Last night (Monday) there was an interesting head-to-head competition between two news magazine interviews at the 10:00 hour – Diane Sawyer interviewing Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords and her astronaut husband on ABC, and Bob Costas interview with accused serial child rapist and former heir apparent to Penn State Head Football coach Joe Paterno, Jerry Sandusky on NBC (the Brian Williams show).
The interviews themselves were each stunning and riveting in their own way. I am not a “happy news” kind of guy, and detest the cloying, sentimental style often used by Sawyer (who is not done any favors by my HD TV, the first time I have taken a good look at her on it since I got the set and the service this summer). But the Giffords story of survival and recovery from a devastating assault on her brain is so fascinating and (I admit) inspiring that it was not completely ruined even by Sawyer. I am also not the kind of rah-rah optimist that Giffords and Kelly obviously are, and I stop short of attributing her progress to that, but as someone who has worked on rehab wards very closely with very seriously brain injured patients (only a few gun shot victims, but a hell of a lot of helmet-less motorcycle accidents) I have been just riveted by her story since the beginning. If only an interviewer as professional and confident as Bob Costas had handled the “Gabby and Mark” story. Costas, who I have always been a big fan of, though have also disagreed with his handling of a few key stories (steroids in baseball, NBC’s Olympic coverage in China) was in rare form Monday night. He had been scheduled (and NBC had been heavily promoting) to interview Sandusky’s lawyer, when 20 minutes before the interview the lawyer offered him a chance to interview Sandusky himself, over the phone (no holds barred). With very little time to prepare for this new and in many ways much more challenging assignment, Costas easily hit a home run. He asked clear, concise questions about all of the important issues, allowed Sandusky to answer and tell his story, but did not allow him to filibuster. While making it clear that some of the questions were uncomfortable, he did not flinch, but, as importantly to me, did not adopt a faux and theatrically excessive stance of moral superiority or judgment. So many TV “journalists” are more concerned about channeling the moral outrage of what they perceive the majority of their viewers to be feeling that they take the focus off the interview subject, and switch it to themselves. All we got from Costas was a competent and professional interview with the man at the heart of the biggest scandal in the history of College Football, and alleged rapist of at least 8, and apparently more, young boys. I am not a lawyer, but I am stunned Sandusky was allowed to do this. There were moments in the interview that, even in the face of his denial of the main charges, will undermine any attempt he may later make to defend himself at trial. I wonder if the thought was that the tape of this interview might someday be played at trial and allow Sandusky to get his own story in front of the jury without having to testify. As good a job as Costas did, he was not cross-examining a witness under oath, and I guess a lawyer might take the calculated gamble that whatever he said on NBC would be less harmful than what he might say under a grueling, adversarial cross examination. As to the network competition, it was not even close. Rock Center, with a 1.1 in the demo and 3.87M total viewers (that move to Wed can’t come too soon) got crushed by the special 20-20 with Sawyer, which pulled a 2.4 and 12.39M (these are the corrected, final numbers as per tvbtn, not the earlier numbers still trumpeted on the ABC website that has Sawyer with a 2.8 in the demo). Sawyer actually did just as well as the first run Castle did in the same slot last week (2.4/ 11.07M); Rock Center did a little better than they did last week (1.0/3.46M). I guess a lot of this has to do with the sorry state of NBC and the relative upswing of ABC, but I guess a lot also has to do with people like the feel-good story over the feel-gross story. I wish that Costas' more professional style would be the kind of thing that would get rewarded with ratings, but obviously the cloying style is so common because it is so popular. -- TV or Not TV .... The Smartest (TV) People! You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "TV or Not TV" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/tvornottv?hl=en
