Not So Prime Time: Chasing the Trivial on American Television - Hardcover

Rosenberg, Howard

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1566635772 ISBN 13: 9781566635776

Publisher: Ivan R. Dee, 2004

Synopsis

In this witty and candid perspective on American television, the Pulitzer Prize–winning critic Howard Rosenberg traces a disturbing pattern: TV's relentless pursuit of the mundane in its seeming quest to dumb-down America. And, he writes, it may be succeeding. How else to interpret the onslaught of look-alike, deceptively titled "reality" shows that have transformed much of prime time into a cratered moonscape? The longer mediocrity endures, Mr. Rosenberg advises, the greater the chance we will become permanently desensitized to it-and seduced by it-making third-rate the standard. He finds occasional heroes but more often rogues. Many of his essays in Not So Prime Time relate to television news, which the author charges has failed dismally in its shrilly self-proclaimed role as a Bethlehem star of enlightenment, its influence continuing to widen in circles that value tabloid over truth. He finds it hard to say, in fact, whether there is more "reality" in Survivor or in a typical newscast on CNN, the Fox News Channel, or MSNBC. News and entertainment now mingle on TV as intimately as singles snorting up together at a cocktail party, becoming interchangeable, with newscasts cross-dressing as theater, and vice versa. Not So Prime Time records how this has happened-not overnight; the crud has been creeping forward for years. Oh the horror.

About this title

About the Author

Howard Rosenberg was the Los Angeles Times's TV critic for twenty-five years before his retirement in 2003. He won the Pulitzer Prize and two National Headliner awards for his commentary and reporting; his writing has also appeared in a great many magazines. Mr. Rosenberg now teaches news ethics in the Annenberg School and criticism in the film-television school at the University of Southern California. He lives in Agoura Hills, California, near Los Angeles.

Reviews

Television’s class acts and shameful excesses are explored in this delectable book of crisp, witty and caustic criticism, compiled from longtime Los Angeles Times television critic and Pulitzer-winner Rosenberg’s columns. Dating from 1986 to 2003, these provocative essays focus primarily on news coverage of big stories, from the loss of the space shuttle Challenger and the downfall of the Berlin Wall to the war in Iraq and that enduring example of journalists gone wild, the O.J. Simpson trial. Rosenberg’s keen observations and vibrant writing bring fresh insight to the familiar, whether he’s trashing a trashy daytime talk show or vigorously demanding that TV news adhere to the high journalistic standards that it rarely achieves today. Fox News personality Bill O’Reilly is a "self-inflating gasbag." A reporter sucking up ad nauseam to Arnold Schwarzenegger in 1993 "at times looked poised to climb up on his subject’s lap and purr." In a piece that veers away from news, a particularly inane NBC movie about Noah is "a Bible story as Henny Youngman might have written it. Take Lot’s wife. Please." And he offers touching tributes to titans like Jackie Gleason, Nancy Marchand and Charles Kuralt. Because the columns are arranged by theme rather than by chronology, they can feel repetitious when read consecutively—three pieces in favor of televising executions and four about the TV image projected by various presidents, for example. Although Rosenberg spends twice as much time critiquing TV as he does praising it, he conveys such admiration and respect for this much-maligned medium that he can only occasionally be accused of kvetching.
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Los Angeles Times television critic Rosenberg has borne public witness to 30 years of broadcast excellence, which gives him a certain credibility when he reminds us that most television programming is crud. In this collection of columns from the past 15 years or so, Rosenberg plumbs the depths of the sewer with grim levity, wryly chronicling the highlights of the mediocre: the O.J. trial, exploitative talk and "reality" shows, and a televised suicide on the local news. Many of his musings and much of his frustration has to do with the increasingly blurry line between news and entertainment and the media's powerful place in politics. His insightful criticism reveals his admirable concern for honesty in government and media; but he really shines when he's rolling around in the muck he knows could be better, and enjoying himself anyhow. So is it with Dynasty, which reaches "that rarefied area of . . . programming so bad that it's actually good." Such moments, rare though they are, remind us why Rosenberg chose this career after all: tough love. Brendan Driscoll
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Edition details

• Publisher: Ivan R. Dee
• Publication date: 2004
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1566635772
• ISBN 13: 9781566635776
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 288