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Channel 7 isn't the only station to be duped in hiring big-name free agents. In New York, the ABC affiliate, despite its number one rating, is dumping its two anchors in favor of snazzy Tom Snyder. The two departing anchors, Roseanne Scamardella and Ernie Anastos, are homegrown reporters, with strong local support. So rather than being dazzled by the coming of Snyder, New York viewers have inundated the station with calls of protest, and some emotional viewers have even picketed outside the station...
This may be true of car-chase dramas and comedies with laugh tracks, but network news coverage isn't shoddy. CBS, ABC and NBC each spend about a million dollars a week on their nightly news. Big budgets made possible the satellite reporting from West Beirut; large American audiences agonizing over what they saw (including one viewer in the White House) hastened the ceasefire. But if network news is indispensable, it is also inadequate. Its fatal flaw is fear of the bored viewer switching channels. Those who get their news mostly from TV, as most Americans...
Perhaps this is why we are becoming a half-informed country. Gallup, testing whether the public supported Reagan in his opposition to the Soviet pipeline, discovered that only half the people had even heard of the project. The Washington Post-ABC poll finds that only four of ten Americans followed the news from Lebanon closely. To news junkies who try to keep up on events (perhaps a declining breed), TV speaks in some depth and detail only in the off-hours...
...programs come in two kinds, orderly or contentious. CBS's Face the Nation and NBC's Meet the Press let a guest finish a sentence. On ABC's This Week with David Brinkley, questioners interrupt and badger the guest, which works well with facile and thick-skinned politicians, but can be unfair to the reflective. Sometimes these shows make headlines; their real value is to give viewers a sense of public figures they have only read about...
...knowledgeable on a subject. Network executives, seeing the program win so many awards, condescendingly praise it as worthy; it is far more than that, even though there are nights when foreign accents become too thick, or economists drone too long over their hedgings. There is now an imitator in ABC's late-night Nightline with Ted Koppel; he is well-briefed and quick-witted, but it isn't in him to be as self-effacing as MacNeil or Lehrer...