Everybody Hates Brian
What do you do when you’re an extremely likeable on-air personality in an increasingly irrelevant medium? This is the problem that has seemed to plague NBC’s one-time heir apparent to the newsman throne, Brian Williams. On Sunday Associated Press writer David Bauder wrote an interesting piece looking at Williams recent fall to the middle. Amidst all of the anchor shuffling over the past year and a half (some necessary, some greedy) Williams was the one constant. He was named early to replace Brokaw and the transition seemed almost invisible. And yet here he is sitting in second place behind one former morning show host and in front of another.
One area on which the article touches is the fact that Brian Williams has become a favorite guest on Conan and The Daily Show — not because of his keen insight into the stories of the day, but because he happens to be really funny (add to this his recent, and incredibly curious, role as Sopranos-blogger for Slate). The problem is the people who are watching Conan and The Daily Show are not the people who watch the Nightly News and they never will. It’s a format for the old and the conditioned.
The question then becomes, is Brian Williams losing viewers, or is the format losing viewer (and Charles Gibson just happens to be attracting people at the moment)? In either of these scenarios one also has to wonder what the “face of a news division” will ultimately mean as fewer and fewer people stop feeling the need to tune in to a program whose information they could easily find on the web in half the time (and with considerably fewer ads for denture cream and adult diapers).
I don’t watch any of these broadcasts, but I feel like I should. The fact of the matter is if I were left to my own devices nine times out of ten I’m going to read an article on what new deal a studio executive was able to make instead of reading the article on Iranian peace agreements, even though I know the latter is ultimately more meaningful. Hopefully Mr. Williams (and the rest of the gang) can somehow trick us into watching more often — just hopefully not like they did at CBS. No, that was a complete disaster.
June 28th, 2007 at 9:25 am
You’d be surprised at how profitable the evening news programs are, but they have been bleeding viewers for two decades so surely it won’t last forever.
If you do decide to tune in- I suggest you go with #1. 7.5 million total viewers and 2.5 million demo viewers can’t be wrong (note: lower numbers because it’s summer, in winter it tends to be more like 9 or 10 million, and can we talk about how messed up the ratings system is anyhow? really now…).
June 28th, 2007 at 11:37 am
i think that while people aren’t watching charl(i)es gibson and brian williams, they still serve a purpose as our most trusted news sources. think about where people turn in a time of crisis. On september 11th I sat glued to Peter Jennings magnificent coverage rather than the cable stations. Nobody on cable can lend the right amount of respect, gravitas (without sensationalizing), and compassionate humanity (something that absolutely nobody on any of the cable stations brings to the table, because they’re all about finding a scapegoat as soon as possible) that the network anchors (maybe even katie, but i refuse to watch because her News Eyebrows scare me) exude. They comfort in a time of need instead of just reporting, and they let you know that you’re not alone in times of confusion. Without these few people, who do we feel we can trust in journalism anymore?
June 28th, 2007 at 1:49 pm
Nate, I completely agree, but what if we eventually live in a world where there isn’t an evening news (which, honestly, seems far fetched in that the networks at the very least will continue with the model out of goodwill and their constitutional responsibility to “serve the public interest”), then where do we turn in times of crisis. The idea that we want to see a pro guiding us through troubled times is no doubt factual, but what if those times come and we simply don’t know the people on screen.
The way I see things working out is that the anchor becomes less a news reader and more involved in news deliver — which is already happening. It’s their face that introduces the various web-video clips and the like and more or less becomes the physical embodiment of a networks news division — whether or not we ever really see them doing actual journalism.
June 28th, 2007 at 7:18 pm
I think that the FCC deregulations in the 1980s undid that “serve the public good” business… I recall Tom Fenton ranting about that in his book “Bad News.”