WOO ! SWISH ! SNIPE !

As if it weren’t bad enough that we have all these lower left
snipes telling us what show we’re watching and what’s coming up next, at
least one cable network has taken the practice to a new low with two
innovations. SOAPNet’s snipes now make noise coming on and going off,
distracting you from the show’s dialog. Not only that, but many of the
snipes are there to tell you what’s coming up in the plot (in the
current act.) Guess they’re trying to keep veiwers with shorter
attention spans glued to plots that move at glacial speeds.

Frank, Cronkite and Woodruff

The passing of former NBC News president
Reuven Frank got me thinking today. In the late 1960’s, the CBS Evening
News anchor Walter Cronkite went to Vietnam to see the war firsthand.
Luckily he was not injured and the anchor, who up until then was thought
to be a hawk, returned to his broadcast "
with a different perspective."

One wonders what stories
ABC’s Bob Woodruff will tell of the war in Iraq when he returns to the
broadcast he shares with Ms. Vargas. He so desperately wanted to
see the war as the Iraqi soldiers see it.