I’m driving faster than a glacier through the Spaghetti Bowl and a radio spot comes on, advertising a TV show. There’s a tense soundtrack and plenty of juicy teaser material about a “grisly murder” and “terrifying crime.” New one-hour cop drama? Nope. It’s the evening news.
The radio spot came to mind last week as the former president of CBS News, Eric Ober, spoke at the University of Nevada, Reno. Ober and Steve Sando, former CBS News director of operations, spent Nov. 5 with journalism students. At night, they joined UNR journalism instructor Rosemary McCarthy and former journalism Dean Joann Lee to talk about ethics.
Ober began with an ode to TV news’ past.
“TV news, at one time, was a public service,” Ober said. “It was not expected to be profitable.”
Now, local TV stations make plenty. A “bad” local TV station makes about 20 to 30 percent profit. A “good” station makes 60 percent.
“If you said that to somebody running a newspaper, they would be stunned,” Ober said.
Things change. Most news media, Ober noted, are owned by the Big Five conglomerates: Time Warner (CNN), General Electric (NBC), Viacom (CBS), Disney (ABC) and News Corp. (FOX).
“They all demand efficiency and profit,” Ober said. But on the bright side, “They pay you for having a good time.”
Because making media is fun. But there’s a dark side, Ober said: “Less in-depth reporting, less investigative reporting that takes days or weeks—that’s not an efficient way to do TV.”
Reporting world affairs also disappears—“It’s costly.”
But no need, he said, to be dismal about the Brave New Media World.
“There are more jobs than ever,” he told students. “So rather than depress you, it should elate you. … Don’t believe anybody who says it’s not ‘good’ anymore. It’s not bad—just different.”
After all, the media merely feed viewers what viewers want.
Ober and Co. talked about Jessica Lynch (the media couldn’t have done more to expose the U.S. military’s Lynch myths because, after all, the military was the media’s only source of info); Walter Cronkite (he was edged out to make room for Dan Rather who was being wooed by ABC); and Connie Chung (after Newt Gingrich’s mom called Hillary Clinton a “bitch” during an interview, Republicans hated Connie).
They talked about embedded reporters (no better way to tell the military’s side of the story) and TV coverage of O.J. Simpson’s slow-mo Bronco breakaway.
“The facts are that American viewers are voting every day by what they watch,” Ober said. “And most viewers that day were watching that dumb-ass car driving down the road.”
A Santo anecdote summed up the spirit of 21st-century media. Perhaps you remember this: CBS was shooting Dan Rather in Times Square at the Turn of the Millennium. NBC’s logo was showing on the huge electronic sign behind the CBS anchor.
“There’s only one money shot in Times Square,” Santo said. “The only decent shot for Dan is in front of the big Jumbotron.”
It wasn’t Santo’s decision to replace the NBC logo with that of CBS. But he knows who made the call. Ober interrupted Santo, reminding him not to “name names.” Santo wrote a name on a slip of paper and showed it to Ober. He nodded.
“Ethically, I didn’t have any problem with it,” Santo said. “I’d do it again. … I didn’t affect the Jumbotron in Times Square. I didn’t affect it on NBC’s air. It was my air, and this was just like the time I removed a flagpole from in front of a Teamsters building because it was coming out of Dan’s head.”
Ober gave Santo a look.
“I guess I never told you about that,” Santo said.