I watched the 1976 film Network again last night. It's about a last-place television network that moves its evening news broadcast under "programming" to improve ratings. I first saw Network when I was a political science undergrad and aspiring newsman, and planning to follow in the footsteps of my grandfather and father who had worked at CBS. It was Jimmy Carter's "malaise" era of high unemployment and inflation, the Weathermen, Symbionese Liberation Army and Patty Hearst. My parents had recently abandoned life in a NYC suburb in Connecticut to husband a 12-acre farm and livestock in Vermont. Three years later, Iranian students took 52 American embassy diplomats and employees hostage in Tehran whose captivity led to Ted Koppel's Nightline news broadcast on ABC. After 444 days, the hostages were released the morning of January 20, 1981, just minutes after Ronald Reagan was sworn in as President. Along the way, in June 1980, CNN and 24-hour news were born.
Oscar-winning screenwriter Paddy Chayefsky penned the prescient Network screenplay which the Writers Guild of America now calls one of the 10 greatest screenplays in the history of cinema.
Who knew then that "Howard Beale's mad prophet of the airwaves" foresaw the future of not only network news, especially cable news, but also reality TV and talk radio. Beale's live assassination in the movie also presaged live streaming and found footage of events like the police shootings of Philandro Castille and Alton Sterling, which triggered the televised assassinations of five policeman in Dallas.
And who knew that in 2016 we'd be facing an election between two media-saturating and Twitter-addled candidates whose asylum-worthy character defects are getting the highest Nielsen ratings in election history?
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