BC Crawler

Wednesday: New Hampshire Review, NBC Bias? 'Daily Show' blowback, and more.
January 9, 2008

By Alex Weprin

[New Hampshire Primary Media Followup 2008!] Rachel Sklar, Huffington Post’s media editor (and resident Canadian) was up in New Hampshire covering the primary. After Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-NY) was declared the winner, she posted about what the victory means for her. Along the way she had a few words for the media, and what it means for them: “Said Rachel Maddow slightly earlier in the evening: "What New Hampshire did was come out and body slam the national establishment press." Said Williams: "Voters have decided, 'this goes on from here.'" That's a good thing — and when it does, everyone in it will be better: The press will be better, because this is twice now they've jumped the gun, and twice that they've been wrong.” Memo to news orgs: I know there is a race to see who can break what first, butn sometimes it is better to take a step back. Personally, I learned absolutely nothing after the first 15 minutes of pundits talking about the Clinton/McCain victories. It sounded as though they needed to fill time. Something they obviously did in fact need to do.

[An Obama Bias?] NBC was in hot water this week over comments made by NBC Nightly News anchor Brian Williams on MSNBC. Said Williams: “I interviewed Lee Cowan, our reporter who covers Obama, while we were out yesterday and posted the interview on the web. Lee says it's hard to stay objective covering this guy. Courageous for Lee to say, to be honest.”

Williams responded on his Daily Nightly blog (look! New Web site!) to the claims, saying that his comments were being spun and taken out of context of the larger excitement of New Hampshire. This is a one major benefit of blogs such as Daily Nightly, it allows reporters like Williams to respond to critics in an open forum.

[Hell Hath No Fury Like a Stewart Scorned] Jon Stewart is upset at the WGA for not signing an interim agreement with The Daily Show and Colbert Report. While The Late Show and Late Late Show are both owned by Dave Letterman, Stewart and Colbert’s shows are still owned by Comedy Central, and that is enough to keep the WGA from signing a deal. Worth noting: The WGA signed a side deal to unionize Daily Show writers back in 2006, without including the rest of the network. Some insiders are upset that the union was willing to deal then, but not now. Of course, there’s a strike on now, and there wasn’t then

Also: Did Stewart and Colbert write their shows? As the LA Times notes, many of the jokes seem clearly scripted, something that, to some extent, has to be done if you are cueing up video clips. “You can't blame them. No one, not even someone as extemporaneously afflicted as Robin Williams, would agree to put on a daily show without at least a few notecards. The cameras, the sound, the lights, none of these can be coordinated without some sort of decision in advance about what the host is going to say and how long he's going to say it. In other words, a script.”

[CES 2008- The Kevin Martin!] Kevin Martin let loose at CES out in Las Vegas. Among the bombs dropped by K-Martin: DRM should not prohibit consumers from making copies for personal use, or use on portable devices. He still thinks a la carte is the bomb, wants to see it through. Wants to redefine “broadband” to refer to higher speeds, as 200kbps is not broadband, and consumers who think it is may be, to quote Gizomodo: “getting hosed.” The transition to digital television will not be delayed. Period.

[And Desperation Sets In] ABC, looking for something, anything, to fill time during the strike, has resurrected The Mole, the loony game show that used to be hosted by Anderson Cooper, before he was, you know, famous. ABC claims they were looking at bringing the show back when the writers were working, but the timing suuure is convenient. Look for it to be back sometime this summer.

[Conan O’Brien and a Guitar? I smell Sitcom!] The video below from Conan’s return to the airwaves has been making the rounds online, including garnering nearly 3800 votes on Digg (Who made some news of their own yesterday). Enjoy!

Posted by BC Crawler on January 9, 2008 | Comments (0)