Big Media Woes
May 4, 2002
BROOKE GLADSTONE: From WNYC in New York this is NPR's On the Media. I'm Brooke Gladstone.
BOB GARFIELD: And I'm Bob Garfield. Last week two of the world's most powerful multi-media giants starred in a double feature of The Incredible Shrinking Corporation. AOL/Time Warner announced a $54 billion dollar quarterly writedown -- a mandatory revaluation of once inflated, now dramatically deflated, AOL shares. They're worth roughly half of what they were when the merger was consummated. Meanwhile on the other side of the Atlantic, the French conglomerate Vivendi Universal continued its stock price collapse. Having lost half their value in the last 6 months, Vivendi's shares shrank yet another 25 percent. So much for the juggernauts. And so much for the synergies that conventional wisdom said would propel AOL/Time Warner to unprecedented domination. Joining us now is journalist Aaron Pressman who last was on the show just after the AOL/Time Warner merger talking about how the colossus would have its way with us. Aaron, welcome back to the show.
AARON PRESSMAN: Glad to be back.
BOB GARFIELD: Now when the merger occurred there was talk of a marriage made in heaven. Now that was back in January of 2001 when we were living in a wholly different world. AOL was going to gain access to the content of this gigantic media company, Time Warner, with all kinds of possibilities for cross-promotion and what they call synergy. Did, did any of those synergies actually come to fruition?
AARON PRESSMAN: Well very anecdotally the company likes to tout the fact that they promoted record stars on the AOL service to boost up record sales and things like that, but there were a few key blunders in their assumptions in putting the merger together, primarily along the lines of broad band -- this high speed internet connection that was supposed to run over the cable lines that Time Warner owned -- really hasn't panned out the way that people hoped, and that was the core of the whole convergent strategy.
BOB GARFIELD:But what about the notion that all of this content we're going to somehow serve the AOL audience and bring hitherto unimagined revenue opportunities to the joint company. Has any of that materialized?
AARON PRESSMAN: Really at - you - I don't think there's any evidence that it has. I think part of the original idea was that they would start putting really interesting, unique stuff on the internet in very big files, like actual movie files and actual music files, and this would drive a lot of people to get higher speed, bigger capacity connections to the internet - broadband that AOL was going to be selling. And that really hasn't materialized. The demand for broadband connections is - it's good, it's solid, but it's not booming, and AOL itself has not been a leader in hooking up its subscribers to faster, more expensive connections.
BOB GARFIELD: Is that the largest story here -- the failure of the broadband industry to develop as predicted?
AARON PRESSMAN:Just, you know, think about how you use the internet. There's not really a need to download massive files except maybe college students who like to download music files on the internet and they're all at college where they get free high speed internet connections. But for the average mom and pop, I'm not sure what the rationale is why they need a 50 dollar a month internet connection over the 20 to 25 dollar connection they have today, and in fact America On Line recently altered its marketing strategy, and instead of trying to push people to buy broadband, they're now trying to continue to push their dialup connection and get people to keep using the old slow way!
BOB GARFIELD:At the time of the merger, there was a lot of talk of-- gigantic consolidation having all sorts of deleterious effects on the consumer and on the society. There were and continue to be calls for regulation by the government to make sure that these juggernauts can't dominate the marketplace. Is it possible that the marketplace itself is taking care of the problem and that the failure of - so far - of AOL/Time Warner will discourage further consolidation?
AARON PRESSMAN: Well I think it's too soon to say whether the proponents or the critics had it right, because there's been a recession; the internet economy and interest in the internet and broadband has really not blossomed the way people predicted. You know AOL and Time Warner put together a lot of great content with ways to deliver the content such as cable wires and an on line service. New mergers like Direct TV and Echo Star [sp?] -- they're ignoring the content side of it and they're just putting together distribution networks. So the strategic rationale has changed, and on Wall Street people are saying well we aren't going to make the mistakes those guys made. Maybe they're going to make some new mistakes.
BOB GARFIELD: All right, Aaron. We'll have you back in a couple of years and we'll, we'll see how things have played out.
AARON PRESSMAN: Okay, great.
BOB GARFIELD: Aaron Pressman, thank you very much.
AARON PRESSMAN: Thank you.
BOB GARFIELD: Aaron Pressman is a freelance writer who contributes to Wired, Business 2.0 and the Christian Science Monitor. [MUSIC TAG] American (Newspaper) In Paris
May 4, 2002
BROOKE GLADSTONE: This weekend, French citizens are voting in a runoff election between conservative President Jacques Chirac and the far right candidate Jean-Marie Le Pen. Le Pen is expected to garner less than a quarter of the vote, but that's more than most thought possible a month ago. His popularity has sobered the French who thronged the streets this week to protest his xenophobia. Don't expect any pro-American demonstrations, however. French media and politicians have long criticized the United States for everything from its Middle East policies to its cultural imperialism. So it might have surprised readers of that country's leading broadsheet, Le Monde, to find in its pages a pullout section of the New York Times in English -- not translated into French. Obviously this benefits the Times by expanding its French market. The surprise, as Thomas Marzahl reports from Paris, is that it seems to be doing that for Le Monde too!
THOMAS MARZAHL: On the day after September 11th, Le Monde's front page bore the headline "Nous Sommes Tous Americains." We are all Americans. Every day for a week it published a page of articles from the New York Times in English -- a notable shift for Le Monde which has traditionally looked askance at American culture and politics. While last fall's sample of English-language articles was temporary; a few weeks ago it became more permanent with a Sunday supplement of New York Times articles on politics, world affairs, arts and business. Le Monde editor Eric Le Boucher says the New York Times in English were the most natural choice for his paper.
ERIC LE BOUCHER: We choose to be bilingual and we want to open doors and windows to different cultures, to different point of view.
THOMAS MARZAHL: Judging by some of the letters the paper has received since the supplement's launch, many readers are not happy. One wrote: "When will you realize that you are sawing away at your own demise and contributing to the isolation of millions of people who don't speak perfect English?" Albert Salon, who heads a lobbying group for the French language, said the project was only furthering the Americanization of France. Correspondents to Le Monde said one thing, but research the paper carried out over the period of a year painted a very different picture. Eric Le Boucher.
ERIC LE BOUCHER: In French or in English, that was, a, a question but our tests -- we, we made some tests -- and they are - they were very clear -- in English. People, young people especially, want, want it in English.
THOMAS MARZAHL: New markets are key for Le Monde as it, like many newspapers in France, has seen circulation and ad revenue drop. As for the English language, many French are eager to try out their English when they find you are a native speaker. But there are limits. All billboards are required to provide a French translation for an English slogan, and the venerable Academie Francaise -- the watchdog of French language -- still ties itself in knots every year trying to find French expressions for English words that have crept into daily life. Media analyst Jean-Marie Charon welcomes the collaboration but says that Le Monde, a very pro-European paper, could have opened up to Europe first rather than to the United States.
JEAN-MARIE CHARON: [SPEAKING IN FRENCH]
TRANSLATOR: Where I find myself in disagreement with Le Monde is this exclusive arrangement with the New York Times. It would have been interesting in the end if one week it could have been the New York Times, one week Britain's Independent, then Germany's Suddeutsche Zeitung or Italy's La Republica. I'm a little frustrated at this missed opportunity to open up in different directions.
THOMAS MARZAHL: Charon warns the move could backfire and cost the paper readers. Twenty-six year old Anne is just the kind of reader the paper is angling for. She had just picked up her copy at a newsstand in the Paris Montmartre neighborhood.
ANNE: [SPEAKING IN FRENCH]
TRANSLATOR: It's a great idea, even if many readers won't touch it, because the French speak English very poorly. Many will probably just throw the supplement out, so it would be better to offer a translation of the articles in French.
THOMAS MARZAHL: At the nearby Metro station, 18 year old Philippe on the other hand, thinks the supplement could not have come at a better time.
PHILIPPE: [SPEAKING IN FRENCH]
TRANSLATOR: I think this can bring some diversity to a daily like Le Monde, and with what is going on right now in France, we need to hear from and read about other cultures so that our society opens up more.
THOMAS MARZAHL: Philippe's reflections on far right leader Jean-Marie Le Pen have been borne out in French streets. On Wednesday, more than a million people marched across France against Le Pen, racism and xenophobia. The supplement ends its trial run in July, but both the French and the Americans hope for a re-launch in the fall. Then the New York Times may continue its march across Europe, taking on partners in Germany, Italy and Spain. As Le Monde wrote in an editorial, "Knowing others in their language increases diversity and does not mean giving up what you yourself hold dear." For On the Media, I'm Thomas Marzahl in Paris. [MUSIC] Letters
May 4, 2002
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Our mailbag was overflowing with reaction to our interview with NPR programming chief Jay Kernis about changes in the network's cultural programming. Susanna Bock of Newberg, Oregon writes: "If Fred Child (of Performance Today) is exiled to the radio-Siberia of 2 a.m., what is the possibility that so many of us who have begun to love classical music under his tutelage will be able to nurse that growing appreciation of what otherwise would be foreign and strange to us? This is what we need to hear! Just so you know, I am an NPR junkie among a cohort of NPR junkies and I have been for years. I'm currently 25 years old."
BOB GARFIELD:But Michael Roalkvam of Kenosha, Wisconsin yelled at his radio, so angered was he by what he heard as my implication that if NPR moves to cover more popular culture it would duplicate what is available elsewhere on such shows as Entertainment Tonight. "Give me a break!" he writes. "Does All Things Considered worry that they're covering the same material handled by the commercial television networks? No! Because they know they will cover the issues with more insight and from different perspectives that the major networks miss."
BROOKE GLADSTONE:And this from Steve Rathe of New York City, the producer of NPR's Jazz from Lincoln Center. "Though I've been critical of NPR's programming shift, I appreciate the difficulty of the job Jay is doing. He is also one of broadcasting's most creative and bravest producers. But the issue is not what Jay is doing, but the direction public radio is going." Rathe adds: "For the shrinking base of classical and jazz stations, NPR is now proposing to consider streams of recorded music. Classic and jazz listeners are predictably attracted by a thin play list of recorded music. It's much harder and less predictable to make music choices by instinct and aesthetics. Harder still to attract consistent audiences to live performances and new music. But isn't that why public radio was created -- to go beyond the formats of commercial radio -- to make deeper and broader connections" Isn't that why so many listeners have contributed?"
BOB GARFIELD:We want your contributions, your insight, your perspectives -- so do write us at onthemedia@wnyc.org, and please don't forget to tell us where you live and how to pronounce your name.
BROOKE GLADSTONE:Coming up, public radio and alternative music -- with influence comes the potential for payola. And what Spider-Man learned from Ayn Rand.
BOB GARFIELD: This is On the Media from National Public Radio. Public Radio Payola?
May 4, 2002
BOB GARFIELD: We're back with On the Media. I'm Bob Garfield.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: And I'm Brooke Gladstone. Reporter Eric Boehlert wrote in this week's Salon that public radio has an impact on music other than classical or jazz. Noncommercial stations helped to push such alternative artists as Ryan Adams and Norah Jones onto the charts and were the first to embrace the soundtrack of Oh Brother, Where Art Thou. [MUSIC UP AND UNDER]
MAN: [SINGING] I-- AM A MAN OF CONSTANT SORROW. I'VE SEEN TROUBLE ALL MY DAYS.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: That CD, snubbed by commercial stations, went on to sell 5 million copies and win the Grammy for Album of the Year. But if public radio is now a powerful influence on alternative music, is it subject to the same corrupting pay-for-play systems that afflicts the rest of the music industry? Here to answer that question, I guess in the affirmative, is Eric Boehlert. Welcome back to OTM.
ERIC BOEHLERT: Hi, how are you?
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Good. First of all why would the mainstream music industry be interested in non-commercial stations? How influential are they?
ERIC BOEHLERT: Well they've become more influential because some have sort of broken away from the traditional classical music and, and news approach of public radio, and they're, they're playing sort of adult rock and adult folk records, and they're doing it 24 hours a day, and they have great listenerships in terms of demographics. I mean they're, they're reaching 30+ adult listeners who grew up on rock and roll and can't find decent music on the commercial radio. So anyone who exposes adults to new music, record companies want to influence.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: So what happens when a public radio station becomes a tastemaker so to speak in the alternative rock world?
ERIC BOEHLERT:Record companies start paying attention. Some of these stations now report their play list to the trade magazines, and that affects the all-important charts. Record companies are obsessed with charts, so if they have a hit record and they want it to go top 5 or number one they have to get these public radio stations on board.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: How many stations are we talking about here?
ERIC BOEHLERT: Right now it's a dozen or so. But they're in very large markets, so they have a lot of influence.
BROOKE GLADSTONE:So I'm still not clear -- what's the danger here. What's wrong with non-commercial stations wielding more influence in the music industry? Doesn't that help both the stations and the non-mainstream artists that they play?
ERIC BOEHLERT: Yeah, absolutely. I mean in, in a sense it's a great thing because lots of artists that simply cannot get played on commercial radio have a home in a lot of large markets -- New York - Philadelphia - Pittsburgh - places they would never be heard. The concern is that the pay-for-play system that's established at commercial radio will now seep into public radio and artists will not necessarily be judged on the merits but on how much money the record company is willing to put up for marketing and promotions.
BROOKE GLADSTONE:Okay, so explain again how this pay-for-play system works. Basically radio stations are contacted by these people called "indie-promoters," and, and where does it go from there?
ERIC BOEHLERT: In the commercial side an indie-promoter will form a, an exclusive relationship with a radio station, and they'll do that by paying them sort of an annual up front fee -- maybe a hundred thousand dollars. Once they become that station's exclusive indie, every time that station adds a new record to its play list, that indie will then invoice or bill the record company and the indie will generate an income. Virtually every time a song is added to an FM play list on the commercials stations today, someone's getting paid for it.
BROOKE GLADSTONE:And so this indie record promoter -- he's sort of a go-between, between the record companies and the radio stations. This is what keeps it from being called payola. It's legal. I wonder though, is it legal for public radio to take this kind of money?
ERIC BOEHLERT: I've talked to some programmers and they didn't think that it would be impossible to form a relationship. The indie could send a check in the form of an underwriting, and that's how they would establish the relationship. But I also talked to a station connected with a university, and they thought that a university probably had very strict conflict of interest rules that might prohibit this.
BROOKE GLADSTONE:You've been speaking in theory. Have we actually seen any public stations taking this kind of money and adjusting their play lists as a result?
ERIC BOEHLERT: No, not yet. You know, some of the program directors at the major market stations are, are adamant. They say they'll never do it. They say this is not what public radio represents. But I also talked to people at stations and, and record companies who are concerned, because once a format is perceived as valuable by record companies, and they want to get on those play lists, the money starts flowing and it's hard to say no. Ten years ago alternative rock radio -- when grundge was exploding -- and they started selling a lot of records. You know those programmers, they didn't want to be part of this sort of indie pay-for-play system, and they said you know, that's the scummy Top 40 world. And you know today virtually every alternative rock station is claimed by an indie. So public radio -- I think their heart is in the right place, and they say we are going to be the exception to the rule. We're going to stand up. But there's a station in Akron that just last week the program director sent out an e-mail saying that he was now being repped exclusively by an indie. These program directors are just deluged with calls from indies and record companies. He didn't have time for all the calls. He said I'm just going to work with one indie. I don't have - know any evidence that the station is getting one of these, you know, 6-figure payments, but people in the industry saw it as sort of the first sign that this is not impossible in this format.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Does a relationship with an indie inevitably mean that your play lists will change?
ERIC BOEHLERT:Play lists wouldn't have to really change all that much. You know, you're going to play 30 or 40 songs, and the indie probably is representing, you know, 10 or 20 of those, so you can conceivably keep the format relatively similar to what it is now. So it's not like the play lists would, you know, automatically change overnight and, you know, all the favorite folk artists would be dropped. But on the flip side, the other concern is that already since the stations have been reporting to the trade magazines and they've become more influential the concern is that they're already playing fewer independent artists. You know, you see Stevie Nicks and Elton John songs on public radio play lists whereas, you know, a couple of years ago they wouldn't even have been considered.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Why is that happening if money is not yet an issue?
ERIC BOEHLERT:Well two things -- again, the stations are --have a higher profile, so they're hearing more and more from the major labels. Also, they're sort of migrating to the middle themselves. They want more listeners. They're tightening up their play lists. The way it's described to me is they're just sort of becoming more professional and more professional would mean playing Elton John, because it's - you know the stations don't want to be seen as sort of eccentric, you know, free form radio where people are still hauling in their album collections.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Eric Boehlert, thank you very much.
ERIC BOEHLERT: Thanks.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Eric Boehlert's latest article, Public Radio's Private Seduction, appeared in Salon.com. [MUSIC] Ex-Cons Get Media Savvy
May 4, 2002
BOB GARFIELD: Media literacy is gaining legitimacy. In colleges and many well to do high schools, learning to decode commercials and recognize bias increasingly is seen as valuable preparation for life in a media world. But let's face it, in most places, it's still an elective. But put a media literacy class in a different environment, like, say, at The Fortune Society, and it becomes almost essential. The Fortune Society is a community-based organization that helps ex-offenders transition to life out of prison. OTM's Jad Abumrad sat in on a few classes.
JAD ABUMRAD: On this Monday, like most, Eric Appleton begins his Media Literacy class by handing out a newspaper article. This one is about the Immokalee tomato pickers in Florida.
ERIC APPLETON: ...in this case, people who are usually perceived as having no power, right, are banding together and they're using the media.
JAD ABUMRAD: The 7 students, seated in a small circle on under-sized school chairs each read a paragraph, beginning with Rafael, age 20.
RAPHAEL: "Early on a Sunday evening workers in Immokalee are recuperating from a long week and gearing up to start another one."
JAD ABUMRAD: It is Raphael's first day in Media Literacy class. After spending time in jail on a weapons charge, this is a new experience for him -- reading and then thinking critically about what he reads. The newspaper article claims that since tomato pickers are paid 45 cents for each bucket they make 50 dollars for two tons of tomatoes. The class determined that since each bucket was 32 pounds--
ERIC APPLETON: You've got to divide 4,000 by 32--
JAD ABUMRAD: The real wage is closer to 41 dollars for every 2 tons.
ERIC APPLETON: -- 41.25. [LAUGHTER] The media's even lying! Yeah!
JAD ABUMRAD: That there would be an inaccuracy in a piece of reporting does not surprise anyone here. It would be hard to find a collection of people that are more cynical toward the media which to most of them means TV news.
IVAN: The media is going to report what it want' but it's also go-- it's also manipulated.
ANTHONY: For me, personally, I don't feed into the media. I can't.
ROSLYN: They, they-- they are like vultures. They'll do anything and everything to get a story.
ERIC APPLETON: I can't, I can't even fathom, like, what their perspective is because a lot of this is about me learning about the depth of cynicism that exists.
JAD ABUMRAD: Instructor Eric Appleton thinks the reason may be that his students equate media with the things that put them behind bars --government, society, authority -- but even though they distrust the media, Eric says his students still feel the need to be a part of it.
JESSE SMITHERMAN: This is what keeps me out' the crack house! By me doing this here, I ain't got time to do nothing else. The Media Literacy class is actually therapy!
JAD ABUMRAD: Jesse Smitherman has been in and out of prison his entire adult life.
JESSE SMITHERMAN: I had a problem, man. I wa-- I was-- I had a drug problem! And every time I got out of prison I just would go back to the same old lifestyle -- again, and, and again, and again and again.
JAD ABUMRAD: But this time, he says, is different. In class Jesse has learned word processing, web research techniques and desk top publishing, and all of these skills are evident in his new passion -- creating and distributing public awareness flyers. He carries a stack in his briefcase on nuclear fallout and pollution at Ground Zero. Often after class he'll rush to the computer and create an instant PSA with graphics based around the day's reading. Then, in his suit and wire rim glasses, he'll stand on a streetcorner and hand them out.
JESSE SMITHERMAN: Most of the people that I give this information to, they're like oh, wow! Yeah! There's a 1 800 number or information regarding this subject matter; there's a web site if you, if you have a computer....
JAD ABUMRAD: For Jesse, Media Literacy is his way of re-connecting with society, and he's not alone.
ROSLYN: My name is Roslyn Gallin [sp?]. I'm 42 years old. I came to the Fortune Society to change my life.
JAD ABUMRAD: For Roslyn who's also struggled with drugs for 30 years, the media offer a way out of solitude -- a chance to listen and be listened to.
ROSLYN: Cause I feel like I really have a hell of a story to tell.
JAD ABUMRAD: As part of her recovery, she's actually been on TV and radio. The rehabilitation facility where she lives imposes a strict curfew, so when she can't go out, she turns to radio talk shows.
ROSLYN: Because you never know what subject they might pick that you can identify with to help you say that I'm not alone. Somebody else is going through this -- somebody else feel this -- somebody else thinks this.
JAD ABUMRAD: A few nights ago she caught a show where the topic was young girls who pursue older men. She thought of her own situation. At 14 she married a man who was 28, had 6 kids and then couldn't support them.
ROSLYN: And I just wanted to reach out and tell them, you know, you're making a mistake. You have time for that. Live your live out.
JAD ABUMRAD: Most of the students here like Rosyln and Jesse are in the process of reclaiming their lives, and that's the not-so-hidden meaning behind the tomato picker article the class reads today.
ANTHONY: The first action against the Immokalee growers took place in 1995. More than 4,000 workers....
JAD ABUMRAD: When the Immokalee tomato pickers began to demonstrate for better wages, they distributed videos of the demonstrations to other members. The article describes crowds of workers gathering to watch those videos again and again. Rafael reads.
RAFAEL: "That's why the videos are so popular. They allow the coalition members to see themself externally as they see themselves internally as people who have the power to better themselves and act on their own behalf."
JAD ABUMRAD: To most, Media Literacy is an academic pursuit. But to this group of people, this unusual class, the emphasis is not on achieving a cerebral distance from the media tidal wave. Rather, it's about diving in and learning to swim into the wider world. For On the Media this is Jad Abumrad. [MUSIC]
Man Behind Spider-Man Unmasked
May 4, 2002
BOB GARFIELD: Every superhero has a secret origin. Superman came from Krypton; the Incredible Hulk was exposed to gamma rays, and Spider-Man -- as moviegoers are finding out this weekend -- was born when high school student Peter Parker was bitten by a radioactive spider -- or [WHISPERING] that's what they'd like you to believe. In fact, Spider-Man sprang from the imagination of Marvel Comics head Stan Lee. Or [WHISPERING] that's what they'd like you to believe. While Stan Lee is the man who's credited for creating the web-slinger, in truth he had a collaborator -- a brilliant artist named Steve Ditko. After much wrangling, Ditko's name appears in the opening credits of the multi-million dollar action film, which is prompting many moviegoers to ask "Who's Steve Ditko?" To answer that question we're joined now by Blake Bell who runs the Ditko.comics.org web site. Blake, welcome to OTM.
BLAKE BELL: Thank you, sir.
BOB GARFIELD: Now Spider-Man was born in '62--
BLAKE BELL: Yeah.
BOB GARFIELD: -- at the time, I was 7 years old - I probably read every Spider-Man title for the next 6 or 7 years and the name Steve Ditko means absolutely nothing to me. Why is that?
BLAKE BELL: That's the comic book industry for you, and then the comic book industry, when you think about it, is really only 60 years old. It was all work-for-hire at the time. Even in the '40s it was shop work, so-- they just did not respect the people doing the actual work. Steve Ditko was one of the first to fight his way on to the credits of a comic for more than just drawing. In Amazing Spider-Man 25 which would have been about 2 and a half years into the run he actually had his name down as "Plotter" on the book because in those days what Marvel would do is they would give the artist a brief synopsis -- if even that, by that time -- and then the artist would completely do the stories, and then the "Scripter" would come in and lay down the actual words. And Ditko felt that it was not proper that he was only receiving credit for the art work but that he should actually get some kind of plotting credit as well.
BOB GARFIELD: Were there any particular Ditko touches that you believe enhanced Spider-Man's popularity?
BLAKE BELL:Yes. Ditko created a world where the visual laws were so intriguing, it was almost a visual ballet, these characters battling, dancing in the sky. The body movements were very realistic. He had a "cartoony" style compared to some of the super realistic artists like Neal Adams [sp?] that came along later n the '60s, but he somehow was able to create his own visual universe with rules that made it more realistic than any super realist could ever hope to do. Spider-Man was one of the first street level superheroes, because Ditko's landscape was pure New York -- run down buildings, water towers, types of things that artists hadn't really brought to the, to the picture before and you really felt that connection to the streets in a book like Spider-Man.
BOB GARFIELD: So Steve Ditko created or co-created this-- [BOTH SPEAK AT ONCE]
BLAKE BELL: Yes.
BOB GARFIELD: -- phenomenal comic book character, and then after a short while he just up and left. Why?
BLAKE BELL:Well he'd gotten into Ayn Rand's philosophy of Objectivism -- value for value is a very important issue -- credit for what you had done was certainly an important issue, and receiving financial compensation for that was an important issue. And on I guess a financial and an artistic level he felt he was being asked to compromise, and so he pulled a John Galt and said you're not going to get out of me what you want; I'm going to do this on my own time, and I will just do what I have to do to get by and survive -- and disappeared.
BOB GARFIELD: Just for clarity -- John Galt the protagonist of Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged.
BLAKE BELL:Yes. He was the one who disappeared and then tried to take all of the, the great minds of the world with him to, to show the world that, you know, we are the creators and we deserve a little respect.
BOB GARFIELD: Was Peter Parker or Spider-Man an objectivist?
BLAKE BELL:He grew to be one by the end. As Ditko's philosophy became more entrenched, you can see Peter Parker becoming much more of a confident individual, much more like a Howard Roarke, the protagonist of The Fountainhead where no longer is he concerned like he was in the first story of Amazing Fantasy 15 -- Spider-Man's first appearance -- no longer is he concerned as much what the, the mainstream crowd thinks.
BOB GARFIELD:With all due respect, we're speaking to you, a Steve Ditko expert, because we couldn't find Steve Ditko himself. He never gives interviews.
BLAKE BELL: Yes.
BOB GARFIELD: The Los Angeles Times called him "The J.D. Salinger of Comic Books."
BLAKE BELL: Yes.
BOB GARFIELD: But Salinger went into seclusion and as far as anyone knows never wrote again. What about Ditko?
BLAKE BELL: He co-publishes his own work. He is perceived as this J.D. Salinger because, you know, people only know what is out there in the mainstream, and he rarely contributes to that facet because they want too much control; they - he refuses to give up control of the characters that he does. He gave up control of the character he co-created, Spider-Man, and-- he figured that was enough of that, and now he owns whatever he creates, and he's willing to pay the price in terms of low distribution and lower financial reward.
BOB GARFIELD: Blake, thank you very much.
BLAKE BELL: Thank you, sir.
BOB GARFIELD: Blake Bell runs the web site Ditko.comics.org. He's also writing a book about the wives of comic book artists.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Coming up, pay cuts, big bucks and bad words on network television.
BOB GARFIELD: This is On the Media from National Public Radio. New$ Anchor$
May 4, 2002
BOB GARFIELD: We are back with On the Media. I'm Bob Garfield.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: And I'm Brooke Gladstone. Normally when stories about the salaries of network anchors hit the media, and they often do, we at OTM maintain a judicious silence. But the salary headlines this week are different, and we asked back our old pal J. Max Robins, columnist for TV Guide, to explains the why's and wherefores. Hi Max.
MAX ROBINS: Hi, Brooke.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: So it seems that this time the money is actually shrinking. ABC has demanded that Peter Jennings take a pay cut. Why?
MAX ROBINS: First, they want to send a message throughout ABC -- these are tough times; everybody's going to have to take a little bit less, or certainly you're not going to get much more. Even Peter Jennings is vulnerable to that. Another thing's important in this. It really shows that those flagship nightly newscasts are not the real center of these network news divisions that they once were.
BROOKE GLADSTONE:It's interesting, cause all of us have been saying that all along - it looks like the--the sun is setting on the evening newscasts. But still, network anchors always seem like the, the movie stars of news and they've always been paid if not movie star salaries, almost. Peter Jennings was making 10 million before he was asked to take I guess a, a 25 percent pay cut.
MAX ROBINS: They're still stars. They still have a value. However these corporations, and, and make no mistake, the Walt Disney Company owns ABC --they have to send a message to Wall Street too -- that we're going to be fiscally responsible. We're going to invest money where there are areas of growth and we're going to tighten our belt in areas that are mature businesses for us. If the sun is beginning to set on these nightly newscasts, where it's really rising are on the morning shows. I mean The Today Show rocks. It's a-- a huge profit center for NBC. Clears about 200 million dollars a year in profits, Brooke. There you see Katie Couric signed a big deal, worth reportedly about 15 million dollars a year. They just re-signed Matt Lauer, her co-host, for at least 8 million dollars a year. They can justify it because the show makes so much. They can also justify it in what they'd lose if those two personalities left the show.
BROOKE GLADSTONE:So the evening newscasts and the evening news anchors aren't necessarily where the news money is, but as NBC's Brian Williams said in, in the L.A. Times not long ago, it isn't the nightly grind that makes the anchors valuable. It's these important single moments like September 11th when they break into program; when they're there as a trusted guide for the nation to hold their hand and keep them informed.
MAX ROBINS: When you have these momentous news events or news days, that's when we sample, that's when we may check out -- if we're a Dan Rather fan, we may check out what Peter Jennings has to offer and decide -- hey! - we like that a little better! And then in the weeks coming after that when things are a little bit more normal, we may check that out. So these men and women who command these superstar salaries -- they're really kind of marketing vehicles.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: How important are anchors to the content of their programs.
MAX ROBINS:The anchors have a lot to do with the content. And they really are de facto, and, and two of them in name managing editors of their newscasts, and they have a lot to do with how they cover the news, both for good and ill effect.
BROOKE GLADSTONE:We have ABC asking Peter Jennings to take a 25 percent pay cut off of his already kingly salary. You know, we don't shed tears for [LAUGHS] Peter Jennings, but we did nearly have a panic over what happened with Ted Koppel, and it seems to be ABC that is in the vanguard of public expressions that news isn't really that important any more.
MAX ROBINS: Asking Peter Jennings to take a pay cut and kind of behind closed doors asking correspondents, producers, down the line to take pay cuts really speaks to no real strong commitment to news there. It's, it's a network where their news division has increasingly become news packagers as opposed to news gatherers.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: And in this are they significantly different from NBC or CBS?
MAX ROBINS:CBS is in a similar situation. They have continued to contract as a news organization. That's why you often hear about either ABC or CBS forming some kind of a joint venture with the C--CNN. They're significantly different from NBC in that NBC invested heavily in expanding in news with MSNBC and CNBC and cable and that was a way for them to amortize their costs. ABC and CBS have become much more news packagers as opposed to news gatherers. They're still committed to news, but it's -it's by and large "news lite."
BROOKE GLADSTONE:That's what they used to day about NBC and Tom Brokaw in particular, but actually that at least has the financial backing to maintain itself.
MAX ROBINS: There is a certain irony there -- that NBC is kind of the lightest weight of the bunch if you will, however, they do it successfully and, and it's, it's analogous in a sense to the print world where you can be s-- very successful with a group of magazines, but they may be more about lifestyle than they are about hard news.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Well Max, thank you very much.
MAX ROBINS: Thank you, Brooke.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Max Robins writes the Robins Report for TV Guide. The Willy J. Clinton Show
May 4, 2002
BROOKE GLADSTONE: There does seem to be one way to get a big payday out of the networks, but you have to be a former president to do it, and preferably not Gerald Ford. NBC reportedly offered Bill Clinton his own talk show, and his asking price was said to have been 50 million dollars. That's more than the salaries of all the network anchors combined, although it's less than half of Oprah Winfrey's reported paycheck.
According to the tabloids, though, the man we call "Bubba" is still not quite ready to take the plunge. Naturally they want him. Clinton is known for his ease in front of the camera, and in Town Hall Meetings he's proved adept as an interviewer. Whatever network signs him will want to amortize the expense by spreading him around. If it's NBC, he'll be on MSNBC and CNBC as much as Chris Matthews. He'll sit in the broadcast booth during the World Series. He'll anchor a morning news show segment called "Bill Clinton's America."
Whatever network signs him will be painted as having a pervasive left wing bias, and they'll try to compensate by giving Trent Lott his own sitcom. And the 2004 presidential election will be haunted by the specter of Bill Clinton. Rather than a shadowy presence hanging over the Democrats, he'll actually be interviewing them.
As for the Republicans, the perennial strategy of blaming the media and blaming Clinton will be rolled conveniently into one when Clinton becomes "The Media." [HAIL TO THE CHIEF PLAYS] [OPRAH WINFREY'S THEME SONG PLAYS] Swearing Up on TV
May 4, 2002
BOB GARFIELD: One episode of South Park, the taboo-busting Comedy Central primetime cartoon, used the "S" word more than a hundred times. If you watch The Osbournes in which dissipated Black Sabbath rocker Ozzy Osbourne and his nuclear family split the difference between Ozzie & Harriet and The Addams Family, you will hear the "F" word bleeped out but not obliterated about every 30 seconds. ESPN's docudrama about basketball coach Bobby Knight also aired in primetime, also was liberally seasoned with the "F" word and didn't even bother bleeping the expletive out. Thirty years ago on Laugh-In it took mere suggestive euphemisms such as "sock it to me" to make a nation gasp. But according to the Washington Post's Paul Farhi, hardly anyone's gasping these days. He wrote about verbal vulgarity, and he joins us now to talk about it. Paul, welcome back to OTM.
PAUL FAHRI: Thanks, Bob.
BOB GARFIELD: Language and television. What the hell is going on?!
PAUL FAHRI: I think we are in some period of continued downward slide. If I could throw out one theory, I would suggest that it has something to do with the competitive nature of television -- every network seems to be losing viewers, and every network is doing what it can to try and bring viewers back or hold on to the ones that it's got.
BOB GARFIELD:Well at some point doesn't the law of diminishing returns set in here? People are fighting for viewers, but the viewers don't seem to stay impressed for long. The culture gets increasingly coarsened and nobody's even making any money out of it in the long run.
PAUL FAHRI: Well I think you've got to add -- if you isolate bad language in and of itself it's one thing -- but bad language coupled with bad programming is inevitably going to be a failure. In some ways you could call it an irrelevant aspect, as long as there's something else to bring you to it. As Dick Wolf, the guy who made Law & Order said, "Shakespeare seemed to do okay without using many bad words."
BOB GARFIELD: What has happened all of a sudden that it is of the essence that the words are spoken verbatim.
PAUL FAHRI:The Sopranos happened. People see The Sopranos drawing all this praise and acclaim and figure that we should be like that. To a certain extent they're right. I mean do cops really talk like Joe Friday? Do mobsters really talk like the criminals of, of the '50s or the '60s or the '70s on TV? Of course they don't.
BOB GARFIELD:Have you got some examples for me of things that we have heard -- and try to be delicate here, because we at On the Media have standards approximately like the ones you have at the Washington Post.
PAUL FAHRI: Sure. There's a show called The Shield on FX which is owned by Fox. It's a cop show, and he's a rogue cop with his own particular kind of language and the common word for barnyard excrement has been heard fairly recently on 60 Minutes, on Nightline. Moving over to MTV you've got The Osbournes which spares its youthful audience the indignity by bleeping out the words, but the words that it bleeps out probably outnumber the words that it lets through.
BOB GARFIELD:What are we to make of a show like South Park which I, I have to tell you, when I've occasionally encountered it, I've found pretty hilarious, although it's obsessive on this cult of taboo-breaking.
PAUL FAHRI: South Park does delight in its taboo-breaking. Their program last year in which the "S" word was uttered I believe 162 times was if nothing but a, an attempt to throw the taboos right back in the viewer's face and was done rather effectively I thought.
SOUTH PARK CHARACTER: [SHOUTING] Last night the Dang and Bold Show cop drama broke new ground by saying "sh**" (BLEEP) on television, making "sh**" (BLEEP) officially okay to say around the country! A recent poll shows that 24 percent of Americans think the show has pushed the envelope too far, while a whopping 76 percent say they don't really give a "sh**" (BLEEP). In other news....
PAUL FAHRI: But Comedy Central would say we put the show on at 10 o'clock with the express knowledge that we don't think there are many children in the audience at that hour. It is a cartoon for adults. But my kids love it, by the way. [LAUGHS]
BOB GARFIELD:[LAUGHS] Yeah, my kids love it too. You know, I'm not all that old, but I certainly remember the I Love Lucy reruns and they couldn't even say "pregnant" when Lucy was pregnant.
PAUL FAHRI: The thing that gets me though is which is chicken and which is egg? Was Lucy a reflection of the culture at the time or was television in some way being ultra-conservative so as not to offend? Now the question is: Whose standard really does apply? In other words some people are offended by this, but clearly a lot of people aren't. So I, I, I-- I don't know that you can apply a one-size-fits-all any more. We're a-- extremely diverse society, and where the line is isn't really a fair question cause the line is everywhere.
BOB GARFIELD: Paul Fahri, thank you very much.
PAUL FAHRI: Thank you, Bob.
BOB GARFIELD: Paul Fahri covers media and other things for the Style Section of the Washington Post. [MUSIC] Saturday Night Live Censor
May 4, 2002
BROOKE GLADSTONE: William Clotworthy says he's the man they call "The Dr. No" on Saturday Night Live. He was that program's network-imposed censor for a dozen years, from 1979 to 1991. As he writes in his book, Saturday Night Live: Equal Opportunity Offender, quote "I'm the guy a lot of people thought didn't exist. I'm the one who decided how much painted-on pubic hair could be shown on a nude statue on national television. It was my responsibility to define how large a bull's balls could be and still get on the air." To be sure, it must take a finely tuned sensibility to determine when a joke is merely naughty and when it's downright noxious.
SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE ACTOR: I'm Dr. Richard Ludwin. Let's face it --there's some problems we'd rather not talk about. [SOUND OF FLATULENCE] Like flatulence. [LAUGHTER] Maybe it's time for you to discover what millions of Americans already know. It's this: [SPRIGHTLY MUSIC] The Magic Mouth -- from Timpleton Medical. [LAUGHTER] Excessive gas gets caught in the digestive [SOUND OF FLATULENCE] tract, [LAUGHTER] and it can produce some embarrassing [SOUND OF FLATULENCE] results! [SOUND OF FLATULENCE] Magic Mouth inserts comfortably between the cheeks [LAUGHTER] of the buttocks [LAUGHTER/APPLAUSE] [where] gas normally escapes, so instead of this--: [SOUND OF FLATULENCE] [LAUGHTER] You hear this:
ROBOT-LIKE MAN'S VOICE: Did you see Charlie Rose last night? [LAUGHTER/APPLAUSE]
SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE ACTRESS: Why yes!
SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE ACTOR: Magic Man. It's like having a professor up your butt. [LAUGHTER]
BROOKE GLADSTONE: That joke was a little after your time on the show, but would it have passed muster with you?
WILLIAM CLOTWORTHY: [LAUGHS] I don't think so. [LAUGHS] The thing that struck me first -- the name is Dr. Richard Ludwin who happens to be a friend of mine [LAUGHS] and was the program guy on the show for many years. [LAUGHTER] Was that actually on Saturday Night Live?
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Yes.
WILLIAM CLOTWORTHY:Well, we had one sketch that we turned down --bunch of guys in a fraternity house trying to light farts. You didn't see anything, but you heard the voiceover and then there was this big explosion, and Joe Piscopo was dressed as Smokey the Bear, and he came out and said that should be a lesson to everyone -- don't fart with fire. [LAUGHTER]
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Well you didn't have fixed rules. These were all judgment calls, weren't they?
WILLIAM CLOTWORTHY:Oh, no. We called them "guidelines." For example -- sex. [READING] "Sexual scenes must be sensitively handled and contribute to plot or characterization. Gratuitous, overly explicit sexual action is unacceptable and the depiction of physical coercion intended to satisfy prurient interests is to be avoided." That's the type of disingenuous writing that these guidelines were - and there was one for drug use, stereotyping and so forth.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: What do you mean by "disingenuous?"
WILLIAM CLOTWORTHY: Because you can really interpret those [LAUGHS] almost any way you want!
BROOKE GLADSTONE:Very, very early in your career you worked on Milton Berle's show. He wasn't exactly a paragon of good taste. Do you remember if he ran into trouble with the censors?
WILLIAM CLOTWORTHY: Somebody once said - Well gee, Milton Berle wasn't it offensive to the gay community, cause he was always in drag. You know I said lookit - drag humor goes back to Aristophanes!
BROOKE GLADSTONE: I believe that fart humor goes back to Aristophanes [LAUGHS] too.
WILLIAM CLOTWORTHY: Look, most humor [LAUGHS] does.
BROOKE GLADSTONE:But you see, that brings us to the question --if these standards were written in a kind of slippery, slidy way -- the ones you had to follow -- what makes a fart joke okay if Ben Franklin writes about it and, and not okay if Will Farrell does a skit on it?
WILLIAM CLOTWORTHY: Benjamin Franklin is not on television. You know we had to set these standards for what we considered a general audience.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: It seems you also had to have a finely tuned sense of potential offensiveness to minority groups that are rarely considered. You wrote that you'd heard from Americans with neurofibromatosis after a skin on the Elephant Man and a group representing Czechoslovakians was heard from after the classic skit featuring Steve Martin and Dan Akroyd as the "wild and crazy guys!"
STEVE MARTIN AS WILD AND CRAZY GUY: The two most swinging foxes had the hots on for us and are coming here tonight to let us hold on to their big American breasts!!! [LAUGHTER]
DAN AKROYD AS WILD AND CRAZY GUY: Why not? There's no other pair of Czech brothers who cruise and swing so successfully in tight slacks. [LAUGHTER]
WILLIAM CLOTWORTHY: There's just something about that kind of hilarity that minimizes the offensiveness.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Dick Cavett wrote, as you quote in your book, "Censorship feeds the dirty mind more than the 4-letter word itself would."
WILLIAM CLOTWORTHY: Yeah, I agree with that. I'm going to go back and just clarify one thing. Censorship, according to Webster, is "the restriction of any expression believed to threaten the political, social or moral order." Well-- you know - I'm not sure that television entertainment may jeopardize [LAUGHS] the moral a little bit, but we didn't call it "censorship." We considered it "tasteful editing." [LAUGHTER]
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Is there a particular skit that you killed that you wish you hadn't?
WILLIAM CLOTWORTHY: Yeah. That was that fraternity fart joke. I loved it. [LAUGHTER] I loved it, [LAUGHS] and I was overruled by my boss. [LAUGHS]
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Well, William Clotworthy, thank you very much.
WILLIAM CLOTWORTHY: Thanks very much for having me on.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: William Clotworthy is the author of Saturday Night Live: Equal Opportunity Offender. [THEME MUSIC UP AND UNDER]
BOB GARFIELD:That's it for this week's show. On the Media was produced by Janeen Price and Katya Rogers with Sean Landis and Michael Kavanagh; engineered by George Edwards and Dylan Keefe, and edited-- by Brooke. We had help this one last time from Lu Olkowski -- thank you very much, Lu. Our web master is Amy Pearl.
BROOKE GLADSTONE:Mike Pesca is our producer at large, Arun Rath our senior producer and Dean Capello our executive producer. Bassist/composer Ben Allison wrote our theme. You can listen to the program and get free transcripts at onthemedia.org and e-mail us at onthemedia@wnyc.org. This is On the Media from National Public Radio. I'm Brooke Gladstone.
BOB GARFIELD: And I'm Bob Garfield.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: [SOTTO VOCE] [Expletive deleted.] [MUSIC TAG]
May 4, 2002
BROOKE GLADSTONE: From WNYC in New York this is NPR's On the Media. I'm Brooke Gladstone.
BOB GARFIELD: And I'm Bob Garfield. Last week two of the world's most powerful multi-media giants starred in a double feature of The Incredible Shrinking Corporation. AOL/Time Warner announced a $54 billion dollar quarterly writedown -- a mandatory revaluation of once inflated, now dramatically deflated, AOL shares. They're worth roughly half of what they were when the merger was consummated. Meanwhile on the other side of the Atlantic, the French conglomerate Vivendi Universal continued its stock price collapse. Having lost half their value in the last 6 months, Vivendi's shares shrank yet another 25 percent. So much for the juggernauts. And so much for the synergies that conventional wisdom said would propel AOL/Time Warner to unprecedented domination. Joining us now is journalist Aaron Pressman who last was on the show just after the AOL/Time Warner merger talking about how the colossus would have its way with us. Aaron, welcome back to the show.
AARON PRESSMAN: Glad to be back.
BOB GARFIELD: Now when the merger occurred there was talk of a marriage made in heaven. Now that was back in January of 2001 when we were living in a wholly different world. AOL was going to gain access to the content of this gigantic media company, Time Warner, with all kinds of possibilities for cross-promotion and what they call synergy. Did, did any of those synergies actually come to fruition?
AARON PRESSMAN: Well very anecdotally the company likes to tout the fact that they promoted record stars on the AOL service to boost up record sales and things like that, but there were a few key blunders in their assumptions in putting the merger together, primarily along the lines of broad band -- this high speed internet connection that was supposed to run over the cable lines that Time Warner owned -- really hasn't panned out the way that people hoped, and that was the core of the whole convergent strategy.
BOB GARFIELD:But what about the notion that all of this content we're going to somehow serve the AOL audience and bring hitherto unimagined revenue opportunities to the joint company. Has any of that materialized?
AARON PRESSMAN: Really at - you - I don't think there's any evidence that it has. I think part of the original idea was that they would start putting really interesting, unique stuff on the internet in very big files, like actual movie files and actual music files, and this would drive a lot of people to get higher speed, bigger capacity connections to the internet - broadband that AOL was going to be selling. And that really hasn't materialized. The demand for broadband connections is - it's good, it's solid, but it's not booming, and AOL itself has not been a leader in hooking up its subscribers to faster, more expensive connections.
BOB GARFIELD: Is that the largest story here -- the failure of the broadband industry to develop as predicted?
AARON PRESSMAN:Just, you know, think about how you use the internet. There's not really a need to download massive files except maybe college students who like to download music files on the internet and they're all at college where they get free high speed internet connections. But for the average mom and pop, I'm not sure what the rationale is why they need a 50 dollar a month internet connection over the 20 to 25 dollar connection they have today, and in fact America On Line recently altered its marketing strategy, and instead of trying to push people to buy broadband, they're now trying to continue to push their dialup connection and get people to keep using the old slow way!
BOB GARFIELD:At the time of the merger, there was a lot of talk of-- gigantic consolidation having all sorts of deleterious effects on the consumer and on the society. There were and continue to be calls for regulation by the government to make sure that these juggernauts can't dominate the marketplace. Is it possible that the marketplace itself is taking care of the problem and that the failure of - so far - of AOL/Time Warner will discourage further consolidation?
AARON PRESSMAN: Well I think it's too soon to say whether the proponents or the critics had it right, because there's been a recession; the internet economy and interest in the internet and broadband has really not blossomed the way people predicted. You know AOL and Time Warner put together a lot of great content with ways to deliver the content such as cable wires and an on line service. New mergers like Direct TV and Echo Star [sp?] -- they're ignoring the content side of it and they're just putting together distribution networks. So the strategic rationale has changed, and on Wall Street people are saying well we aren't going to make the mistakes those guys made. Maybe they're going to make some new mistakes.
BOB GARFIELD: All right, Aaron. We'll have you back in a couple of years and we'll, we'll see how things have played out.
AARON PRESSMAN: Okay, great.
BOB GARFIELD: Aaron Pressman, thank you very much.
AARON PRESSMAN: Thank you.
BOB GARFIELD: Aaron Pressman is a freelance writer who contributes to Wired, Business 2.0 and the Christian Science Monitor. [MUSIC TAG] American (Newspaper) In Paris
May 4, 2002
BROOKE GLADSTONE: This weekend, French citizens are voting in a runoff election between conservative President Jacques Chirac and the far right candidate Jean-Marie Le Pen. Le Pen is expected to garner less than a quarter of the vote, but that's more than most thought possible a month ago. His popularity has sobered the French who thronged the streets this week to protest his xenophobia. Don't expect any pro-American demonstrations, however. French media and politicians have long criticized the United States for everything from its Middle East policies to its cultural imperialism. So it might have surprised readers of that country's leading broadsheet, Le Monde, to find in its pages a pullout section of the New York Times in English -- not translated into French. Obviously this benefits the Times by expanding its French market. The surprise, as Thomas Marzahl reports from Paris, is that it seems to be doing that for Le Monde too!
THOMAS MARZAHL: On the day after September 11th, Le Monde's front page bore the headline "Nous Sommes Tous Americains." We are all Americans. Every day for a week it published a page of articles from the New York Times in English -- a notable shift for Le Monde which has traditionally looked askance at American culture and politics. While last fall's sample of English-language articles was temporary; a few weeks ago it became more permanent with a Sunday supplement of New York Times articles on politics, world affairs, arts and business. Le Monde editor Eric Le Boucher says the New York Times in English were the most natural choice for his paper.
ERIC LE BOUCHER: We choose to be bilingual and we want to open doors and windows to different cultures, to different point of view.
THOMAS MARZAHL: Judging by some of the letters the paper has received since the supplement's launch, many readers are not happy. One wrote: "When will you realize that you are sawing away at your own demise and contributing to the isolation of millions of people who don't speak perfect English?" Albert Salon, who heads a lobbying group for the French language, said the project was only furthering the Americanization of France. Correspondents to Le Monde said one thing, but research the paper carried out over the period of a year painted a very different picture. Eric Le Boucher.
ERIC LE BOUCHER: In French or in English, that was, a, a question but our tests -- we, we made some tests -- and they are - they were very clear -- in English. People, young people especially, want, want it in English.
THOMAS MARZAHL: New markets are key for Le Monde as it, like many newspapers in France, has seen circulation and ad revenue drop. As for the English language, many French are eager to try out their English when they find you are a native speaker. But there are limits. All billboards are required to provide a French translation for an English slogan, and the venerable Academie Francaise -- the watchdog of French language -- still ties itself in knots every year trying to find French expressions for English words that have crept into daily life. Media analyst Jean-Marie Charon welcomes the collaboration but says that Le Monde, a very pro-European paper, could have opened up to Europe first rather than to the United States.
JEAN-MARIE CHARON: [SPEAKING IN FRENCH]
TRANSLATOR: Where I find myself in disagreement with Le Monde is this exclusive arrangement with the New York Times. It would have been interesting in the end if one week it could have been the New York Times, one week Britain's Independent, then Germany's Suddeutsche Zeitung or Italy's La Republica. I'm a little frustrated at this missed opportunity to open up in different directions.
THOMAS MARZAHL: Charon warns the move could backfire and cost the paper readers. Twenty-six year old Anne is just the kind of reader the paper is angling for. She had just picked up her copy at a newsstand in the Paris Montmartre neighborhood.
ANNE: [SPEAKING IN FRENCH]
TRANSLATOR: It's a great idea, even if many readers won't touch it, because the French speak English very poorly. Many will probably just throw the supplement out, so it would be better to offer a translation of the articles in French.
THOMAS MARZAHL: At the nearby Metro station, 18 year old Philippe on the other hand, thinks the supplement could not have come at a better time.
PHILIPPE: [SPEAKING IN FRENCH]
TRANSLATOR: I think this can bring some diversity to a daily like Le Monde, and with what is going on right now in France, we need to hear from and read about other cultures so that our society opens up more.
THOMAS MARZAHL: Philippe's reflections on far right leader Jean-Marie Le Pen have been borne out in French streets. On Wednesday, more than a million people marched across France against Le Pen, racism and xenophobia. The supplement ends its trial run in July, but both the French and the Americans hope for a re-launch in the fall. Then the New York Times may continue its march across Europe, taking on partners in Germany, Italy and Spain. As Le Monde wrote in an editorial, "Knowing others in their language increases diversity and does not mean giving up what you yourself hold dear." For On the Media, I'm Thomas Marzahl in Paris. [MUSIC] Letters
May 4, 2002
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Our mailbag was overflowing with reaction to our interview with NPR programming chief Jay Kernis about changes in the network's cultural programming. Susanna Bock of Newberg, Oregon writes: "If Fred Child (of Performance Today) is exiled to the radio-Siberia of 2 a.m., what is the possibility that so many of us who have begun to love classical music under his tutelage will be able to nurse that growing appreciation of what otherwise would be foreign and strange to us? This is what we need to hear! Just so you know, I am an NPR junkie among a cohort of NPR junkies and I have been for years. I'm currently 25 years old."
BOB GARFIELD:But Michael Roalkvam of Kenosha, Wisconsin yelled at his radio, so angered was he by what he heard as my implication that if NPR moves to cover more popular culture it would duplicate what is available elsewhere on such shows as Entertainment Tonight. "Give me a break!" he writes. "Does All Things Considered worry that they're covering the same material handled by the commercial television networks? No! Because they know they will cover the issues with more insight and from different perspectives that the major networks miss."
BROOKE GLADSTONE:And this from Steve Rathe of New York City, the producer of NPR's Jazz from Lincoln Center. "Though I've been critical of NPR's programming shift, I appreciate the difficulty of the job Jay is doing. He is also one of broadcasting's most creative and bravest producers. But the issue is not what Jay is doing, but the direction public radio is going." Rathe adds: "For the shrinking base of classical and jazz stations, NPR is now proposing to consider streams of recorded music. Classic and jazz listeners are predictably attracted by a thin play list of recorded music. It's much harder and less predictable to make music choices by instinct and aesthetics. Harder still to attract consistent audiences to live performances and new music. But isn't that why public radio was created -- to go beyond the formats of commercial radio -- to make deeper and broader connections" Isn't that why so many listeners have contributed?"
BOB GARFIELD:We want your contributions, your insight, your perspectives -- so do write us at onthemedia@wnyc.org, and please don't forget to tell us where you live and how to pronounce your name.
BROOKE GLADSTONE:Coming up, public radio and alternative music -- with influence comes the potential for payola. And what Spider-Man learned from Ayn Rand.
BOB GARFIELD: This is On the Media from National Public Radio. Public Radio Payola?
May 4, 2002
BOB GARFIELD: We're back with On the Media. I'm Bob Garfield.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: And I'm Brooke Gladstone. Reporter Eric Boehlert wrote in this week's Salon that public radio has an impact on music other than classical or jazz. Noncommercial stations helped to push such alternative artists as Ryan Adams and Norah Jones onto the charts and were the first to embrace the soundtrack of Oh Brother, Where Art Thou. [MUSIC UP AND UNDER]
MAN: [SINGING] I-- AM A MAN OF CONSTANT SORROW. I'VE SEEN TROUBLE ALL MY DAYS.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: That CD, snubbed by commercial stations, went on to sell 5 million copies and win the Grammy for Album of the Year. But if public radio is now a powerful influence on alternative music, is it subject to the same corrupting pay-for-play systems that afflicts the rest of the music industry? Here to answer that question, I guess in the affirmative, is Eric Boehlert. Welcome back to OTM.
ERIC BOEHLERT: Hi, how are you?
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Good. First of all why would the mainstream music industry be interested in non-commercial stations? How influential are they?
ERIC BOEHLERT: Well they've become more influential because some have sort of broken away from the traditional classical music and, and news approach of public radio, and they're, they're playing sort of adult rock and adult folk records, and they're doing it 24 hours a day, and they have great listenerships in terms of demographics. I mean they're, they're reaching 30+ adult listeners who grew up on rock and roll and can't find decent music on the commercial radio. So anyone who exposes adults to new music, record companies want to influence.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: So what happens when a public radio station becomes a tastemaker so to speak in the alternative rock world?
ERIC BOEHLERT:Record companies start paying attention. Some of these stations now report their play list to the trade magazines, and that affects the all-important charts. Record companies are obsessed with charts, so if they have a hit record and they want it to go top 5 or number one they have to get these public radio stations on board.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: How many stations are we talking about here?
ERIC BOEHLERT: Right now it's a dozen or so. But they're in very large markets, so they have a lot of influence.
BROOKE GLADSTONE:So I'm still not clear -- what's the danger here. What's wrong with non-commercial stations wielding more influence in the music industry? Doesn't that help both the stations and the non-mainstream artists that they play?
ERIC BOEHLERT: Yeah, absolutely. I mean in, in a sense it's a great thing because lots of artists that simply cannot get played on commercial radio have a home in a lot of large markets -- New York - Philadelphia - Pittsburgh - places they would never be heard. The concern is that the pay-for-play system that's established at commercial radio will now seep into public radio and artists will not necessarily be judged on the merits but on how much money the record company is willing to put up for marketing and promotions.
BROOKE GLADSTONE:Okay, so explain again how this pay-for-play system works. Basically radio stations are contacted by these people called "indie-promoters," and, and where does it go from there?
ERIC BOEHLERT: In the commercial side an indie-promoter will form a, an exclusive relationship with a radio station, and they'll do that by paying them sort of an annual up front fee -- maybe a hundred thousand dollars. Once they become that station's exclusive indie, every time that station adds a new record to its play list, that indie will then invoice or bill the record company and the indie will generate an income. Virtually every time a song is added to an FM play list on the commercials stations today, someone's getting paid for it.
BROOKE GLADSTONE:And so this indie record promoter -- he's sort of a go-between, between the record companies and the radio stations. This is what keeps it from being called payola. It's legal. I wonder though, is it legal for public radio to take this kind of money?
ERIC BOEHLERT: I've talked to some programmers and they didn't think that it would be impossible to form a relationship. The indie could send a check in the form of an underwriting, and that's how they would establish the relationship. But I also talked to a station connected with a university, and they thought that a university probably had very strict conflict of interest rules that might prohibit this.
BROOKE GLADSTONE:You've been speaking in theory. Have we actually seen any public stations taking this kind of money and adjusting their play lists as a result?
ERIC BOEHLERT: No, not yet. You know, some of the program directors at the major market stations are, are adamant. They say they'll never do it. They say this is not what public radio represents. But I also talked to people at stations and, and record companies who are concerned, because once a format is perceived as valuable by record companies, and they want to get on those play lists, the money starts flowing and it's hard to say no. Ten years ago alternative rock radio -- when grundge was exploding -- and they started selling a lot of records. You know those programmers, they didn't want to be part of this sort of indie pay-for-play system, and they said you know, that's the scummy Top 40 world. And you know today virtually every alternative rock station is claimed by an indie. So public radio -- I think their heart is in the right place, and they say we are going to be the exception to the rule. We're going to stand up. But there's a station in Akron that just last week the program director sent out an e-mail saying that he was now being repped exclusively by an indie. These program directors are just deluged with calls from indies and record companies. He didn't have time for all the calls. He said I'm just going to work with one indie. I don't have - know any evidence that the station is getting one of these, you know, 6-figure payments, but people in the industry saw it as sort of the first sign that this is not impossible in this format.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Does a relationship with an indie inevitably mean that your play lists will change?
ERIC BOEHLERT:Play lists wouldn't have to really change all that much. You know, you're going to play 30 or 40 songs, and the indie probably is representing, you know, 10 or 20 of those, so you can conceivably keep the format relatively similar to what it is now. So it's not like the play lists would, you know, automatically change overnight and, you know, all the favorite folk artists would be dropped. But on the flip side, the other concern is that already since the stations have been reporting to the trade magazines and they've become more influential the concern is that they're already playing fewer independent artists. You know, you see Stevie Nicks and Elton John songs on public radio play lists whereas, you know, a couple of years ago they wouldn't even have been considered.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Why is that happening if money is not yet an issue?
ERIC BOEHLERT:Well two things -- again, the stations are --have a higher profile, so they're hearing more and more from the major labels. Also, they're sort of migrating to the middle themselves. They want more listeners. They're tightening up their play lists. The way it's described to me is they're just sort of becoming more professional and more professional would mean playing Elton John, because it's - you know the stations don't want to be seen as sort of eccentric, you know, free form radio where people are still hauling in their album collections.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Eric Boehlert, thank you very much.
ERIC BOEHLERT: Thanks.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Eric Boehlert's latest article, Public Radio's Private Seduction, appeared in Salon.com. [MUSIC] Ex-Cons Get Media Savvy
May 4, 2002
BOB GARFIELD: Media literacy is gaining legitimacy. In colleges and many well to do high schools, learning to decode commercials and recognize bias increasingly is seen as valuable preparation for life in a media world. But let's face it, in most places, it's still an elective. But put a media literacy class in a different environment, like, say, at The Fortune Society, and it becomes almost essential. The Fortune Society is a community-based organization that helps ex-offenders transition to life out of prison. OTM's Jad Abumrad sat in on a few classes.
JAD ABUMRAD: On this Monday, like most, Eric Appleton begins his Media Literacy class by handing out a newspaper article. This one is about the Immokalee tomato pickers in Florida.
ERIC APPLETON: ...in this case, people who are usually perceived as having no power, right, are banding together and they're using the media.
JAD ABUMRAD: The 7 students, seated in a small circle on under-sized school chairs each read a paragraph, beginning with Rafael, age 20.
RAPHAEL: "Early on a Sunday evening workers in Immokalee are recuperating from a long week and gearing up to start another one."
JAD ABUMRAD: It is Raphael's first day in Media Literacy class. After spending time in jail on a weapons charge, this is a new experience for him -- reading and then thinking critically about what he reads. The newspaper article claims that since tomato pickers are paid 45 cents for each bucket they make 50 dollars for two tons of tomatoes. The class determined that since each bucket was 32 pounds--
ERIC APPLETON: You've got to divide 4,000 by 32--
JAD ABUMRAD: The real wage is closer to 41 dollars for every 2 tons.
ERIC APPLETON: -- 41.25. [LAUGHTER] The media's even lying! Yeah!
JAD ABUMRAD: That there would be an inaccuracy in a piece of reporting does not surprise anyone here. It would be hard to find a collection of people that are more cynical toward the media which to most of them means TV news.
IVAN: The media is going to report what it want' but it's also go-- it's also manipulated.
ANTHONY: For me, personally, I don't feed into the media. I can't.
ROSLYN: They, they-- they are like vultures. They'll do anything and everything to get a story.
ERIC APPLETON: I can't, I can't even fathom, like, what their perspective is because a lot of this is about me learning about the depth of cynicism that exists.
JAD ABUMRAD: Instructor Eric Appleton thinks the reason may be that his students equate media with the things that put them behind bars --government, society, authority -- but even though they distrust the media, Eric says his students still feel the need to be a part of it.
JESSE SMITHERMAN: This is what keeps me out' the crack house! By me doing this here, I ain't got time to do nothing else. The Media Literacy class is actually therapy!
JAD ABUMRAD: Jesse Smitherman has been in and out of prison his entire adult life.
JESSE SMITHERMAN: I had a problem, man. I wa-- I was-- I had a drug problem! And every time I got out of prison I just would go back to the same old lifestyle -- again, and, and again, and again and again.
JAD ABUMRAD: But this time, he says, is different. In class Jesse has learned word processing, web research techniques and desk top publishing, and all of these skills are evident in his new passion -- creating and distributing public awareness flyers. He carries a stack in his briefcase on nuclear fallout and pollution at Ground Zero. Often after class he'll rush to the computer and create an instant PSA with graphics based around the day's reading. Then, in his suit and wire rim glasses, he'll stand on a streetcorner and hand them out.
JESSE SMITHERMAN: Most of the people that I give this information to, they're like oh, wow! Yeah! There's a 1 800 number or information regarding this subject matter; there's a web site if you, if you have a computer....
JAD ABUMRAD: For Jesse, Media Literacy is his way of re-connecting with society, and he's not alone.
ROSLYN: My name is Roslyn Gallin [sp?]. I'm 42 years old. I came to the Fortune Society to change my life.
JAD ABUMRAD: For Roslyn who's also struggled with drugs for 30 years, the media offer a way out of solitude -- a chance to listen and be listened to.
ROSLYN: Cause I feel like I really have a hell of a story to tell.
JAD ABUMRAD: As part of her recovery, she's actually been on TV and radio. The rehabilitation facility where she lives imposes a strict curfew, so when she can't go out, she turns to radio talk shows.
ROSLYN: Because you never know what subject they might pick that you can identify with to help you say that I'm not alone. Somebody else is going through this -- somebody else feel this -- somebody else thinks this.
JAD ABUMRAD: A few nights ago she caught a show where the topic was young girls who pursue older men. She thought of her own situation. At 14 she married a man who was 28, had 6 kids and then couldn't support them.
ROSLYN: And I just wanted to reach out and tell them, you know, you're making a mistake. You have time for that. Live your live out.
JAD ABUMRAD: Most of the students here like Rosyln and Jesse are in the process of reclaiming their lives, and that's the not-so-hidden meaning behind the tomato picker article the class reads today.
ANTHONY: The first action against the Immokalee growers took place in 1995. More than 4,000 workers....
JAD ABUMRAD: When the Immokalee tomato pickers began to demonstrate for better wages, they distributed videos of the demonstrations to other members. The article describes crowds of workers gathering to watch those videos again and again. Rafael reads.
RAFAEL: "That's why the videos are so popular. They allow the coalition members to see themself externally as they see themselves internally as people who have the power to better themselves and act on their own behalf."
JAD ABUMRAD: To most, Media Literacy is an academic pursuit. But to this group of people, this unusual class, the emphasis is not on achieving a cerebral distance from the media tidal wave. Rather, it's about diving in and learning to swim into the wider world. For On the Media this is Jad Abumrad. [MUSIC]
Man Behind Spider-Man Unmasked
May 4, 2002
BOB GARFIELD: Every superhero has a secret origin. Superman came from Krypton; the Incredible Hulk was exposed to gamma rays, and Spider-Man -- as moviegoers are finding out this weekend -- was born when high school student Peter Parker was bitten by a radioactive spider -- or [WHISPERING] that's what they'd like you to believe. In fact, Spider-Man sprang from the imagination of Marvel Comics head Stan Lee. Or [WHISPERING] that's what they'd like you to believe. While Stan Lee is the man who's credited for creating the web-slinger, in truth he had a collaborator -- a brilliant artist named Steve Ditko. After much wrangling, Ditko's name appears in the opening credits of the multi-million dollar action film, which is prompting many moviegoers to ask "Who's Steve Ditko?" To answer that question we're joined now by Blake Bell who runs the Ditko.comics.org web site. Blake, welcome to OTM.
BLAKE BELL: Thank you, sir.
BOB GARFIELD: Now Spider-Man was born in '62--
BLAKE BELL: Yeah.
BOB GARFIELD: -- at the time, I was 7 years old - I probably read every Spider-Man title for the next 6 or 7 years and the name Steve Ditko means absolutely nothing to me. Why is that?
BLAKE BELL: That's the comic book industry for you, and then the comic book industry, when you think about it, is really only 60 years old. It was all work-for-hire at the time. Even in the '40s it was shop work, so-- they just did not respect the people doing the actual work. Steve Ditko was one of the first to fight his way on to the credits of a comic for more than just drawing. In Amazing Spider-Man 25 which would have been about 2 and a half years into the run he actually had his name down as "Plotter" on the book because in those days what Marvel would do is they would give the artist a brief synopsis -- if even that, by that time -- and then the artist would completely do the stories, and then the "Scripter" would come in and lay down the actual words. And Ditko felt that it was not proper that he was only receiving credit for the art work but that he should actually get some kind of plotting credit as well.
BOB GARFIELD: Were there any particular Ditko touches that you believe enhanced Spider-Man's popularity?
BLAKE BELL:Yes. Ditko created a world where the visual laws were so intriguing, it was almost a visual ballet, these characters battling, dancing in the sky. The body movements were very realistic. He had a "cartoony" style compared to some of the super realistic artists like Neal Adams [sp?] that came along later n the '60s, but he somehow was able to create his own visual universe with rules that made it more realistic than any super realist could ever hope to do. Spider-Man was one of the first street level superheroes, because Ditko's landscape was pure New York -- run down buildings, water towers, types of things that artists hadn't really brought to the, to the picture before and you really felt that connection to the streets in a book like Spider-Man.
BOB GARFIELD: So Steve Ditko created or co-created this-- [BOTH SPEAK AT ONCE]
BLAKE BELL: Yes.
BOB GARFIELD: -- phenomenal comic book character, and then after a short while he just up and left. Why?
BLAKE BELL:Well he'd gotten into Ayn Rand's philosophy of Objectivism -- value for value is a very important issue -- credit for what you had done was certainly an important issue, and receiving financial compensation for that was an important issue. And on I guess a financial and an artistic level he felt he was being asked to compromise, and so he pulled a John Galt and said you're not going to get out of me what you want; I'm going to do this on my own time, and I will just do what I have to do to get by and survive -- and disappeared.
BOB GARFIELD: Just for clarity -- John Galt the protagonist of Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged.
BLAKE BELL:Yes. He was the one who disappeared and then tried to take all of the, the great minds of the world with him to, to show the world that, you know, we are the creators and we deserve a little respect.
BOB GARFIELD: Was Peter Parker or Spider-Man an objectivist?
BLAKE BELL:He grew to be one by the end. As Ditko's philosophy became more entrenched, you can see Peter Parker becoming much more of a confident individual, much more like a Howard Roarke, the protagonist of The Fountainhead where no longer is he concerned like he was in the first story of Amazing Fantasy 15 -- Spider-Man's first appearance -- no longer is he concerned as much what the, the mainstream crowd thinks.
BOB GARFIELD:With all due respect, we're speaking to you, a Steve Ditko expert, because we couldn't find Steve Ditko himself. He never gives interviews.
BLAKE BELL: Yes.
BOB GARFIELD: The Los Angeles Times called him "The J.D. Salinger of Comic Books."
BLAKE BELL: Yes.
BOB GARFIELD: But Salinger went into seclusion and as far as anyone knows never wrote again. What about Ditko?
BLAKE BELL: He co-publishes his own work. He is perceived as this J.D. Salinger because, you know, people only know what is out there in the mainstream, and he rarely contributes to that facet because they want too much control; they - he refuses to give up control of the characters that he does. He gave up control of the character he co-created, Spider-Man, and-- he figured that was enough of that, and now he owns whatever he creates, and he's willing to pay the price in terms of low distribution and lower financial reward.
BOB GARFIELD: Blake, thank you very much.
BLAKE BELL: Thank you, sir.
BOB GARFIELD: Blake Bell runs the web site Ditko.comics.org. He's also writing a book about the wives of comic book artists.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Coming up, pay cuts, big bucks and bad words on network television.
BOB GARFIELD: This is On the Media from National Public Radio. New$ Anchor$
May 4, 2002
BOB GARFIELD: We are back with On the Media. I'm Bob Garfield.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: And I'm Brooke Gladstone. Normally when stories about the salaries of network anchors hit the media, and they often do, we at OTM maintain a judicious silence. But the salary headlines this week are different, and we asked back our old pal J. Max Robins, columnist for TV Guide, to explains the why's and wherefores. Hi Max.
MAX ROBINS: Hi, Brooke.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: So it seems that this time the money is actually shrinking. ABC has demanded that Peter Jennings take a pay cut. Why?
MAX ROBINS: First, they want to send a message throughout ABC -- these are tough times; everybody's going to have to take a little bit less, or certainly you're not going to get much more. Even Peter Jennings is vulnerable to that. Another thing's important in this. It really shows that those flagship nightly newscasts are not the real center of these network news divisions that they once were.
BROOKE GLADSTONE:It's interesting, cause all of us have been saying that all along - it looks like the--the sun is setting on the evening newscasts. But still, network anchors always seem like the, the movie stars of news and they've always been paid if not movie star salaries, almost. Peter Jennings was making 10 million before he was asked to take I guess a, a 25 percent pay cut.
MAX ROBINS: They're still stars. They still have a value. However these corporations, and, and make no mistake, the Walt Disney Company owns ABC --they have to send a message to Wall Street too -- that we're going to be fiscally responsible. We're going to invest money where there are areas of growth and we're going to tighten our belt in areas that are mature businesses for us. If the sun is beginning to set on these nightly newscasts, where it's really rising are on the morning shows. I mean The Today Show rocks. It's a-- a huge profit center for NBC. Clears about 200 million dollars a year in profits, Brooke. There you see Katie Couric signed a big deal, worth reportedly about 15 million dollars a year. They just re-signed Matt Lauer, her co-host, for at least 8 million dollars a year. They can justify it because the show makes so much. They can also justify it in what they'd lose if those two personalities left the show.
BROOKE GLADSTONE:So the evening newscasts and the evening news anchors aren't necessarily where the news money is, but as NBC's Brian Williams said in, in the L.A. Times not long ago, it isn't the nightly grind that makes the anchors valuable. It's these important single moments like September 11th when they break into program; when they're there as a trusted guide for the nation to hold their hand and keep them informed.
MAX ROBINS: When you have these momentous news events or news days, that's when we sample, that's when we may check out -- if we're a Dan Rather fan, we may check out what Peter Jennings has to offer and decide -- hey! - we like that a little better! And then in the weeks coming after that when things are a little bit more normal, we may check that out. So these men and women who command these superstar salaries -- they're really kind of marketing vehicles.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: How important are anchors to the content of their programs.
MAX ROBINS:The anchors have a lot to do with the content. And they really are de facto, and, and two of them in name managing editors of their newscasts, and they have a lot to do with how they cover the news, both for good and ill effect.
BROOKE GLADSTONE:We have ABC asking Peter Jennings to take a 25 percent pay cut off of his already kingly salary. You know, we don't shed tears for [LAUGHS] Peter Jennings, but we did nearly have a panic over what happened with Ted Koppel, and it seems to be ABC that is in the vanguard of public expressions that news isn't really that important any more.
MAX ROBINS: Asking Peter Jennings to take a pay cut and kind of behind closed doors asking correspondents, producers, down the line to take pay cuts really speaks to no real strong commitment to news there. It's, it's a network where their news division has increasingly become news packagers as opposed to news gatherers.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: And in this are they significantly different from NBC or CBS?
MAX ROBINS:CBS is in a similar situation. They have continued to contract as a news organization. That's why you often hear about either ABC or CBS forming some kind of a joint venture with the C--CNN. They're significantly different from NBC in that NBC invested heavily in expanding in news with MSNBC and CNBC and cable and that was a way for them to amortize their costs. ABC and CBS have become much more news packagers as opposed to news gatherers. They're still committed to news, but it's -it's by and large "news lite."
BROOKE GLADSTONE:That's what they used to day about NBC and Tom Brokaw in particular, but actually that at least has the financial backing to maintain itself.
MAX ROBINS: There is a certain irony there -- that NBC is kind of the lightest weight of the bunch if you will, however, they do it successfully and, and it's, it's analogous in a sense to the print world where you can be s-- very successful with a group of magazines, but they may be more about lifestyle than they are about hard news.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Well Max, thank you very much.
MAX ROBINS: Thank you, Brooke.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Max Robins writes the Robins Report for TV Guide. The Willy J. Clinton Show
May 4, 2002
BROOKE GLADSTONE: There does seem to be one way to get a big payday out of the networks, but you have to be a former president to do it, and preferably not Gerald Ford. NBC reportedly offered Bill Clinton his own talk show, and his asking price was said to have been 50 million dollars. That's more than the salaries of all the network anchors combined, although it's less than half of Oprah Winfrey's reported paycheck.
According to the tabloids, though, the man we call "Bubba" is still not quite ready to take the plunge. Naturally they want him. Clinton is known for his ease in front of the camera, and in Town Hall Meetings he's proved adept as an interviewer. Whatever network signs him will want to amortize the expense by spreading him around. If it's NBC, he'll be on MSNBC and CNBC as much as Chris Matthews. He'll sit in the broadcast booth during the World Series. He'll anchor a morning news show segment called "Bill Clinton's America."
Whatever network signs him will be painted as having a pervasive left wing bias, and they'll try to compensate by giving Trent Lott his own sitcom. And the 2004 presidential election will be haunted by the specter of Bill Clinton. Rather than a shadowy presence hanging over the Democrats, he'll actually be interviewing them.
As for the Republicans, the perennial strategy of blaming the media and blaming Clinton will be rolled conveniently into one when Clinton becomes "The Media." [HAIL TO THE CHIEF PLAYS] [OPRAH WINFREY'S THEME SONG PLAYS] Swearing Up on TV
May 4, 2002
BOB GARFIELD: One episode of South Park, the taboo-busting Comedy Central primetime cartoon, used the "S" word more than a hundred times. If you watch The Osbournes in which dissipated Black Sabbath rocker Ozzy Osbourne and his nuclear family split the difference between Ozzie & Harriet and The Addams Family, you will hear the "F" word bleeped out but not obliterated about every 30 seconds. ESPN's docudrama about basketball coach Bobby Knight also aired in primetime, also was liberally seasoned with the "F" word and didn't even bother bleeping the expletive out. Thirty years ago on Laugh-In it took mere suggestive euphemisms such as "sock it to me" to make a nation gasp. But according to the Washington Post's Paul Farhi, hardly anyone's gasping these days. He wrote about verbal vulgarity, and he joins us now to talk about it. Paul, welcome back to OTM.
PAUL FAHRI: Thanks, Bob.
BOB GARFIELD: Language and television. What the hell is going on?!
PAUL FAHRI: I think we are in some period of continued downward slide. If I could throw out one theory, I would suggest that it has something to do with the competitive nature of television -- every network seems to be losing viewers, and every network is doing what it can to try and bring viewers back or hold on to the ones that it's got.
BOB GARFIELD:Well at some point doesn't the law of diminishing returns set in here? People are fighting for viewers, but the viewers don't seem to stay impressed for long. The culture gets increasingly coarsened and nobody's even making any money out of it in the long run.
PAUL FAHRI: Well I think you've got to add -- if you isolate bad language in and of itself it's one thing -- but bad language coupled with bad programming is inevitably going to be a failure. In some ways you could call it an irrelevant aspect, as long as there's something else to bring you to it. As Dick Wolf, the guy who made Law & Order said, "Shakespeare seemed to do okay without using many bad words."
BOB GARFIELD: What has happened all of a sudden that it is of the essence that the words are spoken verbatim.
PAUL FAHRI:The Sopranos happened. People see The Sopranos drawing all this praise and acclaim and figure that we should be like that. To a certain extent they're right. I mean do cops really talk like Joe Friday? Do mobsters really talk like the criminals of, of the '50s or the '60s or the '70s on TV? Of course they don't.
BOB GARFIELD:Have you got some examples for me of things that we have heard -- and try to be delicate here, because we at On the Media have standards approximately like the ones you have at the Washington Post.
PAUL FAHRI: Sure. There's a show called The Shield on FX which is owned by Fox. It's a cop show, and he's a rogue cop with his own particular kind of language and the common word for barnyard excrement has been heard fairly recently on 60 Minutes, on Nightline. Moving over to MTV you've got The Osbournes which spares its youthful audience the indignity by bleeping out the words, but the words that it bleeps out probably outnumber the words that it lets through.
BOB GARFIELD:What are we to make of a show like South Park which I, I have to tell you, when I've occasionally encountered it, I've found pretty hilarious, although it's obsessive on this cult of taboo-breaking.
PAUL FAHRI: South Park does delight in its taboo-breaking. Their program last year in which the "S" word was uttered I believe 162 times was if nothing but a, an attempt to throw the taboos right back in the viewer's face and was done rather effectively I thought.
SOUTH PARK CHARACTER: [SHOUTING] Last night the Dang and Bold Show cop drama broke new ground by saying "sh**" (BLEEP) on television, making "sh**" (BLEEP) officially okay to say around the country! A recent poll shows that 24 percent of Americans think the show has pushed the envelope too far, while a whopping 76 percent say they don't really give a "sh**" (BLEEP). In other news....
PAUL FAHRI: But Comedy Central would say we put the show on at 10 o'clock with the express knowledge that we don't think there are many children in the audience at that hour. It is a cartoon for adults. But my kids love it, by the way. [LAUGHS]
BOB GARFIELD:[LAUGHS] Yeah, my kids love it too. You know, I'm not all that old, but I certainly remember the I Love Lucy reruns and they couldn't even say "pregnant" when Lucy was pregnant.
PAUL FAHRI: The thing that gets me though is which is chicken and which is egg? Was Lucy a reflection of the culture at the time or was television in some way being ultra-conservative so as not to offend? Now the question is: Whose standard really does apply? In other words some people are offended by this, but clearly a lot of people aren't. So I, I, I-- I don't know that you can apply a one-size-fits-all any more. We're a-- extremely diverse society, and where the line is isn't really a fair question cause the line is everywhere.
BOB GARFIELD: Paul Fahri, thank you very much.
PAUL FAHRI: Thank you, Bob.
BOB GARFIELD: Paul Fahri covers media and other things for the Style Section of the Washington Post. [MUSIC] Saturday Night Live Censor
May 4, 2002
BROOKE GLADSTONE: William Clotworthy says he's the man they call "The Dr. No" on Saturday Night Live. He was that program's network-imposed censor for a dozen years, from 1979 to 1991. As he writes in his book, Saturday Night Live: Equal Opportunity Offender, quote "I'm the guy a lot of people thought didn't exist. I'm the one who decided how much painted-on pubic hair could be shown on a nude statue on national television. It was my responsibility to define how large a bull's balls could be and still get on the air." To be sure, it must take a finely tuned sensibility to determine when a joke is merely naughty and when it's downright noxious.
SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE ACTOR: I'm Dr. Richard Ludwin. Let's face it --there's some problems we'd rather not talk about. [SOUND OF FLATULENCE] Like flatulence. [LAUGHTER] Maybe it's time for you to discover what millions of Americans already know. It's this: [SPRIGHTLY MUSIC] The Magic Mouth -- from Timpleton Medical. [LAUGHTER] Excessive gas gets caught in the digestive [SOUND OF FLATULENCE] tract, [LAUGHTER] and it can produce some embarrassing [SOUND OF FLATULENCE] results! [SOUND OF FLATULENCE] Magic Mouth inserts comfortably between the cheeks [LAUGHTER] of the buttocks [LAUGHTER/APPLAUSE] [where] gas normally escapes, so instead of this--: [SOUND OF FLATULENCE] [LAUGHTER] You hear this:
ROBOT-LIKE MAN'S VOICE: Did you see Charlie Rose last night? [LAUGHTER/APPLAUSE]
SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE ACTRESS: Why yes!
SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE ACTOR: Magic Man. It's like having a professor up your butt. [LAUGHTER]
BROOKE GLADSTONE: That joke was a little after your time on the show, but would it have passed muster with you?
WILLIAM CLOTWORTHY: [LAUGHS] I don't think so. [LAUGHS] The thing that struck me first -- the name is Dr. Richard Ludwin who happens to be a friend of mine [LAUGHS] and was the program guy on the show for many years. [LAUGHTER] Was that actually on Saturday Night Live?
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Yes.
WILLIAM CLOTWORTHY:Well, we had one sketch that we turned down --bunch of guys in a fraternity house trying to light farts. You didn't see anything, but you heard the voiceover and then there was this big explosion, and Joe Piscopo was dressed as Smokey the Bear, and he came out and said that should be a lesson to everyone -- don't fart with fire. [LAUGHTER]
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Well you didn't have fixed rules. These were all judgment calls, weren't they?
WILLIAM CLOTWORTHY:Oh, no. We called them "guidelines." For example -- sex. [READING] "Sexual scenes must be sensitively handled and contribute to plot or characterization. Gratuitous, overly explicit sexual action is unacceptable and the depiction of physical coercion intended to satisfy prurient interests is to be avoided." That's the type of disingenuous writing that these guidelines were - and there was one for drug use, stereotyping and so forth.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: What do you mean by "disingenuous?"
WILLIAM CLOTWORTHY: Because you can really interpret those [LAUGHS] almost any way you want!
BROOKE GLADSTONE:Very, very early in your career you worked on Milton Berle's show. He wasn't exactly a paragon of good taste. Do you remember if he ran into trouble with the censors?
WILLIAM CLOTWORTHY: Somebody once said - Well gee, Milton Berle wasn't it offensive to the gay community, cause he was always in drag. You know I said lookit - drag humor goes back to Aristophanes!
BROOKE GLADSTONE: I believe that fart humor goes back to Aristophanes [LAUGHS] too.
WILLIAM CLOTWORTHY: Look, most humor [LAUGHS] does.
BROOKE GLADSTONE:But you see, that brings us to the question --if these standards were written in a kind of slippery, slidy way -- the ones you had to follow -- what makes a fart joke okay if Ben Franklin writes about it and, and not okay if Will Farrell does a skit on it?
WILLIAM CLOTWORTHY: Benjamin Franklin is not on television. You know we had to set these standards for what we considered a general audience.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: It seems you also had to have a finely tuned sense of potential offensiveness to minority groups that are rarely considered. You wrote that you'd heard from Americans with neurofibromatosis after a skin on the Elephant Man and a group representing Czechoslovakians was heard from after the classic skit featuring Steve Martin and Dan Akroyd as the "wild and crazy guys!"
STEVE MARTIN AS WILD AND CRAZY GUY: The two most swinging foxes had the hots on for us and are coming here tonight to let us hold on to their big American breasts!!! [LAUGHTER]
DAN AKROYD AS WILD AND CRAZY GUY: Why not? There's no other pair of Czech brothers who cruise and swing so successfully in tight slacks. [LAUGHTER]
WILLIAM CLOTWORTHY: There's just something about that kind of hilarity that minimizes the offensiveness.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Dick Cavett wrote, as you quote in your book, "Censorship feeds the dirty mind more than the 4-letter word itself would."
WILLIAM CLOTWORTHY: Yeah, I agree with that. I'm going to go back and just clarify one thing. Censorship, according to Webster, is "the restriction of any expression believed to threaten the political, social or moral order." Well-- you know - I'm not sure that television entertainment may jeopardize [LAUGHS] the moral a little bit, but we didn't call it "censorship." We considered it "tasteful editing." [LAUGHTER]
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Is there a particular skit that you killed that you wish you hadn't?
WILLIAM CLOTWORTHY: Yeah. That was that fraternity fart joke. I loved it. [LAUGHTER] I loved it, [LAUGHS] and I was overruled by my boss. [LAUGHS]
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Well, William Clotworthy, thank you very much.
WILLIAM CLOTWORTHY: Thanks very much for having me on.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: William Clotworthy is the author of Saturday Night Live: Equal Opportunity Offender. [THEME MUSIC UP AND UNDER]
BOB GARFIELD:That's it for this week's show. On the Media was produced by Janeen Price and Katya Rogers with Sean Landis and Michael Kavanagh; engineered by George Edwards and Dylan Keefe, and edited-- by Brooke. We had help this one last time from Lu Olkowski -- thank you very much, Lu. Our web master is Amy Pearl.
BROOKE GLADSTONE:Mike Pesca is our producer at large, Arun Rath our senior producer and Dean Capello our executive producer. Bassist/composer Ben Allison wrote our theme. You can listen to the program and get free transcripts at onthemedia.org and e-mail us at onthemedia@wnyc.org. This is On the Media from National Public Radio. I'm Brooke Gladstone.
BOB GARFIELD: And I'm Bob Garfield.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: [SOTTO VOCE] [Expletive deleted.] [MUSIC TAG]
- Back to story:
- May 4, 2002
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Conservative Bloggers Vindicated, Advice for Leakers, and More
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An 11-year-old and his 3D printer
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Who’s gonna pay for this stuff?
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A Journalistic Civil War Odyssey
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A New Incentive for Cord Cutters
- Department of Justice Warrant Names Journalist as a Possible Leak Co-Conspirator
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A Source for Sources
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Web Only Audio Extra - TV Cord Cutters
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With IRS Scandal, Conservative Bloggers Feel Vindicated
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Angelina Jolie's Secret Test Results
