Broadcast News

Broadcast News
from my DVD collection
11.14.10

I've been on television, though it's nothing worth bragging about. Both times were during my high school years; once as part of a promo for our local PBS affiliate, the other as an interviewee for an MTV News segment about Saturday Night Live. Both excited me at the time, but looking back on them now, I can see my excitement was far out of proportion to their importance. Some of my high school friends may remember, but no one else does.

TV news was part of my life, if only because television in general was such a huge part of my life. I'm just old enough to remember Walter Kronkite. The Iranian hostages, the assassination attempt on President Reagan, the destruction of the Challenger - these are some of my earliest TV news memories, and even if I didn't always understand their greater implications, I grasped their significance.

Mostly, though, I got my news from the newspaper, especially as I got older. My father would pick up all the local papers, not just one. He believed you could learn something from all of them (even from a rag like the New York Post). I gravitated to the sports and comics, to the near exclusion of everything else. In fact, I still have the New York Daily News editions from when the Mets won both the pennant and the World Series in 1986. I've been told that they'd probably be valuable enough to sell online. Maybe - though I'd hate to have to give them up.

Television has gotten less and less important to me as I've gotten older. I recognize that there are a lot of genuinely good programs out there. For example, I'll never forget how utterly addicted I became to 24 when I first saw it on DVD during my video store years. But I guess I'm no longer as willing to put in the effort it takes to follow a show these days. Maybe I prefer episodic material instead of having it serialized. I'm not sure. As for news, I get it online now, so yeah, I guess I'm also to blame for the demise of newspapers. Sorry.

Broadcast News is one in a group of DVDs that was generously donated to me recently by Sue. She and John have a pretty big collection and she was looking to unload some of them, and who am I to turn down free DVDs?

I'd forgotten how great Holly Hunter is in this movie. I wasn't sure if I'd be able to watch it yesterday because I had gotten little sleep this weekend. I was out all day Saturday with Andrea and didn't get back until much later than I'd expected. We were way up in the Bronx, near Westchester, so I had a longer ride home than usual, especially on a Saturday night. Yesterday I was in the city, but I couldn't even sit and read my Nick Hornby book without dozing off. Fortunately by the time I got home I was awake enough to sit through the movie.