This week demonstrated that not everyone on TV is cynical. Mad Men's Don Draper finally came clean with his wife. A One Tree Hill investigation uncovered a cruel deception. Amazing Race's Mika had a panic attack. And it would take a real cynic to think that Shepard Smith wasn't being real in calling for more balance in Fox News Channel's political coverage. This Halloween, we're removing our masks and embracing genuine human emotion. Welcome to Top Moments: Cynicism-Free Edition.
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The balloon drama that transfixed the nation — and left viewers terrified at the grim possibilities — ended happily and a bit absurdly Thursday with the discovery that the young boy once thought to have been carried across the Colorado sky had never taken to the air.
Cable news channels followed a helium-filled balloon thought to carry the 6-year-old boy, whose family was featured last year on ABC's Wife Swap, and the coverage continued for hours. The balloon landed softly, with the aptly but bizarrely named Falcon Heene not inside. That led to endless vamping and filler as reporters and experts tried to guess where he was, whether he was alive and whether it might have been a hoax.
At one point CNN broke ...
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Dubious congratulations are in order: Ralph Nader became the first public figure to make a stupid and offensive public remark about our first African-American president, telling a Fox News affiliate that Barack Obama has to choose between being "Uncle Sam for the people of this country, or Uncle Tom for the giant corporations."
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Shepard Smith’s fast-paced nightly program The Fox Report has been the most-watched cable news show at 7 pm since October 2001. But when the program celebrates its eighth anniversary in September, there’ll be a new set, new graphics and, Smith says, a whole new approach to delivering the day’s events. But, wait, didn’t we hear something about reinventing the evening news when Katie Couric was hired by CBS last year? The Biz talked with Smith about why he’s forging ahead with an overhaul to his program — and why you won’t see him moderate a presidential-candidates debate anytime soon.TVGuide.com: Why relaunch the program? Your ratings are good, and visually it’s always looked cutting-edge.Shepard Smith: It was when we first rolled it out. The goal is to always be able to communicate in a new and better way. There are certain kinds of stories that have never really worked well with television, stories that are just so visually deficient. We’...
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If you think Fox News' Shepard Smith takes Hurricane Katrina personally, you're right. The smooth-talking anchor is from Holly Springs, Mississippi, and for him, the devastating storm and its aftermath is the natural-disaster equivalent of 9/11. Smith is heading back to the disaster-struck region to lead Fox's weeklong coverage of the first anniversary of Katrina, which Fox is airing under the hopeful title of America's Challenge: Rebuilding the Gulf. When he does his daily shows, Studio B and The Fox Report, in New Orleans and Mississippi from Aug. 28 through 31, Smith wants to highlight the pockets of success in the rebuilding effort. But he's also realistic enough to know that for most of the area's residents, life will never be the same. Smith recently talked to the Biz about what it means to go back to New Orleans and Mississippi.
TVGuide.com: There have been all thes
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