






                           "Broadcast Programming"




     This is an important movie for the broadcasting industry for many

   reasons.  Fisrt of all, to my knowledge there never before was a movie

   that dealt with the programming aspect of the broadcasting industry
  
   before (except for Switching Channels, which was released at approximately
 
   the same time).  Also, this movie depicts many things common to the 

   broadcasting world in a way which the average moviegoing viewer can relate

   to them, the same ones who watch the prime-time television news that this

   movie centers about.


     Moreover, Broadcast News shows the pressures and demands involved with

   broadcasting.  A great deal of work goes into the little subtleties in

   television situations that before I watched this movie I had taken for 

   granted.  One instance that sticks out in my head is when actress Holly

   Hunter and the rest of the news staff in Washington raced to get a tape

   into the machine which was to be broadcast nationally; the characters had

   talked like it was such a big deal if it were a few seconds late.  At 

   first, I didn't think that this was such a big deal; when an anchorman on

   a television news program announces a special report and there is a four

   or five second delay during which everything is blacked out, I noticed that

   I became slightly irritated, but not much.  But when you are dealing with a

   national audience and battling between two other major networks for the

   same people at the same time, I suppose that little things like this mean a

   lot.  Also, when Holly and her partner went on a special assignment to a

   warfront, they risked their lives for a thirty second spot on the newscast.

   It was incredible to realize that this happens every day, on three major

   networks, all for advertising dollars.  Even the small things like I

   mentioned earlier apparently mean a whole lot to the networks; in the

   movie Jack Nicholson laid off a slew of the Washington staff, "all because

   they just couldn't program Wednesday nights."


     Another thing that the movie did was to portray a bad image for anchor

   people, writing most of them off as people who just have to look good and

   not understand anything at all about what they are reporting about.  This 

   is also related to the subject of favoritism, in which a job is given to

   someone by who they know or what they look like rather than how they can 

   actually perform.  This often leads to the wrong person getting the job,

   and is common in any business industry (like in our resume worksheets in

   which the woman, who was better qualified, did not get the job).

   
     Lastly, this movie puts broadcasting in the spotlight - it exposes the

   weaknesses of commerciality in a comical, almost satrical way.  It shows

   how programming is often unoriginal, and how bad choices are made by

   programming executives in today's world in hopes of more money.  But if any

   of this is true, it is not just the programmer's fault - they need a job,

   and the networks need to operate.  Without advertising money, they cannot

   do that.  And advertisers won't pay to advertise on networks that people

   don't watch.  So maybe the movie is important because it shows the viewers

   that we could be our own biggest enemies by demanding shallow, stale

   television programming instead of fresh and different things.  In doing

   this, cleverly enough, the movie makes one big satire of itself.




   
   Broadcast Programming
   Professor Allen
   Michael Stutz
   1/16/9O


