NBC execs are bound and determined to keep this raging Marxist in place, a liberal whose crackpot communist philosophical views anger at least half the nation on a weekly basis. Gregory will in the short term at least remain as host of Meet the Press, God Awful ratings be damned. The shrinks will fix things.
Right.
This plot is straight out of a 38 year old Hollywood script: "Network."
Decades ago, this movie was released that gave us the phrase 'I'm mad as hell, and I'm not going to take it anymore!"
"Network," starring an aging William Holden as an over the hill network executive and Faye Dunaway, the young fresh upstart mover and shaker in the news business, depicted a fictitious TV network that was suffering ratings blues, and took steps including murder and sensational madmen TV anchors to bolster their sagging ratings.
Peter Finch played the madman Howard Beall, who in the throes of awful ratings, announced one day on the set that he was going to kill himself on live TV. The execs in the studio were aghast, and then when the following day they noticed that the ratings went ballistic on their news hour, with the entire nation tuning in to see what happened next, young Faye Dunaway ran with it.
Howard Beall then was the hit dujour, and his ratings saved the network in the short run (no, he did not kill himself on live TV, as it turns out). He just started ranting and raving about everything in general. Then, in the fullness of time, Howard's rants and raves started to sour with the public, and Faye Dunaway wanted to can the creep.
Here's where the plot thickens: the owner of the network, a super rich shadowy figure portrayed by Ned Beatty (Mr. Jensen), stepped in and insisted that Howard Beall be kept on the air, regardless of ratings. Mr. Jensen liked the morose, bad news that Howard Beall continued to spew, as in his view this was the philosophy he supported, and was good for his business ventures overall. Jensen did not care a whit whether Howard Beall's newscasts LOST money, he was to be kept on the air regardless the ratings.
The way the writers ended 'Network' was to assassinate Howard Beall. I wonder how NBC will finally pull the plug on David Gregory?
Stay tuned, film at 11......
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5 comments:
So, they kill their own because he/they are failures, yet cling to their failed ideaology with a death grip. Literally.
In this instance, they SHOULD kill their own, but rather they are choosing to circle the wagons around the doomed Alamo.
It's too bad that they also cannot comprehend that their ideology has not produced any significant results that have forwarded social interest, other than perhaps some of the early environmental efforts have seen improvements in water quality.
But do they take a bow for this one achievement and move on? No siree Bob. Now that the quality of the water in the Hudson and East rivers in NY are nearly as clean as a bottle of Perrier with .001 PPM impurities, that want that .001 gone, and are willing to spend zillions of taxpayer money doing so.
I think it's all money laundering at this point Fredd. I see nothing going on meant to make anything better for anyone. No Thing as Sgt Shultz would say.
I still don't get why they're bringing in the psychs? Did he have a mental breakdown? Who brings in a pysch for ratings failure?
Inno:
Beats me. I guess NBC does now. Used to be that back in the day, when ratings dipped to a certain point, TV execs canned the sad sack pulling down the crappy ratings and looked around for someone else.
Not any more. Not at NBC.
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