News or entertainment? TV political forum unspectacular

Wednesday, June 22, 2011

Television might have moved into a new political dimension with the Republican candidate forum for the presidential nomination on CNN Monday, June 13. This appeared to be strictly a showcase for would be candidates housed in a made-for-television format and as bland as plain pizza dough. Some of the preliminary advertising listed it as a debate, but in my opinion that was very misleading. If the intent was simply to introduce the field of potential candidates for the Republican Party, it probably failed on that account since several “undecided” candidates were absent. But, what can one expect this early in the process?

Every thing I observed indicates this was strictly a made for television event much like a cheap movie with very little plot but a very big time slot to fill. The forum/ debate was held in New Hampshire and here’s the commercial part - it could be viewed on CNN, television, CNN.com and various mobile devices.

The preliminary buildup included CNN television, CNNPolitics.com and @ cnnpolitics on Twitter. This, I’m sure was to make it available to anyone and everyone so they could get their money’s worth out of the cost of putting it on.

The “cast” of this production, whoops, I mean the candidates themselves, included front runner, Mitt Romney, Newt Gingrich, Ron Paul (the Texas Congressman), Rick Santorum, Tim Pawlenty, Michele Bachmann and Herman Cain.

This actually did provide an opportunity to learn a little about the status of the political scene because it did have some air of an educational event.

I had no idea who Herman Cain was prior to this introduction. And, it was informative to learn that Michele Bachmann (billed as the darling of the TEA Party) and her husband had been foster parents to a large number of children. That tells me a lot about her character but little about what she would do if she were to sit in the Oval Office as ourpresident.

Actually, the candidates were very professional although unspectacular - again that is my personal opinion. There were no sensational new ideas offered on how to correct our unemployment situation, nor did I hear any comment or opinion from anyone that made me want to jump on theirbandwagon. Of the field the forum offered, Ron Paul continues to make the most sense. He is not your classic political candidate. He did not offer wild-eyed solutions, just presented plain facts and reality about our economic woes. His approach is basic economics of cut spending and balance the budget. He suggested we look where we are spending most of our money and include entitlements and foreign wars, foreign and domestic subsidies, etc. He is probably too honest for most people.

Among the missing were Donald Trump and Sara Palin. Their contribution would probably have been more in the entertainment category than political, but it’s early in the process, so why not let them liven things up a bit?

My opinion also, but when a news network goes to the extreme of filling the airwaves with programing like this and have the courage to call it news, this becomes evidence that we probably have way too many television channels and too little meaningful news content to fill the available time. The lack of pertinent news is further exemplified by the television coverage of the Casey Anthony murder trial. One network chose to actually air the trial while multiple talkshows used it in bits and pieces to fill time. And, it seemed to be bounced from program to program on some of the networks when one talk show personality would appear on another show to be part of a panel on the current status or as an expert on the topic.

Luckily we have choices, including turning the television off. We are doing a lot of that lately as more of the networks are re-running whatever they have in their archives that might draw advertising.

This new phenomenon called social media is going to become a problem for television as we know it today if the social networking continues to expand. They will have more impact on public opinion than the television networks’ newscasts do very soon. Rerun movies or endless recycling of news stories will not be able to compete with this new communication darling and its ability to show both truth and fiction to multiple thousands instantly. What is a poor television network to do?

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Editor’s note: Leo Lynch, a native of Benton County has deep roots in northwest Arkansas. He is a retired industrial engineer and former Justice of the Peace. He can be contacted at prtnews@nwaonline.

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Opinion, Pages 4 on 06/22/2011