peterr@utcsrgv.UUCP (Peter Rowley) (02/14/84)
Fans of NBC's cancelled late-night news program, Overnight, will be happy
to hear that it won an A. I. Dupont / Columbia award for excellence in news
broadcasting. PBS broadcasted the ceremonies a while ago and Linda Ellerbee
was a presenter (as well as an accepter). She made a strong plea for treating
the viewer as an intelligent person, a view echoed by other presenters.
Many interesting comments were made by presenters, who were each given 2-3
minutes to talk about broadcast journalism. Andy Rooney, called in at the
last minute to substitute for Hodding Carter, said that 60 Minutes was, in
a sense, the worse thing to happen to TV news, as it showed that news could
mean big bucks-- and this got the entertainers interested in it. More
generally, he complained that Americans are better at selling things than
making them and pleaded for broadcast journalists not to become salespeople.
He also took a shot at 30 min. news programs, saying that he suggested some
years ago that the 60 minutes team be disbanded to work on stories for an
hour long daily national news.
On that topic, the Canadian Broadcasting Corp. has had just that for over
a year now. Every night at 10pm, there is 22 minutes of traditional news
(with no commercials) followed by 38 minutes of coverage of 2 or 3 topics
(with about 2 commercial breaks). The 2nd half is called "The Journal"
and, while not perfect, is pretty good; it certainly has become a national
institution of sorts.
Fans of the US National Public Radio will be glad to know that a docu-
mentary broadcast on "All Things Considered" on missiles in Europe won an
award. Does anyone know of an NPR outlet that can be picked up in Toronto?
peter rowley, University of Toronto Department of C.S., Ontario Canada M5S 1A4
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