Television
Bruce Jenner Opens Up
I was twenty-three in the spring of 1976 and often played basketball in the Sacramento State University gym and then drove to the all-weather track on the south side of campus and jogged before running wind sprints. People often complimented me for being in good shape, and I considered myself a stud but must’ve known…
Read MoreCable Wars
Ben loves war documentaries especially those with Alexander riding Bucephalus into hostile flanks, and Washington rousing frozen untrained troops, and photogenic Grant and Lee posing before ordering slaughter of several hundred thousand young men, and grainy Great War footage showing death in fetid trenches, and better films of proud performers Hitler, Stalin, Mussolini, Roosevelt, and…
Read MoreWomen in Television News
In the vast and luxurious clubhouse of Seven Oaks Country Club, the League of Women Voters of Kern County hosts three female veterans of television news broadcasting in Bakersfield. Prior to their appearance the audience is treated to cashews and cake and a political history lesson: eleven states allowed women’s suffrage before the Nineteenth Amendment…
Read MoreTV Discipline
andy disgusted by cable fanatics mesmerized by two hundred insipid channels and lives fine on basic package except when some sports require big cable options then calls fanatics who’re busy and refer to sports bars
Read MoreOld Newscasters Never Die
The chronology unfolded about like this: I recently visited my hometown Sacramento, which I’d left in 1991, and was as ever moved by familiar places laden with ancient memories, and shortly after returning to Bakersfield I wondered what had become of several television newscasters from my youth. And in particular I was interested in Harry…
Read MoreSon of John Gotti
I hereby celebrate avoiding every commercial during the Super Bowl between the wildcard Green Bay Packers and the hardscrabble Pittsburgh Steelers. I didn’t have to dodge any pitches during the first third of the game since I overslept as I battled sinusitis. Joining the showdown with the Pack leading fourteen to three, I thereafter held…
Read MoreLetter to my Cable Company
Dear Cable Company, Please excuse me for annually asking you to send a technician to upgrade my service from a “limited-basic” menu of twenty-one channels to the still-merely-“basic” package of seventy-five, and then a few months later recalling your cable guy, always a different one, to climb the telephone pole in my back yard and…
Read MoreHighlights from the 2008 Olympics
I see many noble commentators have downplayed if not altogether ignored Olympic sports in order to rebuke China for a range of civil rights concerns and thereby imply the nation today is as ill as in the era of Mao, who shred at least as much flesh as Hitler and Stalin. China has in fact…
Read MoreBob Costas Explains Olympic Coverage
BEIJING – Every night during the Olympic Games I’m frequently overcome by sensual gratification and the release of absolute power: this invariably occurs as I tell billions of inconsequential viewers that, in essence, their time matters not, and fragments of headline sports they’ve waited months to watch will be shown in two or three hours,…
Read MoreSkipper Stu Nahan
Wednesday night, after I’d scurried around the airport in Fresno, looking for luggage that wasn’t there, my cell phone vibrated but I ignored it and instead stepped to customer service and politely scolded the airline representative for shoehorning me into a connecting flight that, especially during holiday season, was unlikely to receive bags from my…
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