The Late Show starts early

Those in the know: the critics, the intelligentsia, the elites have already started. After one show Jay Leno is getting panned unmercifully. His interview with Kanye West, just one day after West’s major faux pas at the VMA’s, is being cited as an example of Leno’s inability to connect with his guests. Leno is being demonized for asking Kanye what his dead mother would say about his rude antics the night before, a middle-America question if there ever was one. Leno’s monologue, they say, was just not funny.

Still, the same critics, as always, loved Jerry Seinfeld and admitted the musical number at the car wash was both funny and good.

Let’s take a step back here. While I am no fan, the truth is Leno knows his audience. They want big name stars (Seinfeld, Oprah, West, Jay-Z, Rihanna) and they got them. They want jokes they understand and don’t want to have to think about. They want to be entertained. The quality of the interviewing is not important. The fact that the audience could see Kanye West and hear him attempt to answer for what happened just one day earlier, as the commercial says, was priceless.

I know, I know, Leno is no Letterman. For NBC, that’s a good thing. The last thing any network is looking for is a cult hit. Cult hits are for cable. NBC needs the masses to jump on board. We’re talking prime time here, not late night. The only question is will audiences watch Leno when the blockbuster dramas begin next week? The answer, I think, is that it depends on whether Leno can continue to get the biggest names in show biz to appear on his program, especially when there is controversy involved. If so the audience will grow. If Leno gets big enough audiences, the stars will have to appear. Prime time and a big audience to sell yourself or your new movie is a mighty big draw. The bigger the audiences the more stars, the more stars the bigger the audiences.

I see the Leno show as the perpetual second choice at ten p.m. If you don’t like the ABC or CBS drama Leno becomes a real choice, something different, alternate programming, better than watching the Fox Seinfeld re-runs for the 52nd time. Leno’s numbers should be especially good when the networks begin their inevitable re-runs. CBC ratings shot up the year of the strike in the U.S. when the networks were forced to re-run show after show. Leno will be especially strong in December and during the summer when there is little new to watch on television. If he attracts the biggest stars he will also get viewers to PVR his show.

All-in-all it’s an interesting strategy for NBC. They looked at Leno who consistently beat Letterman at 11:30 and concluded he speaks to middle-America. His appeal is wide. Guests don’t hate or fear him. Many stars just don’t want to appear on Letterman to be abused. Leno’s interviews are soft, seldom does he ask the hard question or demean his guests. He’s a risk-free commodity, no home runs, but no strike outs either.

The real bottom line here is the bottom line. Leno’s show is incredibly cheap compared to any drama. It’s even cheap compared to some of the big reality shows. NBC can produce a week of Leno for less than it costs to make a single episode of Law and Order. So audiences will have to be really dismal to force the cancellation of this show. Think about 20/20 and Dateline, both shows are perennial ratings losers yet both programs have had long lives on network prime time. The reason: they are cheap. Even with poor ratings the programs make enough money to not just pay for themselves, but to actually make a healthy profit.

So let’s not argue about whether we like Leno or not, or whether he’s as good as Letterman. The fact is his non-obtrusive appeal and ability to attract big names to his show is exactly what NBC was looking for. Television audiences have never been known to accept the high concept or avant garde. CSI draws way more viewers than Mad Men. Sure it hurts to contemplate the mediocrity that network television so often aspires to. But in the end where does the fault lie? With the networks who need to make money to survive or the consumers who chose American Idol in huge numbers?

Cheap, or as my former partner used to say, “at a price,” is what most network TV is all about. We saw it first with reality television. Then came the big game shows. Now it’s the 21st century talent shows. If Leno succeeds will his success mark the beginning of a trend to prime time talk and variety? I think it will. The copycats always follow every success. In the end the real scary prospect is how reality, game shows, talent contests and now talk could squeeze drama and sit-coms off the networks. Just when CBC decides to get into drama in a big way, U.S. networks are running in the opposite direction. Costs of up to $3 million an episode will do that. The golden age of television is long gone. Welcome to the bronze age.

If you get the opportunity please go to http://www.newsy.com/video/death_of_the_american_actor/ for an interesting American view on what’s happening to network TV.

Filed under: Media Commentary, 20/20, ABC, Amrican Idol, CBC, CBS, CSI, Dateline, David Letterman, Jay Leno, Jerry Seinfeld, Kanye West, Mad Men, NBC, Oprah

Hewitt’s Law

I just returned from over a week in the U.S. Pacific Northwest. The weather was great. The scenery was beautiful. The company was amazing. The only negative was trying to watch TV. The current coverage of Obama’s healthcare reforms is enough to drive even the most hardened news junkie away from the television. American networks are dropping the ball big time. They are not delivering the facts. They are allowing falsehood after falsehood to make it to air with little or no comment. If I worked for news at CBS, NBC, ABC, or CNN I would be hanging my head in shame and telling the people I met that I was an accountant.

But that’s not what I want to talk about: the poor coverage of healthcare reform is just a jumping off point to talk about Don Hewitt. Hewitt was one of the creators of television news and current affairs. We all know him for 60 Minutes but he goes back a long way before that. He produced Walter Cronkite on CBS Evening News and Edward R. Murrow before that. He wrote the very vocabulary that television journalism uses and he did it from scratch. There was no TV news before Hewitt.

Lucky for all of us who have followed in his footsteps in broadcast journalism, he set the standards.

I wonder what he would say if he watched tonight’s evening newscasts in the U.S.? I think I know. He would wonder what happened to the story telling. Why are the reporters dealing with issues and not telling stories about people. What about the story of a working class family that can’t afford health insurance? Where’s the story about the middle class dad who’s afraid of losing his company-paid-for insurance? How about the couple on Medicare or Medicaid, government programs, telling us how well or how poorly these programs work for them? Those are just a few of the possibilities.

You see, the true genius of Don Hewitt was his understanding of three small things that every broadcast journalist should know without thinking. They should be automatic – like breathing. They were the backbone of all Don Hewitt accomplished and stood for and they are deceptively simple.

The first is to “tell me a story.” It was his mantra. When you wanted to get something on the air he demanded this simple act from you, the ability to tell an interesting story. What is more basic in broadcasting? Nothing. If you are not a story teller you should not be a journalist. In fact, if you are not a story teller you should not work in TV, radio or film. The ability to weave a tale that will grab the viewer’s attention and hold it is the singular most important craft that we have to perfect to do our jobs. When the powers that be are weeding out applicants for jobs that’s all they should look for. We can teach the rest. Cameras, edit suites, microphones…these are just the tools we use. We can learn how to use them in one year of community college. Story telling…that’s innate, something you are born with.
Don Hewitt’s second rule is even more abused by modern broadcast journalists than his first. He demanded that every story be entertaining. He realized immediately upon joining CBS TV in the late 1940’s that television is an entertainment medium. People don’t turn on their TV to watch the news, they turn it on to see House, CSI and Family Guy. Go ahead, ask your neighbors what their favorite TV show is. None will say it is the news, I guarantee it. Even though this is more important today in the 200 channel universe it appears to be less understood.

When I worked at CBC News they were upset with me for telling my staff to make their stories entertaining. I had to come up with a new description the bosses would accept. I called for “engaging” stories. Today’s newscasts are anything but entertaining. The CBC is the worst offender and the changes they are talking about threaten to squeeze the last bits of entertainment from their newscasts. They don’t seem to understand that their competition is not CTV News and CBS News, it is CSI Miami and Law and Order. Even the 6:30 U.S. newscasts are going up against reruns of NCIS and 2 ½ Men. To Don Hewitt this was obvious.

Finally, Hewitt understood that people do not relate to issues, they relate to people. He demanded that his reporters and producers put a human face on every story. It seems simple and obvious to me as it did to Don Hewitt but I still see story after story on the news that deals with the issues of the healthcare debate without telling me how they affect a single human being. Why should I care about the deficit? Why do we have to help the banks stay afloat? There are real people, Americans, who are affected by what government does. Who is telling their stories?

Don Hewitt’s three simple rules should be the first thing we teach journalism students. They should be automatically understood by everyone who works in TV and radio news. Sadly they are not. In fact we are losing our acceptance of these basic rules. Just watch the news and you will see.

Like all great artists Don Hewitt’s genius was his understanding of the simple truths, the basics, and he never strayed from that. Even though I never met the man I am sad that he is gone. We need his wisdom more than ever. I’m afraid we will miss him more than we will ever know.

Filed under: Uncategorized, 60 Minutes, ABC, CBC News, CBS, CNN, CSI, CTV News, Don Hewitt, Edward R. Murrow, healthcare, House, NBC, NCIS, Walter Cronkite