I blogged last week about HBO’s “The Newsroom” and how the show debuted at an opportune time soon after the Gallup Poll showed American’s confidence in TV News at a all-time low. There is now no place for the credibility of TV journalism to go but up, and if it does rise in future polls, you can bet in the prediction market that “The Newsroom” creator and writer Aaron Sorkin’s price will go up.
Sorkin’s credibility may go up among those in the political center and left of center, but the credibility of TV News is not likely to budge for several reasons:
- The primary viewers of TV News (65+) are dying off, and just about the only advertisers in a non-election year that want to reach these aging viewers are pharmaceutical marketers.
- In spite of the massive infusion of money during this election year, the broadcast and cable news providers and especially local TV stations will almost certainly not invest in improving their news product, but will take the money to boost their bottom lines during these recession years and in the face of stockholder demands.
- In their desperation to turn around the overall news ratings decline trend (a virtually impossible task), news providers will become more partisan on the right and left to attract a diminishing core of extremists at both ends of the political spectrum.
- This drift to extreme positions will turn off younger viewers, whom Jack Myers labels as Internet Pioneers in his excellent book Hooked Up, furthering the decline of news ratings as more and more Internet Pioneers and those under 55 abandon TV News for instant updates on Google News, CNN online, Twitter, and Facebook.
Therefore, I think Aaron Sorkin is trying to keep afloat a journalism Titanic. His ego and idealism will carry him through at least two seasons of “The Newsroom” (HBO has renewed for a second season), but it will not survive based on its high-minded journalistic idealism, which Charles Pierce in an online Esquire blog, indicated was a world that never was, a world that exists only in “what Sorkin imagines it once was.”
“The Newsroom’s” ultimate success will be determined by essentially the same speculations that make “Jersey Shore” a hit. Who will wind up sleeping with whom?
Lady Gaga wrapped a cute body in a sirloin steak dress to get attention. Aaron Sorkin is wrapping non-ratings-driven journalistic integrity in a dress of sexual tensions to get attention, and he’s getting it. But “The Newsroom” will not change TV journalism. Like Lady Gaga’s sirloin steak dress, integrity-driven TV journalsim will be cooked.
Personally, I could care less about Aaron Sorkin and “The Newsroom”. I’ve tried watching it twice now and it comes off as highly pretentious and bloated with Sorkin’s snappy patter dialog. The show is populated with pretty people and their out of control libidos, behaving like heat-seeking sexual missiles. All the while, they are caught up in their egotistical elitist blather, elevating themselves into the role of all-knowing truth proclaimers.
I suggest readers rent or download the movie “Network”. The prescient Paddy Chayefsky story about TV network news division’s credibility being demolished by a huge conglomerate, “Network” is a tour de force of storytelling. Chayefsky’s 1976 visions of TV news, have become reality in 2012.
The absurdity here is that Sorkin trying to imitate life. Or more correctly, the fantasy of life as he thinks TV newsrooms operate or should operate. The problem with that premise is TV news is bullshit. The late Steve Allen summed it all up by characterizing television as “the Vulgarians, entertaining the Barbarians.”
Sorry but I have a hard time buying into the idea that people like Sorkin who have worked and lived in Hollywood all their lives, pulling down tens of millions of dollars every year, associating only with those like themselves have any clue as to what is going on, on Main Street, USA. For the Sorkin cultural strata, everything between Hollywood and Manhattan is Fly-Over Country, inhabited by intellectually ignorant and cultural dolts.
Sorkin spoke at the Television Critics Association meeting yesterday. He’s making changes in the show for season two. Here’s what was reported: “Aaron Sorkin is seeking some conservative insight for the second season of HBO’s The Newsroom. The acclaimed writer is hiring media consultants of all political stripes to help advise the show’s writing process, The Newsroom creator told reporters at the TCA’s semi-annual press tour in Beverly Hills on Wednesday. The consultants will be from TV, print, and online media disciplines and represent “every part of the ideological spectrum.” Sorkin said the hires will lend some real-world newsroom experience and give the show “a political perspective that I don’t have.”
At least he is admitting his own ignorance and lack of perspective. I would have thought, if Sorkin and his Masters at HBO would have figured this out before season one began. My guess is that HBO and Sorkin decided early on to do the “West Wing” concept in a TV newsroom. Nothing more than recycling story lines and similar characters from 1999-2006. Yawn!
I would argue “The Newsroom” could change TV journalism. If Sorkin’s show should stumble upon a breakout show character that generates a lot of buzz, you can bet that sort of persona will be sought out for a real TV news anchor somewhere! It will be just another instance of chasing after anything in the hope of boosting ratings.
The more I think about it, the farcical “Ron Burgundy” movie portrayal of TV news is much more realistic than “The Newsroom”.