Which one of these newscasts do you watch? Any particular reason?
For me its Peter Jennings and Jim Lehrer. Jennings has a cool detachment that I like, and I like the hour long format of the Lehrer broadcasts.
My PBS stations also carries the BBC WorldNews and I watch that from time to time to get a different perspective.
And that’s the way it is. Good night, David. Good night, Chet.
Damn, now I can’t get the image of Dan Rather singing “Psycho Killer” out of my head.
It’s Jennings and Lehrer for me too. If I had to choose just one, I would go with the News Hour because I much prefer it’s format and depth of discussion.
But I watch Jennings’ show for it’s quick coverage of a wide variety of topics in its half hour; I take it like a synopsis of the day’s news.
Why Jennings instead of Brokaw or Rather? Just long, comfortable habit.
I just want to hear Dan Rather say silly-assed things!
Dan Rather - David Byrne
Jim Lehrer - Tina Weymouth
Peter Jennings - Chris Frantz
Tom Brokaw - Jerry Harrison
As for the nightly new, my interest level’s dropping.
…I hate people when they’re not polite…
shudder
Say something once / Why say it again?
That’s why I don’t watch the evening snooze.
Same as it ever was…same as it ever was…
I watch Peter Jennings, but also like Brian Williams.
They all stopped making sense long ago…
Fun thread!
“I’m embarrassed to admit it,
It hit the soft spot in my heart when
I found out you wrote the
Book I read.”
I haven’t read either Brokaw’s or Rather’s recent books on the WWII generation (I’d just as soon read history books written by actual historians.) :rolleyes: Any takers?
And is it just me, or is Peter Jennings beginning to lose it just a bit? Not true senior moments, you know, but just a bit of digressive rambling, a touch of mad scrambling for words now and then… (Call it Charlie Rose syndrome.) Anybody know if Jennings still smokes heavily? IIRC, the now-defunct “SPY” magazine reported that after his divorce of several years ago, Jennings was known to prowl about the ABC halls with his chest hair protruding from his partly-unbuttoned shirt. He’s also been quoted saying something to the effect that he can’t help himself with women; he finds them irresistable. [Well, he would be pretty tough to resist, wouldn’t he? Except for the smoking, that is…]
Dave Barry once wrote years ago, after Rather’s “Courage” phase, that he always watches Dan Rather, because he just knows that some day he’s gonna go crackers on the air [a la Peter Finch in “Network”]. Talk about making an easy call…
I’d grant an exemption in the case of anthrax-in-your-office, though. I thought Brokaw’s emotional personal touch re. his personal assistant’s contracting anthrax was quite, well, touching.
“Some good points; some bad points;
It all works out (sometimes I’m a little freaked out!)”
We occasionally see Dan Rather’s broadcasts this side of the pond. Is it just my television, or has he gone some strange shade of orange?
I used to watch Walter Cronkite, of course (and no cracks about how I’m old enough to have listened to Edward R. Murrow!). When he retired, I stuck with CBS long enough to find that young Rather puppy too intense and scary. So I switched to NBC and watch Brokaw (and the NYC affiliate beforehand, with the agreeably fluff-headed Sue Simmons).
Brokaw does annoy me sometimes with his heartwarming, Norman Rockwell grandstanding: I once wrote a complaint when he said that Madalyn Murray O’Hair “had the dubious distinction of being the world’s most famous atheist.” I asked him if he would say the Pope “had the dubious distinction of being the world’s most famous Catholic,” and he wrote me an apology and said I had a point.
Still, I get most of my news from Jon Stewart these days . . .