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August 23, 2007

Of Anchorwoman, Matt Lauer, and Stormy the Weather Dog

Hard to say whether it was Stormy the Weather Dog, or the Dunder Mifflin quality of the Channel 19 news team in Tyler, Texas, but for a moment Wednesday night I thought Anchorman, Fox's new mini-series, is a mockumentary in the mold of The Office. The bubbly blonde (former Miss New York Lauren Jones) is too grating, gum chewing and generally clueless to be non-fiction. And, I figured, no news station would hire this chick any sooner than a real paper company would hire Steve Carrell's character (Michael Scott), desperately low ratings or not. Right?

Boy was I wrong. As it turns out, not only is Stormy real, but so is Lauren Jones and the premise of the show: tacky California blond is hired at West Podunk, Texas to be a news anchor and reveals that news reporting really is 90% or so just reading from a teleprompter.

It'll take days, perhaps hours, for the cultural significance of Anchorwoman to ripple through a vacationing America. Or, it will take until the show's last episode, when the Internet-less masses find out whether Ms. Jones succeeds in her quest to switch bimbo careers.

But it's already thought provoking.

Wonder, for example, what Katie Couric thinks about Anchorwoman. Reportedly, Katie's big move into Dan Rather's big shoes revolved around her making the nightly news less nightly newsy. That didn't pan out, and Katie's folksy, bloggy, You Tubey gimmicks caused her to fall on her toothy face. Since then she has, more or less, been reading from the Dan Rather memorial teleprompter. And, let us bear in mind, this might be just what salvages her CBS career.

Anchorwoman (the show, not the Couric) seems destined to expose some hard truths about the reporting profession, foremost: one can be a stupid journalist and still a successful journalist. And no one will be more surprised, or upset, by this than journalists --specifically, the stupid ones. After all, when Anchorwoman mocks the gravity that CBS 19's intrepid Michele Reese assigns to her breaking story on some un-fixed potholes outside town on Route whatever, we are laughing because we have seen that story already: When it rains too much, the twenty-something chick from local Channel 5 is standing by the flooding river in duck boots; when it snows, there she is in front of the piles of road salt ([smiling] "...but the city says it's ready [!] for Hellblizard '07..." [back in the studio] "Take care out there Sally. That snow is really piling up!")[Flash Hellbilzzard graphic]. Etc., etc.

Even on the national stage, clowns like Matt Lauer pretend to tackle tough issues like donut addiction, child shyness, and X-Games accidents with a solemn tenacity. But again, it's the scripted questions and the host's unconvincing, feigned intellect that convinces us that, with better hair, some quality time with the teleprompter and a toothy, boyish smile, we, too, could read questions from cue cards and pretend to engage in hard-hitting debate. Or become CBS News anchors, with a little luck.

Of course, Anchorwoman isn't breaking new ground. The new ground - namely, that the old media is composed largely of gas bags - has been breaking more or less daily as the Internet has revealed scores of writers or reporters around the world who weren't really trained to write, or report, but who often out-report college-educated journalists. And, to make things entertaining, the citizen media often make the media look dumb, lazy, and dishonest in roughly equal does. Which is why no one gets news from the news anymore. It's like shopping at Sears.

I pretend to be a lot of things, including writer, attorney, blogger, and campaign consultant, among other things. But I do not pretend to be a television critic, so I won't venture any zany predictions about Anchorwoman - other than that it appears to be as compelling as some of the low brow, mundane nonsense that routinely makes new Fall lineups, at least for a while. The show features an exceptionally leggy blond who needs to be told to wear a blazer, if you catch my drift, which let's face it is a definite plus. Lynne Sullivant seems to be emerging as Jones's nemesis - Sullivant, a semi-young reporter who's worked the snow storm beat, etc., is actually a likeable sort, albeit predictably bitter (something like: "I could've been a model...but I wanted to use my brain so I became a journalist!"). Sullivant has some hard-hitting questions of her own about Channel 9's integrity and who can blame her? Then there's Michele Reese, who stars as the woman who will turn into her colleage Judy Jordan in about 20 years.

Anchorwoman may flop because it's degrading and crass. On the other hand, maybe it will wildly succeed for those reasons. At this stage, though, it'll be worth paying attention to the reception the show receives in the newspapers and other old media. And keep in mind the rave reviews The Office usually receives. The Office's kudos aren't without merit, but mockery of American business tends to be a favored theme. Let's see what happens now that journalists are in the crosshairs.

Posted by bill at August 23, 2007 09:19 AM

Comments

Posted by: mike ferg at August 23, 2007 10:36 AM

Posted by: Raygun at August 23, 2007 10:59 AM

Posted by: Raygun at August 24, 2007 09:04 AM

Posted by: jgg at August 24, 2007 08:02 PM

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