Perhaps the most frightening change in commercial television is that networks continue to lay off – never to rehire – their better angels. Flat ratings, ya know.
So the proliferation — the epidemic, the disease — of remorseless, wise-guy, lewd, rude, put-down, name-calling TV, continues to deride and conquer.
Last week “TMZ,” as seen on Fox-5 and loaded with a cast of young, desensitized, wise-guy “reporters,” included a segment that lampooned someone’s singing voice. Listening to him sing, said one, young TMZ reporter, “is like having a Vietnam War flashback.”
That remark was followed by group laughter.
Funny stuff, huh?
No one escapes, not even Vietnam Vets still suffering battle trauma, the combat loss of battalion buddies and perhaps even a leg and/or an arm.
At least in August, when Travel Channel’s “Man v. Food” cleverly called an attempt to drink five milkshakes “the Bataan Death March of ice cream,” few survivors of that WWII horror were still alive to be insulted.
And there are no oases, just mirages.
During NFL telecasts a player or coach is occasionally heard, through a field microphone, cursing. That often causes the broadcasters to solemnly apologize to the audience for the inadvertent ambush.
Yet, NFL Sunday afternoon telecasts are now carefully chosen by networks to insert their most vulgar promos for primetime comedies. The promos are never funny, but they are vulgar, thus that’s deemed even better than funny to sell a comedy.
CBS’s NFL telecasts are weekly vandalized by the worst gutter gags — laugh tracks included — that can be found and lifted from “Two and Half Men” and “Mike & Molly.”
Last week, however, Fox’s Giants-Cowboys telecast tried hard to play top-this by choosing a promo for the sitcom “The Mindy Project” that included her friend dressed for Halloween as a urinal. Then again, TV has replaced conversations once held in hallways, elevators and offices with conversations held at urinals and while seated in toilet stalls.
Another Fox promo for a sitcom focused on a fellow dressed in a Halloween costume, the lower half of which appeared to be a Speedo. He referenced the size of his genitalia.
Oh, the telecast also included public service spots encouraging Americans to do right by our most vulnerable residents, our children.
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In Hurricane Sandy, WABC-Ch. 7 “Eyewitness News” proved that if you give it 20 or 30 chances to scream “The sky is falling!” – 20, 30 opportunities to pull “calamity coming!” weather alarms — it will one day be telling the truth.
Still, the absurdities of televised weather are a constant. Last Sunday night, Ch. 7 News included a weather radar map — perhaps supplied by the National Weather Service — that noted several locations, including “Buckingham.”
Buckingham?
I later learned that Buckingham is a small township near Doylestown, Pa., which is due north of Philadelphia.
But given that the people of Buckingham know exactly where Buckingham is, yet many, many other viewers don’t, why use Buckingham as a radar map reference point rather than Doylestown or Philadelphia, thus giving viewers a better shot to interpret what’s on the screen?!
To show us, on the precipice of a hurricane, Buckingham, was like reporting on hurricane storm conditions at an obscure pond instead of the nearby reservoir!
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Dominos Pizza has launched a TV ad campaign pitching its new “handmade pizzas.” And, gee, they look delicious, except for one thing:
Shouldn’t the bare-handed woman shown joyously making the pizzas be wearing kitchen-sanitary gloves? Sure, she looks clean enough, so, as long as she makes all of them. . .