I was over 60 years old when I first heard it, nearly eligible for Social
Security after four decades in newsrooms, dealing with Sputnik,
assassinations in Dallas and Memphis, rioting in America’s streets, Vietnam,
a man on the moon, the lies of Richard Nixon, an awful Sunday in Beirut
that left many U.S. Marines dead, the Gulf War, the collapse of the sham
called the Soviet Union, and on and on.
It was only three words long. A good radio sentence. “It’s show business,”
the man said. There it was, right out in the open, and here all this time I
thought I was in the news business. I had, I swear, started out in the news
business and gone about my work almost religiously. Then a woman cut a
man’s penis off and it got picked up (both the penis and the story), Tonya
Harding’s ex-husband took care of a competitor, O.J. took himself and all of
us for a ride, and the world I had always known got turned upside down.
I was as guilty as anyone else. These were legitimate news stories, right? I
sure thought so at the time. Maybe it was the never-ending, day after day,
hour after hour emphasis on them that led to where we are today. “It’s show
business,” the man said, walking through the CBS News, Radio newsroom
where he was the new boss and his credo was all that mattered. When you’re
in show business, you can’t be BORING. Ya gotta keep things zippy, sassy and
breezy (ZSB). So say Auf Wiedersehen to most foreign stories. They are so
lacking in ZSB. Dump’em. What ya wanna focus on is anything involving sex,
celebrities, and unrepentant trash of all kinds - white, black, Asian, butterscotch,
whatever. That’s the real news, or what passes for it, much of the time now on
many radio and TV outlets and Web sites.
With show business as their mandate, editors and anchors at CBS Radio
looked to Hollywood. On at least two mornings - when radio has its biggest
audience - a lead story was the opening of widely-hyped movies. Is not
something really messed up when “The CBS World News Roundup,” a
distinguished broadcast going all the way back to 1938, starts the day
sounding like “Entertainment Tonight?” I had lived long enough to see a
serious profession, mine, become a frivolous one. A joke.
The packaging of fluff and gossip as news may have been inevitable at
CBS and other networks because of the lust of many radio station owners to
mimic the perky pace and mindlessness of local TV news and to make
damn sure their news and talk station sounded exactly like everyone else with
that format. CBS Radio’s discarding of serious journalism was hurried along
when refrigerator peddlers, Westinghouse, bought the Tiffany Network and
tossed out its culture. “You can be sure if it’s Westinghouse” it was all money, all
the time. Quality was no longer part of the equation. The less spent on anchors,
editors, freelance reporters, technicians, overtime, benefits, the better. After my
boss was sent packing, Mr. Show Business was put in charge, and I was soon out
the door too.
Having never done anything else, I had no way of comparing the changes
in “news” to what was happening in other businesses. If I had been a
carpenter, hired by a company with a reputation for using the best
materials, employing the most skilled artisans and not leaving a job until
things were picture perfect, what would have been my reaction when the
business was sold to people whose sole passion was how much money could
be made and how fast expenses and personnel could be cut?
Let’s say I stayed on, and we were told to use cheap sheetrock instead of
quality cement board as before, to substitute plastic for metal wherever
possible, and to not sweat making every joint, every beam fit tight. If I did
what the new bosses wanted, would I still be a carpenter? Or would I be
something else, even if I didn’t know it or wouldn’t admit it?
That question became more relevant than ever when CBS News, Radio
introduced the iCast, a “newscast” for Ipod users. In the first iCast, the
anchor used the word “smart-ass,” ridiculed Wal-Mart employees as well as a
professor CBS News had interviewed, made at least two factual mistakes
and, suddenly, set loose rock music in a “story” about Israeli shelling of
Lebanon. At least one manager claimed the affiliates loved the iCasts.
Maybe so, but like many love affairs it didn’t last long. The iCast is no more,
yet it wouldn’t surprise me if the devotees of show business came up with
something even worse. Just give them time.
It’s common for geezers in any profession to believe the “punks” who
came after them don’t know as much or work as hard. A former pressman
for the New York Daily News, Frank Amato, says of some of the younger
guys there now, “They don’t even know how to make a hat,” referring to the
caps “real” pressmen on the night shift traditionally made from old
newspapers to keep ink out of their hair. Charles Oakley, formerly of the
Chicago Bulls and the New York Knicks, was asked in a TV interview what
he and former teammates Michael Jordan and Patrick Ewing talk about when
they get together. “How bad the players are today,” I heard Oakley say, and he
didn’t look like he was kidding.
There are some very good journalists at commercial radio networks and
stations today, but their bosses – lovers of show business and buzz –have
made it clear that’s what they expect to hear on the air. Although it isn’t
funny, I chuckle when I think about what those who are dispensing trash
disguised as information today are likely to say about the “punks” who
follow them: “They don’t have any standards.” No kidding. And whose fault
is that?
-0-
This appeared in the online magazine Word Riot in May 2009. It is part of an
unpublished memoir, “Everyone Needs An Editor (Some Of Us More
Than Others. ”