When I was in middle school, I used to spend my Friday
night watching 20/20 – both because I
liked how it made me feel more mature than my peers, and because I didn’t have
a social life. (Frankly, the latter was the bigger influence on my decision to
watch the show.) I’m not going to say that it was great journalism, and I now
recognize that it could at times focus on stories that were sensationalist
and/or overly frivolous, but it was never as crass as I remember say, Dateline, being, as it was a fairly
slick and classy way for me to get some extra news into my television diet.
In fact, thanks to 20/20, I have a soft spot for “news
magazine” television programs, even I recognize all the trapping and problems
these kind of shows hold, both in terms of their validity as “news” sources, and
the fact that they generally add to the problems that we generally ascribe to “the
media”. As I grew older, I grew out of the long-winded and sensationalist 20/20, and learned to embrace Nightline, both in the awesome Ted
Koppel-helmed version, and the later, not-nearly-as-good version that came
after he retired. Nightline was
slicker and more efficient, and especially in the current iteration, became
very good at balancing the tone between the serious and more light-hearted
stories. (Though now that I mention it, I’m not really a fan of the fluff
pieces, but I know that some people really like it, so I accept it as a
necessary evil.)
It’s with this mindset, and for these reasons, that I
decided to review Rock Center with Brian
Williams. I’m didn’t go into the show with all that high of expectations,
but considering that Williams is a affable host, that the news magazine, while
not dying, is a highly marginalized genre; and that NBC is flailing in the
ratings, I was interested in seeing what the show had up its sleeve, if
anything. (Perhaps the only thing I could count on was that Rock Center would
be better than The Playboy Club, but
that’s not a particularly difficult prediction to make.)
I ended up being surprised by the fairly unsurprising nature
of the program, and while I can’t blame NBC for playing it safe instead of risking
a larger audience and losing, I’m a bit disappointed that the network would use
valuable primetime real estate to air something so decidedly average.
For most of its running time, the show is broken down
into four taped news segments – here, they were about a “boom town” in North
Dakota presented by Harry Smith, reporter Richard Engel sneaking into Syria for
a report on the country’s oppression, an in-studio report on news ideas for
airplane boarding, and Kate Snow investigating “birth tours”, where women come
to America so that their children can gain American citizenship, and then go
back with their kid to their home country. Each segment ends with Williams
having a brief follow-up conversation with the conversation with the correspondent
(with the exception of the segment on airplane seating; Williams presented that
one himself) which gives Williams to direct the viewers to follow-up with the
story on the show’s website.
Pretty standard, right? What’s bothersome about this is
that the way that Williams presents this material isn’t so standard. The sound
stage that the programs is hosted in is fairly open in its design, and though there
are couches (for the guest) and desks (for the post-segments de-briefing),
Williams prefers to stand to deliver the segues, as if to cast a less formal
vibe for the news program.
I almost wish that the show would embrace this more
talk-show like format more. In the cold open, there was, for whatever reason, a
brief shot of Williams sitting down on the couches will all of the correspondents,
and they seemed to be cross-discussing the various stories. I would like to see
that approach taken in the future; segments like Snow’s on the birth tours seem
to be trying to present both sides of the stories – not just for the sake of
journalistic ethics, but because they want to facilitate discussion, and having
a panel discussion would certainly help to achieve that goal.
Of course, not all the news story are proper for
discussion, given that both the “boom town” and airplane seating segments were
more of the “huh, that’s interesting variety”, but I see no reason why the
program can’t just have these correspondents share a little camaraderie. It
would especially help with the running time; with an hour-long running time
split amongst four segments and a guest interview, those segment feel like they
run for a bit too long without actually using their time effectively.
And speaking of guests, tonight guest was, in a weird bit
of scheduling, was Jon Stewart. Now obviously Stewart was their to be the
softball kind of interviewee for the show to test out its format (it’s
broadcasted live, for whatever reason), and thought he seems like the type to
detest these kinds of show, Stewart was a game enough for the task. But in a weird
bit of a scheduling hiccup, the interview was broken up into two short halves;
in the first, Stewart and Williams swapped Halloween tradition, and in the second,
they debated the Occupy Wall Street movement.
So the question remains: What kind of show is Rock Center going to be? Is it a news
program or a talk show? Will it attempt to engage its viewers, or would it
prefer that they just complacently take in the stories they tell? Will it ask it’s
guest serious questions, or Williams just spend seven minutes with them shooting
the shit? Because right now the show seems to be stuck in a wishy-washy middle
place, and it’s not going to attract viewers, or even hold on to the one it got
tonight, by acting so beige.
Perhaps the best part of tonight’s show was seeing
Stewart pop-up randomly in little bits preceding his interview. Sure he’s the
kind of guest to who’s down for those sorts of things (and maybe even suggested
them himself), but it also speaks to the affable and rather humorous nature
Williams sports, and I think this show would work better if NBC would let him
off the leash and let him run the show that’s he’s currently pushing through
the cracks.
Quotes, Etc:
“Brian Williams needs vascular support.”
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