Not So Prime Time : Chasing the Trivial on American Television

Rating:
Summary: Humor and outrage in equal measure
Review: Howard Rosenberg has been writing about television for thirty-three years, most of the time in his syndicated newspaper column for the Los Angeles Times. This collection of his essays (unfortunately for us, his last) shows his sharp wit and and infallible crap-detector working at top form.

He shows a wonderful sense of outrage at prying newspeople who want to air someone's private grief to sell more cars, or mutual funds, or whatever their sponsors are hawking. Likewise, he takes telvision news to task for its lynch mob mentality towards Richard Jewell the suspected (and later exonerated) Olympic Games bomber in Atlanta.

Through the years covered by the columns, he chronicles the sad decline of television news into mere sensationalism, where apparently only celebrities can make news and facts must never get in the way of ratings.

He has great fun puncturing TV's pretension too, as in when he records a that program no longer goes into "reruns." According to the networks, it has an "encore episode." He suggests the next level of hype should be "pre-seen" episodes.

Commenting on how shallow and staged the presidential debates are, he suggests the president of the United States often comes across merely as "America's Anchorman."

He retired just over a year ago and we are the poorer for it. Here is a collection of essays for people who like their martinis dry, their Op Ed columns slightly acidic, and their vision 20-20. We'll miss you, Howard

Rating:
Summary: Excellent treatment of a disturbing subject...TV
Review: I agree with everything Mr. Squires states in his review--thanks, Harry. I had the privilege of attending Mr. Rosenberg's book signing last night, and of hearing him speak about the impact of 24-hour cable news, the blurring of opinion and news, and how the proliferation of reality shows (and therefore, the necessity for him to review them) was a factor in his retiring from the L.A. Times. (He is now a professor of journalistic ethics at the University of Southern California.) Having read his columns for all 25 years they appeared in the Times, I feel that a terrible void now exists in the area of TV criticism. Mr. Rosenberg is not coy, mean, or disingenuous in his writing: his style and content are absolutely crisp, thoughtful, intelligent, and right on the mark. As far as I'm concerned, he can write many more books like this one: please, Howard, mine your columns (all my clippings are faded); and help us navigate through the minefield of current TV, too.