News or Snooze?
New Nightline not worth giving up sleep
In the good old days — say, a month ago —
Nightline (weekdays at 11:35 pm/ET, ABC) spending a week in war-torn Iraq would have been something truly special. But
Ted Koppel is gone, and with him goes a tradition allowing for context and perspective.
Instead, in the first week of a jumbled Nightline makeover, three correspondents/anchors jousted for airtime most nights. In the process, Terry Moran’s first-person stories — highlighted by a ride-along on a dangerous night patrol with U.S. and Iraqi troops — were just part of a very mixed bag.
The new Nightline isn’t terrible, but it no longer seems as essential because it feels so much less distinctive. In look and tone, especially when ill-chosen coanchor Martin Bashir revs up his strident tabloid engine, this Nightline lite resembles an uneasy cross of (yawn) the evening news and (yuck) a 20/20-style newsmagazine. Given its multitopic format, it’s more like "10/10/10," a hectic nightcap for an attention-deficit age that barely merits staying up for.
Moran did get one full show to himself, a patchy roundtable with Iraqis that several of the more vocal U.S. opponents were unable to attend. It was a pale shadow of the trenchant town meetings Koppel used to conduct.
More representative was the World AIDS Day broadcast on Dec. 1, with Cynthia McFadden’s on-location report from AIDS-ravaged India forced to share space with Bashir’s pointless account of convicted steroid czar Victor Conte going to jail.
In this overstuffed Nightline, too much ends up being not quite enough.
Cool TV Yules
I’m a sucker for Christmas shows. My favorite new discovery is the “Merry Christmas Everybody!” episode of BBC America’s marvelous Creature Comforts series (Dec. 23, 10:30 pm/ET), featuring droll animated animals speaking the words of ordinary Brits. You’ve never heard "The Twelve Days of Christmas" mangled and argued over more hilariously than by this merry menagerie of dogs, birds, bears, bats, snails, pigs — and a predatory owl drooling at the very thought of partridge.
I also savored Newsday columnist Diane Werts’ comprehensive book, Christmas on Television (Praeger). It revisits classics like A Charlie Brown Christmas while, invaluably, offering a critical reading of themes in Christmas episodes from sitcoms to Westerns up to The O.C.’s “Chrismukkah.” I got misty-eyed just thinking about holidays spent with former faves like Once and Again and China Beach. Like I said, I’m a sucker for this stuff.
