Ebert: Okay, already! I won't watch! Now are you happy?

[Kire]

Roger Ebert's Journal:

Okay, already! I won't watch! Now are you happy?
By Roger Ebert on November 4, 2008 3:57 PM | Permalink | Comments (53) | TrackBacks (0)

I would like to apologize to CNN, MSNBC and Fox. I admit my guilt. I watched them on satellite TV. They told me not to. Every time I tuned in, they were advising me to visit their websites, visit them on Facebook, send them e-mails, join their chat rooms, post a comment, Twitter. Yada, yada, yada. I could even check when the polls closed in 49 states I don't live in, even though I voted early. I don't think it was sexual, but I grew alarmed every time Wolf Blitzer asked to Twitter me.



"I can't even take off my coat, and the man lies again!!!"


I go way back in the news business. I remember when newspapers refused to run TV listings. Why the hell should we help them out? It was like Safeway telling you about the specials at Kroger. Now I watch the news, and they tell me I'm in the wrong place. "Instant updates on our web site!" they say. "Become an iReporter and send in your cell phone videos!" "E-mail me at cafferty.com and see your e-mail and hundreds of others." Now why would I want to do that? Surely it can't be that much more entertaining than watching Jack Cafferty. As far as I can tell, he's employed full-time urging viewers to go somewhere else.

Some of the iReports from Hurricane Ike were terrific. Not so much the iReport about how four people in Shaker Heights got ballots with a missing page. The writer-producers get paid to whip this stuff together and feed it to the on-air people. Ideally, this should be an invisible process. Not lately. I'm watching and the anchor interrupts himself. "This just in! There's a breaking development! I just got an e-mail from my producer!" He swivels around and says, "Can you zoom in over my shoulder, Joe the Cameraman?" We see illegible dots on the laptop screen. "Looky here!" the anchor says.

More: http://blogs.suntimes.com/ebert/2008/11/okay_okay_already_i_wont_watch.html#more

[Wabbajack_]

1. Huh

"I remember when newspapers refused to run TV listings. "

Lol, they did that?

[NV Whino]

2. I think that's because there were only 3 channels

and everyone had the listings memorized.