Thu. Nov 11, 2004
Dramatis Interruptus
So I’m watching CSI:NY. The whole CSI Phenomenon hasn’t caught on with me, but I’m trying to give CSI:NY a shot. Because there’s little else on. It’s about 10:55pm.
All of a sudden, a CBS News “Special Report” (complete with a “professional” display of the opening countdown on the intro) breaks in with the big news: “Arafat is Dead Again.” I figure this time he must be “not only merely dead, [he’s] really, most sincerely dead’” (in the words of the Munchkinland Coroner), because CBS proceeds to run a full four or five minute obituary recounting Arafat’s story from shortly after birth to the present.
Maybe it seemed ridiculous because there have been so many peaks and valleys in the Arafat Dow this week. It reached the point earlier this evening that Fox News reported Arafat was indeed still alive … and the funeral would be this Friday. Fair, Balanced, and Sometimes Psychic. At any rate, after all this the CBS News interruption and lengthy obituary came across as, well, the long anticipated and lengthy release of a most constipated man. Like they’d been sitting on this mini-documentary for a week now, and By Gum they were gonna run it now that they were sure he was Really Dead.
And it left me lacking one piece of knowledge. Who killed those people in that diner on CSI:NY? CBS left us hanging as if the previous 55 minutes of that show had never happened.
Back when I was a youngster, we used to have a name for those who would take their time leading you very close to the climax, and then leave you hanging. Later in life, I came to know such people as “contractors.”
Now they apparently work for CBS.
Later: “An overly aggressive CBS News producer jumped the gun with a report that should have been offered to local stations for their late news. We sincerely regret the error. The episode of CSI: NEW YORK will be rebroadcast Friday, Nov. 12.” Those “overly aggressive” producers have been a real problem for CBS this year … perhaps some valium should be passed out with their paychecks.
Published 12:27AM, Thu, Nov 11 2004
Category: TV
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Peanut Gallery
Like baseball, network tv is set up to break your heart. At least with cable, they run it and run it and run it until you get it. Now you’ve got to wait until the reruns set in, and watch every week until you get to the episode you missed, (because they won’t tell you). And then hope that it doesn’t get interrupted again.
Cable news is better too. You can pick whatever subject you need real in-depth coverage on, whether it’s Scott Peterson, Rathergate, Dean-Scream, Swift Boats, Bush Mandate or Electiongate, and it’s there for you, whenever your little heart desires.
The following few days give the networks the honest opportunity to do what they’ve all really wanted to do for years- put on a Monty Pythonesque statement:
“Our top story tonight- Arafat is STILL DEAD.”
In my book, the kookiest kook in the whole incident has to be Limbaugh- he wholeheartedly claimed that Arafat’s wife was desperately trying to get the doctors to wake him up one last time, so that she could get Swiss bank numbers from Arafat, where purportedly he’s hidden “billions in stolen US aid money”. I’m no great Rush fan, but him pushing conspiracy theories like that one are over the edge, even for him.
Hate to shock you Todd, but I’d bet with Limbaugh on this one.
Forbes ranked Arafat as the 6th richest person in the world, and the “former Minister of Finance of the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) ... estimates Arafat had between 3 and 5 billion dollars.” He has controlled every dollar that flowed into the Palestinian cause since the mid-70’s, and you have to know they didn’t all go for groceries.
It’s long been known that Arafat maintained his power for so long by controlling those purse strings. Long before Limbaugh (whom I haven’t heard in months) people were muttering about the access to the accounts. Supposedly two of his underlings tried to get the info before he was taken to Paris, but he wouldn’t tell them. Arafat apparently never let others in on how (and where) to access them, to maintain his control.
And then he went into a coma.
The man was too paranoid to even align a successor for his position as Palestinian leader, as if he thought he would live forever. If he didn’t take care of passing that important asset on, what makes you think he took care of anything else?
At any rate, I’m betting this is a story we’ll hear a lot more about.
Unlike the murder of those people in a Brooklyn diner. Doubt we’ll ever know what happened to them.
Surely there exist fan sites where the real information on the CSI episode in question is provided, or, at the very least, wild speculation that proves to be just as interesting as the actual script. (Just as there is with every subject under the sun.)
Failing that, there exists a relatively reliable BitTorrent of all the episodes.
Network TV used to be set up to break your heart… now it’s just set up to make you buy a TiVo or a DSL connection.
I saw this today
CBS NEWS interrupted the final minutes of Wednesday night’s episode of CSI: NEW YORK in order to air a special report about the death of Yasser Arafat. CBS has apologized and says it will rebroadcast the episode, in its entirety FRIDAY at 9PM CENTRAL TIME.
“An overly aggressive CBS News producer jumped the gun with a report that should have been offered to local stations for their late news. We sincerely regret the error. The episode of CSI: NEW YORK will be rebroadcast Friday, Nov. 12.”
PhotoDude has mighty and strange power. . .
“PhotoDude has mighty and strange power”
I think you may have one unnecessary word in there … “and.” Because today we find that the apology was not enough. Today, CBS fired the producer
“According to the source, the producer failed to follow standard procedures that require a senior CBS News executive to be consulted before interrupting regular programming … The source said the producer disregarded explicit, advance instructions that breaking news of Arafat’s death – if it occurred during prime time – was to be reported with a news ‘crawl’ at the bottom of the screen.”
I’m just a canary in a coalmine…
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LOL!
Bet you watch next week, though…