Volpato was presented. A Carlsbad, New Mexico, pharmacist and aspiring politician, Volpato was accused of murdering his wife and intentionally wounding himself to throw suspicion elsewhere.
Why, police asked, would robbers murder his wife, shooting her four times, to ensure that she was dead (thus keeping her from identifying them), yet leave him only slightly wounded?
Carlsbad detective Jon Tully: “I think most investigations tend to operate on a couple of premises. One is: There’s no such thing as a coincidence.”
See? How can a scriptwriter top that?
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Welcome back, WCBS-FM. The golden oldies station was replaced by robots playing George Michael, Luther Vandross and contemporary dental chair music in the form of Jack FM in June of 2005.
Now, do us a favor that WCBS-FM failed to do from 1972, when it went to an oldies format, through June of 2005: Before and/or after every song, identify the group or artist and the year the song or instrumental was released. Please. In automobiles guesswork ensues, debates and even arguments among passengers erupt.
Oldies stations don’t merely offer music as their stock in trade, they stimulate memories, personal histories. Finish the job; tell us who and when. Please.