By Steve Rhodes
The next original thought to appear in a column by veteran Tribune Op-Ed writer Clarence Page will be the first. He is expert at being the last pundit in America to write what everyone else has already written – and in the same manner. He’s an aggregator of conventional wisdom who is expert at distilling and plagiarizing the standard narrative and regurgitating it in as cliched a manner as possible.
Today’s column on the vapidity of television – A Plea For Better Junk On TV – is particularly egregious. Let’s take a look.
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“Fifty years ago this week, then-Federal Communications Commission Chairman Newton N. Minow famously skewered the nation’s daily television programming as ‘a vast wasteland.’ Today, it is still largely a wasteland, in my view, because that’s mostly what people want.”
People are stupid! Unlike me.Tsk, tsk!
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“I have tried to avoid getting too excited about that over the years. After all, bad TV has its good qualities. It provides me with much less of a distraction from life’s more useful and rewarding activities – like reading.”
Because books are so superior. Just look at the the No. 1 seller on Amazon that hasn’t even been released yet!
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“But every so often a smart visionary like Minow comes along to remind me that, hey, the public airwaves do belong to the public. That’s us. Broadcasters make truckloads of money through our good graces. We let the broadcasters use our airwaves at no cost.”
Page needs to be reminded that the airwaves belong to the public. He forgets – even as he makes boatloads off them.
Or as Trib commenter sowhatandmethree writes: “Speaking of wasteland, are your checks for the McLaughlin Group still clearing? Has Suze Ormond cured their financial problems?”
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“For that, we deserve to have a little more than the TV that architect Frank Lloyd Wright described as ‘chewing gum for the eyes.'”
I don’t even know what that means, but Frank Lloyd Wright died in 1959! TV has sort of changed since then. Apparently Page didn’t get the memo that even Minow no longer believes TV is a wasteland.”[M]ost of what I hoped for has far exceeded my most ambitious dreams,” he wrote just five days ago – on the Trib’s Op-Ed page!
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“Alas, a half-century later the metaphor of the vast wasteland remains too vivid – and too appropriate – to be easily forgotten.
“You could hear that in the audience laughter as former CNN anchor Frank Sesno, now director of the School of Media and Public Affairs at The George Washington University, read excerpts from Minow’s speech. In an average viewing day, it said, ‘You will see a procession of game shows, formula comedies about totally unbelievable families, blood and thunder, mayhem, violence, sadism, murder, western bad men, western good men, private eyes, gangsters, more violence, and cartoons . . . ‘”
Wait, what? Sorry, got distracted by the comics and crime and sports and horoscopes in today’s newspaper.
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“‘What’s changed?’ Sesno asked, sparking more laughs. That’s a good question, Frank.”
And one Page is ill-equipped to answer because he apparently does not watch TV, even though he feels qualified to comment on it. Of course, a lot has changed, from groundbreaking situation comedies with brilliant social critique such as All in the Family and M*A*S*H to shows such as NYPD Blue that replaced black-and-white with gray to innovative and insightful programming such as The West Wing, The Shield and The Wire – some, but not all on cable, which is still television. Has anything more brilliant than The Simpsons and Family Guy ever been broadcast? I mean, besides The Larry Sanders Show? I could go on and on. And that’s not even getting to The History Channel, Discovery or The Daily Show. The real question is, What hasn’t changed?
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“It’s easy to knock today’s abundance of unreal ‘reality TV’ shows like Jersey Shore or Keeping Up with the Kardashians or new-wave versions of old game shows and talent shows like Celebrity Apprentice and American Idol. And it is easy to knock those of us who knock such self-consciously low-brainpower shows as elitists.”
Yes, but sadly America’s elitists seem to have the lowest brainpower around.
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“Let the marketplace decide, goes the modern argument, especially now that there are so many channels available in the cable TV universe, plus the Internet and other new technologies.”
Who else should decide – Clarence Page?
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“Even so, I often surf around the channels with a Bruce Springsteen song on my mind: ’57 Channels (And Nothin’ On).'”
How did I know that was coming? I’m surprised it wasn’t the lead. Of course, that song is 20 years old. And I can guarantee you that if you can’t find something interesting to watch in the first 57 channels of the dial, you’re the problem, not TV.
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“The marketplace practices an elitism of its own. Network programmers race to the bottom of public tastes in order to come out on top of the ratings.”
Which newspaper and book publishers never do!
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“The best shows are often on cable channels, which don’t use public airwaves but cost extra.”
Like the New York Times’s website!
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“The marketplace in broadcasting tends to reflect the tastes of only a slice of the public, the slice that advertisers view as the most impressionable consumers, especially young people who have money to spend and respond most quickly to whatever TV happens to be selling.”
The Tribune never does this!
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“Yet, contrary to what some of his critics assert, Minow has never called for government to decide what people should view.”
Really? The point of his infamous speech was his threat to pull the licenses of stations that failed – in the view of his FCC – to meet their (undefined) public interest obligations. In fact, some scholars blame him for making TV execs ratings-obsessed.
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“Then as now, the networks could do better. If they’re going to offer us junk, at least they should make it good junk.”
I have no idea what this even means. The airwaves these days are filled with quality. Is there junk, too? Yes. Just like very cultural endeavor. As Trib commenter Studio City says:
“This is a bunch of embarrassing, elitist crap. Minow was writing about a 3-network universe, 10 years before PBS launched. And even then he was overstating his case. The allusion of a ‘wasteland’ reflects the sheer volume of hundreds of channels, each filled with shows of all descriptions. The relatively few shows we might agree are ‘high quality’ is about the same percentage of excellence one finds in all the other arts – films, architecture, music, painting, and in more commercial experiences like restaurants and hotels. I don’t enjoy reality shows, but as a producer I know that, depending on format, they take huge amounts of skill and resources to create and maintain. Watch Frontline, Treme, Justified, Fringe, The Daily Show, and even lighter fare like NCIS, Hawaii Five-O, and American Idol and you’ll see a huge range of well-crafted shows that craft characters and stories that enlighten, challenge, and yes merely entertain millions of people who do indeed have brains in their heads.
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Amen.
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Next From Page: The Internet Is A Sewer.
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See also: About That Wasteland.
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More Page:
“Clarence Page also did some reinventing on last Sunday’s Chris Matthews Show,” the Daily Howler once noted. “Page was discussing a recent remark by Dick Cheney. And then, he thought back to Campaign 2000. As usual, memory failed:”
PAGE (9/12/04): Well, it’s a lot like Al Gore inventing the Internet. He never actually said that, but the word went out through, you know, conservative talk radio, etc., saying he did. And then the late-night comedians picked up on it, and the same thing now –
Here’s the problem. From his (nationally syndicated) Trib column:
PAGE (12/10/03): Gore, the techno gadget freak, must be impressed with how well Dean’s new-wave campaign machine rides on the cutting edge of technologies adapted to populist politics. Dean’s ability to draw crowds, organize local campaigns and raise funds has broken all expectations by his use of the device Gore once inaccurately claimed to have invented, the Internet.
And so on.
The vast wasteland, sir, is yours.
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Comments welcome.
Posted on May 12, 2011