Tag Archives: broadcast networks

Listening to the television…

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I’m not old enough to remember the days when, if you were lucky, television came into your home as three channels over the air. I am, however, old enough to remember a time before what we think of as cable TV was wide spread. Until quite late in my youth, TV consisted of 12 stations – at least eight of which were duplicates because due to quirks of geography, we got at least some of the “big three” broadcast network stations that served the Baltimore, DC, and Pittsburgh markets. You don’t really need three flavors of ABC, but we had it. 

Back in those olden days, you watched whatever happened to be on when you sat down in the living room. If you missed a favorite show, maybe you’d catch it in reruns, maybe you wouldn’t. At least in our house, having a VCR was no guarantee that what you thought would end up on tape would actually be there when you went looking for it. If there was something you really, truly wanted to watch, you needed to make the time for it. It was, indeed, a simpler age.

Just like those golden days of yore, I can still tell the day of the week by what’s on my television in the evenings. The biggest difference is that instead of being a destination, the shows mostly run as background noise while I’ve got my nose stuck in a book. 

What does my evening TV consumption look like? Probably nothing surprising here, but since I’m fond of lists, here’s what makes up the preponderance of what runs in the background while I’m doing other stuff.

  • Monday – American Pickers
  • Tuesday – The Curse of Oak Island, Maryland Farm and Harvest, and Outdoors Maryland
  • Wednesday – North Woods Law
  • Thursday – Lone Star Law 
  • Saturday – This Old House and whatever flavor of veterinary medicine programming National Geographic or Animal Planet is showing
  • Sunday – North Woods Law / Lone Star Law

I still miss regular doses of Live PD… sort of like having the scanner running in the background of the weekend… but I don’t suppose we’ll ever see that back given what passes for contemporary sensibilities.

In any case, it’s Friday evening now, and that means it’s time to settle in with a good book, and listen to a couple of episodes of Gold Rush while I lose myself in Elizabeth I’s England.

Newsroom…

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I don’t spend a lot of time thinking about television. Outside of a few shows that I follow religiously, the set usually just runs as background noise. Most people have favorite TV shows or series, but there are probably fewer of us who have favorite TV writers. Still, I’m glad to see one of my favorites making a splash next Sunday night with Newsroom on HBO. Aaron Sorkin’s writing is, well, just dreamy. I loved the super-fast dialog and walk-and-talk’s on West Wing. His characters, for me at least, reach a hard to replicate level of believability for television. If the trailers for Newsroom are to be believed, it looks like he will hit the mark again.

Sure, Sorkin is an evil genius, notoriously hard to work with, and has an ego big as all outdoors, but damn, the man can write. He can suck you in and make you feel the story. Even when you don’t agree with the politics of the characters or even like them very much, he manages to find a way to invest you in the story and in the lives of the characters on screen. Not a handful of other screen writers manage to hit that sweet spot, but he does it more often than not. Plus, he’s writing for an HBO audience now which means the show won’t have to be dumbed down or cleaned up enough to be acceptable to the broadcast networks.

I’m not usually gushy about television, especially a show that hasn’t premiered yet, but I’m going into it wanting to like Newsroom. Come on, I can’t be the only person out there looking forward to seeing the news media through Sorkin’s slightly warped and monolog-ie perspective, right?