From: v101pyrw@ubvmsb.cc.buffalo.edu (Michelle L. Zafron)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.tv
Subject: Re: complaint about ABC
Date: 6 Apr 92 20:05:00 GMT
Distribution: na
Organization: University at Buffalo
News-Software: VAX/VMS VNEWS 1.41

In article <2579@number1.dwrsun2.UUCP>, perl@dwrsun2.UUCP (Robert Perlberg) writes...
>In article <ksvda0INNad7@early-bird.think.com>, barmar@think.com (Barry Margolin) writes:
>> In article <1992Mar24.151138.6528@usenet.ins.cwru.edu> aq637@cleveland.Freenet.Edu (John J. Lopez) writes:
>> >Why didn't they wait until a commercial break to show their Special Report.

>> It's difficult to do this, since the show is on at different times in
>> different time zones, while the special reports were presumably live
>> (except for the one you said was a repeat of an earlier one).

>> Some people do think that real-life tragedies are more important than silly
>> TV shows.

><FLAME ON>

>People watch TV to get some _relief_ from reality.  If real life is so
>important to you, why are you watching a "silly TV show" in the first
>place?  Why don't you just watch CNN?  I really couldn't care less if
>another plane crashes.  I'll know about it in a couple of hours anyway
>when I watch the news.  Why do I have to know it so soon?  And at the
>expense of having the movie (and my whole evening along with it)
>ruined?

><FLAME OFF>

I watch tv to relax, to enter a fictional world for a couple of hours.  This
does not mean however, that I wish to enter a hermetically sealed world while
I watch "Murphy Brown".   When I watch the news at 11 or 6 or whatever, I expect
to hear a recap of the days events.  For the most parts the special reports deal
with immediate tragedies, or late-breaking political events, that IMHO take
precedence over my fictional retreat.  

I think that television stations feel that in certain circumstances news is
a higher priority than entertainment.  I do not mind if a television show--a
fiction that I'm sure I'll have the oppurtunity to view again, is interrupted
by a special report to tell me that a tragedy like a plane crash, or a 
politically dangerous situation, or a war, or election results has happened.

When ABC interrupted the last five minutes of "Dirty Rotten Scoundrels" to break
the news of the plane crash, the person I was watching it with uttered a cry of
total fury and anguish.  She could not comprehend why they would do something 
like that.  Now this movie has been on tv before, it will be on again.  It's 
available for rental.  I knew someone who was upset when they interrupted his 
soap to tell us about the Challenger explosion.  How come the ending of human 
lives rates below the ending of a movie or a television program?  

Now I've groused about special reports before--the all important news of Zsa Zsa
Gabor's sentencing, or when during the Gulf War, a network was concerned with
analyzing George Bush's golf game, but those are ludricrous examples.  When 
something serious has happened, I want to know.  

The networks theoretically have a dual purpose to entertain and to inform.  And
although the networks are usually more concerned with making money, I applaud
their decisions to interrupt programming to bring us news like this, AS IT 
HAPPENS.  

>Robert Perlberg
>Dean Witter Reynolds Inc., New York
>{murphy | philabs}!dwrsun2!perl
>	-- "I am not a language ... I am a free man!"
--Michelle L. Zafron (v101pyrw@ubvmsb.cc.buffalo.edu)
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"Suppose that you were an idiot and suppose you were a member of Congress.  But
 I repeat myself."
                                 --Mark Twain   
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