ANY CHANCE THAT CNN MIGHT GET BETTER? WELL, DOES "FAT CHANCE" COUNT?

When I was a kid I grew up in "the biggest city in the world" ("world" meaning U.S.A.). I think we had 6 television stations-- more than anyone else anywhere. We had ABC, CBS and NBC, a couple of local things and an educational type thing. When my dad got home from work the whole family would sit down and watch the CBS Evening News. So did all my friends; I assumed every family did. Around the time when I was starting to develop a social consciousness, one of my teachers (maybe Mr. Fulmer?) brought in a speech that some guy named Newton Minow made to the National Association of Broadcasters just as the school year was ending. Minow had just become the head of the FCC, and he was as different from Colin Powell's reactionary son as John Kennedy was from George W. Bush. This was Minow's first big speech and he didn't beat around the... bush; he got right to the point. After a sentence or two of pleasant introduction, he threw down the gauntlet. "Your license lets you use the public's airwaves as trustees for 180 million Americans. The public is your beneficiary. If you want to stay on as trustees, you must deliver a decent return to the public--not only to your stockholders. So, as a representative of the public, your health and your product are among my chief concerns. I have confidence in your health. But not in your product. I am here to uphold and protect the public interest. What do we mean by 'the public interest?' Some say the public interest is merely what interests the public. I disagree. When television is good, nothing--not the theater, not the magazines or newspapers--nothing is better. But when television is bad, nothing is worse. I invite you to sit down in front of your television set when your station goes on the air and stay there without a book, magazine, newspaper, profit and-loss sheet or rating book to distract you--and keep your eyes glued to that set until the station signs off. I can assure you that you will observe A VAST WASTELAND."

Minow's phrase got into the public consciousness-- and my own. We certainly discussed it in my classes at school, at the dinner table, and among my friends. I didn't know it at the time, but it turns out I was some kind of a nerd. Mostly, people weren't in classes where teachers like Mr Fulmer brought in Newton Minow's speech. Most people didn't watch the CBS Evening News with their families. Most people didn't talk with their friends about this kind of thing. Most people didn't get all A's and know mostly other people who got all A's. IQ is defined in a way that presupposes the mean or average IQ is 100. I guess there are an equal number of people with 2 digit-IQs as there are with 3 digit IQs. People with 2-digit IQs, especially the ones that drift down into the 80s, have trouble with abstract thoughts. Even if someone were to bring up ole Newton's speech, they wouldn't understand why he was calling tv a vast wasteland. And I'll go out on a limb and assert that the people who watch Fox News (and I'll admit that I've only ever met 2 or 3 of them), like the people who prefer tabloid newspapers over the NY Times or Wall Street Journal or who think Rush Limbaugh or Sean Hannity or Bill O'Reilly ever tell objective Truth about anything of consequence, are pretty much happy as pigs in shit when it comes to what TV has to offer.

Twenty-five years ago Ted Turner started CNN and cable news. It was a pretty radical idea, even revolutionary in a sense-- and pretty much NO ONE thought it had any chance of succeeding. Who the hell wants to sit around and watch NEWS all day? Um... nerds? Well... definitely NOT the people with the 2-digit IQs. Right? No, as it turns out... wrong.

I bet you don't remember Roman Hruska, even if you're from Nebraska (and if you think there's something wrong with Kansas...), which he represented in the United States Senate from 1955 'til 1977. But if you do, chances are you remember the one thing this Republican neanderthal ever said that got him famous. It was early 1970 and Nixon had nominated a backward dullard, G. Harrold Carswell, to the Supreme Court. He was quickly rejected by the Senate but Hruska's defense of him was amazing. Pretty much acknowledging that Carswell was, at best, "mediocre," Hruska, himself not exactly a Rhodes Scholar, argued that "there are a lot of mediocre judges and people and lawyers. They are entitled to a little representation, aren't they, and a little chance? We can't have all Brandeises and Cardozos and Frankfurters and stuff like that there." (The snide not so subtle anti-semitism apart, the man was ahead of his time. Laughed off the Senate floor back in 1970, he'd probably be sitting in on the strategy sessions choosing a nominee with Rove, Cheney and Bush now.)

But the reason I bring up Hruska and his whiny plea for people of the mediocre persuasion is because he WAS so ahead of his time. Television IS a vast wasteland and it's a vast wasteland because advertisers' pressure on broadcasters to provide big viewership ready to be brainwashed into buying things they neither want nor need requires a search-- a dive-- for the lowest common denominator. Someone with a 125 IQ (which, I suspect, is still not that close to Hruska's "Brandeises and Cardozos and Frankfurters and stuff like that there") is unlikely to be all that engaged in something that appeals to someone with a 75 IQ. And vice versa (although everyone can enjoy SOUTH PARK on one level or another).

When I was much younger I assumed that the world was divided into two camps, bright people who read the NY Times and morons who read the NY Daily News. And there were always a helluva lot more people on the subways reading the News than the Times. Today Fox News' raison d'être-- no matter how crucial it is to serve as a propaganda mouthpiece for the Bush Regime, and the Corporate (or fascist) forces it represents, for Murdoch and his hand-picked crew of neo-conservative overseers -- is making money. They've figured out how to do it and they are today's New York Daily News.

CNN seems to have lost its way. Instead of following their founder's vision of presenting NEWS, they want to compete with Fox. And indeed they have now devolved into a kind of third-rate Fox-Lite. Recently Ted Turner, long ago having lost any say-so over his brainchild to a corporate bureaucracy, made a speech in Las Vegas where he pointed out that popularity isn't EVERYTHING. "Adolf Hitler was more popular in Germany than the people who ran against him. Just because you are bigger doesn't mean to say you are right.'' He explained that Fox had become a propaganda tool for the Bush administration but that "There's nothing wrong with that. It's certainly legal. But it does pose problems for our democracy. Particularly when the news is dumbed down, leaving voters without critical information on politics and world events and overloaded with fluff. We need to know what's going on in the world. A little less Hollywood and a little more hard news would probably be good for our society." I'd say that Ted was accurately describing Fox News -- AND CNN. And I think it's not a stretch to say that he knew that, or even meant to say it for CNN executives.

And I think there's room on the cable for actual NEWS programing. While CNN is your Hurricane HQ and Fox is giving 24/7 updates on the humidity in Aruba (between segments defending Rove and smearing progressives), a television network could actually be doing real news. And, no, the lowest common denominator folks will not listen. But they already have Fox catering to them perfectly-- not to mention scores of other television operations. As my friend Ken pointed out a few days ago, if CNN were to change formats from Fox-lite Infotainment to News, they would probably take a dive in the ratings... at first. Many people want junk-tv. They'll leave CNN faster than word gets around to non-viewers that it's safe to turn on CNN without having to be barraged with junk-tv. Pie in the sky? Yeah, probably. I worked at Time-Warner for many years (as a division president) and the chances of that crew doing something daring... well, you'd have a better shot at winning the Irish Sweepstakes-- twice in a row.

Minow, who never heard of Georgia's runaway bride or of Scott and Lacy Petersen or even of Michael Jackson or the American Idol contestant who bonked Paula Abdul, ended his speech to the National Broadcasters this way: "Television and all who participate in it are jointly accountable to the American public for respect for the special needs of children, for community responsibility, for the advancement of education and culture, for the acceptability of the program materials chosen, for decency and decorum in production, and for propriety in advertising. This responsibility cannot be discharged by any given group of programs, but can be discharged only through the highest standards of respect for the American home, applied to every moment of every program presented by television. Program materials should enlarge the horizons of the viewer, provide him with wholesome entertainment, afford helpful stimulation, and remind him of the responsibilities which the citizen has toward his society. These words are not mine. They are yours. They are taken literally from your own Television Code. They reflect the leadership and aspirations of your own great industry. I urge you to respect them as I do. We need imagination in programming, not sterility; creativity, not imitation; experimentation, not conformity; excellence, not mediocrity. Television is filled with creative, imaginative people. You must strive to set them free. The power of instantaneous sight and sound is without precedent in mankind's history. This is an awesome power. It has limitless capabilities for good--and for evil. And it carries with it awesome responsibilities--responsibilities which you and I cannot escape. I urge you to put the people's airwaves to the service of the people and the cause of freedom."