Just what we needed, a story in the New York Times about how the behind-the-scenes scene at NBC’s “Today” show is totally wacky and crazy. Hey, aren’t you satisfied with that groundbreaking piece of news? Live television, with live guests, and taped segments that have to play at an exact time, and politicians and guests on the street is a hotbed of activity! Bleh!
Anyone who hadn’t seen the movie Broadcast News in fucking 1987 or watched the wretched sitcom “Good Morning, Miami,” in 2002 has now had their minds blown. Putting together live television every morning is, like, so hard!
Don’t take our word or it. Look at the absolutely amazing, deep, thoughtful in-the-trenches reporting in the Times story:
Had you been watching the “Today” show on Aug. 4, you would have seen a fairly unextraordinary bit of television at precisely two seconds after 7:01 a.m. As they do every morning, the program’s anchors, Matt Lauer and Meredith Vieira, began to offer the traditional American accompaniment with breakfast: the top-of-the-hour news.
What you wouldn’t have seen, of course, beneath their droll descriptions of the cash-for-clunkers mess, was the rising sense of panic in the TV show’s control room — a dark box, a floor below the studio — where a major booking bomb was about to explode. Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, was due on the air in less than four minutes to discuss Bill Clinton’s trip to North Korea. But, in the vaguish ways of Congress, he was nowhere to be found.
Oh no! I wonder if they’ll find him!
Graham’s not in his office — his assistant’s trying to find him!” a frantic staffer shouted as she fiercely worked the phones. Jim Bell, the executive producer, made a little crack about the G.O.P. and alarm clocks, but 60 seconds later, it didn’t seem so funny: “We don’t have a senator, people! Talk to me — any word?”
“My God, he looks like crap,” a voice complained. But at least they’d actually made it.
With a single minute left, Mr. Graham was still completely AWOL, and the staff in the control room shifted gears. They would jump ahead two segments, or maybe cut straight to the stock report. Barring that, they would find another senator on the spot.
Then, at 30 seconds, someone finally shouted: “There he is! The senator just arrived!” And there indeed he was: Lindsey Graham, on a tiny digital monitor, hastening into place as a tech crew rushed around him slathering on his makeup.
Ha ha! Graham looked like crap. Somebody said that on the record. (What those control room people don’t realize, apparently, because they work in the fairy land of live television, is that regular people, even United States senators, sometimes look like crap. Especially Lindsey “Droopy” Graham.) The best part is when they decide they’ll find another senator on the spot if they have to! That’s how important Graham is to them!
Anyhoo, after that longer-than-long anecdotal lede (seriously — that whole segment we just quoted is the lede, and we cuts parts out), comes this ace sum-up of the experience:
Such are the anxieties of live TV, a species of the news media which, despite its glacial front of self-composure (Marshall McLuhan’s “cool”), is actually an almost endless waterfall of worries, from the disastrously large (a missing guest) to the preposterously small (a busted mic).
Wow! Who woulda thunk it! Live TV is unpredictable! Stop the presses! How did anyone figure that out? Not from the throngs of audience members doing stupid shit behind Fat Al Roker, or from this chick who flashed the “Today” show camera as it panned the crowd (check Katie’s reaction). Or maybe no one knew that live TV was crazy because no one had ever thought such a thing before!
Oh, wait. Excuse us. We went off in our heads to the editor meeting where this story was assigned.
We kid the New York Times and the “Today” show. As much as we find this story lame (it’s not as bad as an LA Times story, after all), there are probably people out there who find it fascinating.
Our favorite sentence in the story is this sentence: “It is a testament to the schizophrenic nature of live TV that the most spontaneous moments are never seen by those at home.”
News flash: That’s one of those lines that looks good but doesn’t actually mean anything. A “a testament to the schizophrenic nature of live TV”? Fuck you.
Well, good thing this article isn’t real journalism. Oh wait — it was in the New York Times. We’re doomed.
[...] the New York Times featured a shit story about the “Today” show (to which we still say: really?), someone goes ahead and — in middle America! — writes two blog posts that will save [...]
I’d just like to point out that the traffic on the “chick flashes Today Show cameras” link was tremendous. Thanks everyone!