Television

THURSDAY EVENING

6:00

6:30

7:00

7:30

8:00

8:30

9:00

9:30

10:00 I 10:30

11:00

11:30

12:00

CD1

WTWO

e

News

NBC News

Fortune

Happy Days

Cosby Show

Family Ties

Cheers

Night Court

Hill Street Blues

News

Tonight

wnv

о

Ditf Strokes

Company

Little House On The Prairie

All In Family

Baseball: Cincinnati Reds at Houston Astros

News

Movie

©

wnu

вэ

Quilting

Business

MacNeil / Lehrer Newshour

Heart Of The Dragon

Mysteryl

Capitol Jrnl.

I.U. Journal

Business

Gourmet

©

wrtv

о

News

ABC News

Ent. Tonight

Movie: "Invitation To Hell"

20/20

News

Benson

Nightline

—

WTVW

о

Benson

ABC News

News

Ent. Tonight

Movie: "Invitation To Hell"

20/20

News

B. Miller

WKRP

©

wish

о

News

CBS News

Chance

Simon & Simon

Bridges To Cross

News

H's Heroes

Night Heat

©

WON

—

Good Times

Jeftersons

B. Miller

B. Newhart

Movie: "The Chosen"

News

WKRP

Trapper John, M.D.

m

WTHI

CD

News

CBS News

Nevrtyweds

Price

Simon & Simon

Bridges To Cross

News

Night Heat

и

WTBS

—

A. Griffith

Gunsmoke

Sanlord

Movie: "Psycho"

Baseball: Atlanta Braves at Los Angeles Dodgers

©

Jim And Tammy

700 Club

L. Sumrall

Life

Lesea Alive

In Touch

Praise The Lord

Praise Lord

WTHR

(В

News

NBC News

Jeopardy

Fortune

Cosby Show

Family Ties

Cheers

Night Court

Hill Street Blues

News

Tonight

И)

MTV

—

VJ: Martha Quinn

Monkees

VJ: Martha Quinn

VJ: Mark Goodman

Rock Influences

VJ

m

WXM

Star Trek

Too Close

Taxi

Movie: "Right Of The Phoenix"

B. Newhart

Benny Hill

H'mooners

—

WBAK

Make A Deal

ABC News

Ent. Tonight

Company

Movie: "Invitation To Hell"

20/20

ML Zone

Nightline

Sanford !

88

ESPN

—

Horse Racing

SpoCtr.

SpeedWeek

Fashion

Stanley Cup Playoffs: Division Final

SpoCtr.

Outdoor Lite

(91

USA

—

Cartoons

Radio 1990

Animals

Motorcycle Racing: Daytona 200 Classic

Petrocetli

Alfred Hitchcock Hour

EdgeNt.

ai

NASH

—

Country Rock

Be A Star

Fandango

Nashville Now

Country Rock

Videocount.

Be A Star

Fandango

Nashville

о

CNN

—

Newswatch

Showbiz

Moneyline

Crossfire

Primenews

Larry King Live

News

Moneyline

Sports

NewsNkjht

©

CSPN

—

Viewer Call-In

National Press Club

Congressional Hearing

Viewer Call-In

Today In Washington

UFE

—

Simmons

It Figures

Family

Cassie S Co.

Regis Philbin's Lifestyles

Dr. Ruth Show

Movie: "September Storm"

ARTS

—

"Dinner At Ritz" Cont'd

Shortstories

Music Of Man

Montserrat Caballe: The Woman, The Diva

At The Met

Madrigal

Music

CBN

—

Green Acres

Rifleman

Alias Smith And Jones

Wackiest Ship In The Army

700 Club

Don't Die

Girl From U.N.C.LE.

Groucho

PAY TV CHANNELS

(B

HBO

—

Movie: "Between Friends" Cont'd

Movie: "Cat's Eye"

Movie: "Code Of Silence"

Movie: "Act Of Vengeance"

a

ns

—

Disney

Ozzie

Movie: "Treasure Island"

Island

Movie: "Country"

"Darby O'Gill And The Little People"

@

SHOW

—

Movie

Showtime

Tom Petty & Heartbreakers

Movie: "D.C. Cab"

Honeymooners

"Ten From Your Show Of Shows"

e

MAX

—

Crazy About The Movies

Movie: "Supergirl"

Movie: "Body Heat"

Comedy

Movie: "Fanny Hill"

THE MEDIA 271

The Herald-Telephone, Thursday, April 24,

All

_Television

Movies

EVENING 8:00 Q SD ** "Invitation To Hell"

(1984, Drama) Robert Urich, Susan Lucci. A devilish woman serves as the director of a country club where she seduces men physically and women materially. (R) g (2 hrs.) ® **H "The Chosen"(1961, Dra­ma) Maximilian Schell, Rod Steiger. Based on Chaim Potok's novel. A friendship slowly develops between a worldly, assimilated Jew and the son of a Hassidic rabbi. (2 hrs.) (5) S3 * * * "Flight Of The Phoenix" (1966, Adventure) James Stewart, Pe­ter Finch. When contact with rescuers becomes impossible, crash survivors begin repairing an old airplane forced down in the desert. (3 hrs.) Ш +* "D.C. Cab"(1983, Comedy) Mr. T, Adam Baldwin. Drivers of a nearly bankrupt Washington taxicab operation become heroes when they rescue two kidnapped children. 'R' g

8:05 QD **+Ъ "Psycho" (1960, Suspense) Anthony Perkins, Janet Leigh. A young woman encounters a psychotic killer at a secluded motel af­ter stealing a large sum of money from her employer. (2 hrs., 25 min.)

9:00® **% "CodeOf Silence"{1984, Adventure) Chuck Norris, Henry Silva. A maverick Chicago cop wages a soli­tary war against rival drug-running gangs. 'R'g(l hr., 41 min.)

@ *** "Country" (198i, Drama) Jessica Lange, Sam Shepard. Threat­ened with foreclosure of her farm, an Iowa woman struggles to hold on to her land and keep her family together. 'PG'(1 hr., 49 min.) (29 *+*H "Body Heat"(№1, Suspense) William Hurt, Kathleen Turner. A smalltime Florida lawyer is persuaded by his lover to murder her husband. 'R' (1 hr., 53 min.) 11:000) ** "SeptemberStorm"(1960, Adventure) Joanne Dru, Mark Stevens. An international group attempts to re­cover a large Spanish treasure from a sunken ship. (2 hrs.) (7) "Act Of Vengeance"(1986, Drama) Charles Bronson, Ellen Burstyn. Based on the true story of Joseph "Jock" Ya-blonski, whose crusade to rid the Unit­ed Mine Workers union of corruption led to violence and ultimately to mur­der in December 1969. □ @9 *+* "Darby O'Gill And The Little People" (1959, Fantasy) Albert Sharpe, Sean Connery. An old Irish caretaker who is about to lose his job to a younger man captures the king of the leprechauns and forces him to grant three wishes. 'G' (1 hr., 35 min.) (57) +*H "Ten From Your Show Of Shows"(1973, Comedy) Sid Caesar, Imogene Coca. Ten classic skits from the original telecasts of "Your Show Of Shows," with personal anecdotes by

Sid Caesar. 'G' (1 hr., 32 min.) 11:30® * "Fanny Hill"(1983, Drama) Lisa Raines, Oliver Reed. A woman of pleasure hopes to gain fortune in 18th-century London. 'R' (1 hr., 30 min.) 12:000 **H "The Barbarian And The Geisba"(1958, Drama) John Wayne, Sam Jaffe. The first American ambas­sador to Japan receives cold rebuffs from the emperor and devotion from a geisha. (2 hrs.)

272 AMERICA IN CLOSE-UP

_{°This Is Not Your Life:}

Television as the Third Parent

Benjamin Stein

EN YEARS AGO, I spent one year study­ing the handful of powerful people here in Hollywood who govern the general themes and specific social and political messages of prime time commercial television. The conclusion, now not seriously questioned, was that a politically and socially homogeneous clique makes television in the image of its own world view. That world view has little in common with the views of the larger society and is, in fact, often at war with observable reality.

For the past five years, I have been studying the other end of the funnel: the effect of mass culture, specifically television, upon the viewing public, and particularly upon young people. In a nutshell, I have been trying to discover more about the intersections of youth culture and mass culture.

To that end, I have questioned groups of students at ten high schools in the Los Angeles area. I have also just spent eight months sitting in on classes at Birmingham High School, a large middle-class school with students of every ethnic description located in suburban Van Nuys, California.

One basic hypothesis seems to me almost un­assailable: American mass culture, particularly the mass culture purveyed by television, is so powerful, intrusive, attractive, and ubiquitous, so thoroughly unchecked in its ability to instruct and command, that it is virtually a "third parent" in the lives of

American children. For the child of 1986, television is a source of values, an encourager for the future, a confidant, a narcotic, a blanket of security and inadequacy — in short, a parent.

The Way the World Really Works

Over and over in the past five years, I have talked to boys and girls who receive almost no clear messages about what the world is supposed to be from parents or friends. Frequently, a child has only one parent at home, who is often absent. The children can barely recall even talking with their parents about any subject beyond home life. Yet they have an ex­tremely well-developed idea of how the world is supposed to work. There is supposed to be trouble and danger, but it will all work out in the end. There is supposed to be action and excitement, but a resolution leading to calm. Force and strength gen­erally can be expected to solve problems. The people who trust in goodness and act honestly will triumph. These are the values of television.

If you ask a child who has seen nothing but chaos and disappointment in his or her own life just why he or she believes that things will turn out all right in the end — and if you push and don't take silence for an answer — you almost always hear a variant of, "Because that's the way it happens on 'Remington Steele'."

THE MEDIA 273

4. continued

Although the children I talked to live in Los Angeles, none of them is part of the gilded world of television or movie production. Their parents are far more likely to be working two jobs each than to be inking million dollar deals at Paramount. Yet these young people are convinced that a larger, more glamorous world awaits them somewhere beyond Ventura Boulevard. When you probe for details about that world, the promised land sounds surpris­ingly like the countries of "Dynasty" or "Dallas" or "Family Ties."

In fact, many of the children I talked to are morally certain that the "real" world is much more like the world they have seen on TV than the one they can smell and touch. More bizarre still, many of them believe that the world of "Diff'rent Strokes" or "Miami Vice" is the real world, every bit as authentic and available as Van Nuys Boulevard or their own kitchens.

That is, when discussing life, these children talk about things that happen to them every day — fights with parents, car crashes, problems with school — and then they talk about events on "The Cosby Show" or "Webster" as if they, too, were part of daily life — as in a sense they have become.

Days of Their Lives

The more time I spent with these children, the clearer it became that for many of them, there is no longer any line between what is real and what is on TV. It is all one large sphere of experience — with television comprising by far the more compelling, coherent, accessible, attractive portion. ...

Television appeals to young people as a friend and a source of values, but it also tends to confuse them about what their rational expectations should be. That is, TV shows are so much more attractive as a way of life than the lives of the children I talked to, and the children are so unable to tell that TV is a fantasy, that they are both uplifted and saddened by TV shows. In a word, TV offers a better way of life, which encourages kids to believe life can be better than it is, but TV's way of life is also maddeningly unavailable.

"On television, no one is ever lonely, and no one's parents ever neglect them, and no one is ever bored, and no one ever gets left out. That's the way life should be," said the daughter of a broken home, whose stepfather routinely beat her when drunk. "Sometimes when I see how easy it is for Bill Cosby's kids, I get crazy thinking about my own life."

Another- student in Encino told me matter-of-factly that he measures his goals against the way people live on television. "If I can live even half as well as the people on 'Dallas' by the time I'm their age, that'll be doing really well," he said. "Even 'Falcon Crest' would be all right."

If mass culture on TV offers a coherent world view, is perceived as at least as "real" as reality, and is indeed considered part of reality, if it offers moral solace and moral structure, and also implicitly holds up standards for personal accomplishment to chil­dren, it looks — at least to me — very much like a parent. If children see the world of TV shows as part of their world, not as a fantasy separate from it, they will — and do — accept television's messages as part of the general wealth of experience offered by the world. Again, in the absence of clear family structure, meaningful communication between parents and children, and a well-ordered edu­cational system, TV rushes into the void with a world view packaged in living color, with pretty girls, handsome men, and great cars to make it more tempting — all at the touch of a button. Is it any wonder that such an attractive, teaching, moralizing, comforting parent is so appealing?

All of this offers an important, even crucial chal­lenge to us, the real parents, so to speak, in the society: If we have allowed a third parent to become part of our American family, we had better pay close attention to what the new parent is teaching our young about the world, and about us.

At the least, it looks as if that new parent has already taught our children that there is no difference between reality and fantasy. That lesson is definitely not going to help them or us. \T\

Benjamin Stein, who appears in the movieFerris Bueller's Day Off, is a long-time observer of youth and mass culture.

274 AMERICA IN CLOSE-UP

оThe Likability Sweepstakes

"... And that's the wonder, the wonder of this country, that a man can end with diamonds here on the basis of being liked!"

— Death of a Salesman

Willy Loman knew how important it was to be well liked. Since Eisenhower won with the primitivist slogan "I Like Ike," Americans seem to require a pleasing affability from their Commander in Chief. Under Ronald Reagan, geniality was raised to an art form; the President became the nation's surrogate grandfather.

Pollsters say that the advent of television campaign coverage made "image impressions" more important than issues. Likability is one component of that impression. In a campaign where no single issue commands attention, it becomes even more signi­ficant.

Since last winter, Bush strategists had known they had to spruce up the Vice President's image. George Bush was seen as awkward, wimpish, maladroit. So Bush's handlers engineered a make-over. They had him utter self-deprecating cracks about his lack of charisma. They arranged for him to be photographed amid his photogenic grandchildren.

As Bush's negatives receded, he sought to raise those of Dukakis. After slipping up in the first debate, Bush smiled and said, "Wouldn't it be nice to be the Ice Man, so you never make a mistake?" His aides later christened the contest the Nice Man vs. the Ice Man. The idea was to portray Bush's occasional goofiness as engaging, and Dukakis' com­petence as soulless.

The Dukakis camp came late to the likability, wars. Competence was what counted. So what if he sometimes seemed to be running for Accountant in Chief? After the first debate, however, polls showed this to be costly, a Time poll revealed voters thinking that Dukakis had won, but that Bush (by 44% to 38%) was more likable. Dukakis aides began pushing for a "kinder, gentler," warmer Dukakis. In short, they wanted more Zorba, less Zeno.

The new strategy was simple: depict the Nice Man as incompetent, and the Competent Man as nice. The Governor began to act more like Mike Douglas than Mike Dukakis. In North Dakota he pecked two

George Bush and Michael Dukakis

cheerleaders on the cheek and led a crowd in a spirited rendition of Happy Birthday. No more clenched fists; Dukakis began showing open palms.

But likability goes deeper than gestures. "It is the ability to disclose a sense of the private self in public," says Kathleen Hall Jamieson, a scholar of the presidency. "In the television age, candidates have to be comfortable with public intimacy and self-disclosure." But Dukakis, as last week's debate showed, is uncomfortable with self-disclosure. His manner suggests it's none of your business.

"Competent people are sometimes seen as arro­gant," says Bush's director of polling, Vince Breglio. "He's made competence his emblem. But com­petence is only a part of image. A President has to be open and caring, as well as tough and hard. He must project a comfortable image. It's tough for Dukakis to retrace his steps now and make himself nice."

This week the Dukakis campaign unveils com­ mercials that attempt to thaw out the Ice Man. The ads, says Dukakis media chief David D'Alessandro, "show who he really is." Dukakis talks directly to the camera. In one he recalls what it was like to be a young father. In another he sketches his hopes for the future. But do not expect Phil Donahue. Says D'Alessandro: "Dukakis has a limit as to how much he can do as far as changing his persona." Maybe all this touchy-feely stuff is not so important after all. Noted campaign manager Susan Estrich after the debate: "I think we shouldn't make too much of likability." - By Richard Stengel

Willy Loman: character in the play Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller. Mike Douglas: American actor.

THE MEDIA 275

_О

_Dilemmas

A CIA spy's life may be in danger if his name is made public. The spy has played a key role in a major news event.

4%

18%

78%

Question:

(Respondents were asked to pretend they were editors) For each of the following stories, please say whether that story should almost always be reported, whether it should sometimes be reported depending on the particular circumstances, or whether it should almost never be reported.

Story should be reported ...

i Almost always

A woman who has been held hostage escapes and runs half naked into the street. One of your photographers takes her picture.

You have obtained some secret government documents dealing with an important national security issue.

3%

21%

6% 26%

76%

68%

Sometimes, depending on particular circumstances

Almost never

You have a poll that says who will win the election, but there are still four hours left to vote.

13% 27%

60%

"Reprinted with permission of American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research"

A woman is in despair because her son has just been killed in a car accident, and one of your photographers takes a picture of her.

5%

48%

46%

A reporter has sent back a story from an area where American troops are fighting-even though the president has declared the area "off limits" to the press.

20%

41%

39%

A major fire has occurred in your area. Your deadline is approaching, but you aren't certain that all the facts in the story are completely accurate.

10%

54%

36%

A reporter discovers that someone who holds public office is a homosexual.

23%

41%

36%

A reporter has learned that a government official has broken the law. However, the source of that information can't be revealed.

34%

48%

18%

CIA: Central Intelligence Agency, the U.S. government department that collects information about other countries, especially in secret.

276

_{part c Exercises}

1. Comprehension

The Case for Television Journalism

Pleading for television journalism, Eric Sevareid cites criticism normally put forward by newspaper journalists and intellectuals in order to refute it afterwards. Find the missing criticism or rebuttal.

2. Opinion Poll

Following the text by Eric Sevareid, make up your mind about the relationship between print journalism and TV journalism by preparing and carrying out an opinion poll to be published in a student magazine. Develop a questionnaire including questions about

• the attractiveness of print or electronic journalism

• the standard of print and electronic journalism

criticism

TV destroysconversation

TV debases the use ofthe English language.

Sponsors influencepublic affairs programs.

rebuttal

Broadcast journalism is a new and distinctive form of journalism.

TV has increased book sales in the U.S.

CBS has dealt with every conceivable controversial issue one can think of.

• the average time spent reading papers and watching TV

• the dangers of TV as pointed out by some intellectuals

• the criticism of TV by print journalists

• the future development of print and electronic media.

Remember to offer at least three alternative

answers to each question.

Example: Which medium do you resort to when

you want to be informed about current political

affairs?

1. mainly newspapers and magazines,

2. mainly TV,

3. both newspapers/magazines and TV equally.