One of the most iconic actors of the TV generation, James Garner, died yesterday.
Though Garner did a number of movies …
… Garner was best known for two TV roles — Western card sharp Bret Maverick …
… and private investigator Jim Rockford:
Maverick and Rockford weren’t precisely the same role, but they were similar characters. Both were charming conflict-averse con men. “Maverick” didn’t have regular secondary roles like “Rockford,” other than Bret’s brother, Bart. (Garner and Jack Kelly alternated starring in episodes, so there were few episodes with Bret and Bart.)
Jim Rockford was a private eye who was sort of the anti-private eye, beginning with his past as a pardoned convict. He was as honest as a con man. He tried to avoid violence, not because he was a pacifist but because he didn’t want to get hurt himself. He lived in a house trailer, occasionally ran out of money, and had a few disreputable friends. On the other hand, he had a great car (one of the two requirements for my watching a show in the ’70s), and he sometimes got (at least until the next episode) the girl.
Garner, meanwhile, wasn’t merely a great actor; he lived the kind of life you’d like (but rarely get) celebrities to live. He served his country in the Korean War. He married one woman, and stayed married to her. His political views were on the liberal side, but unlike the liberal actors and celebrities of today, he didn’t feel the need to constantly blare his views at people who didn’t necessarily want to hear them. (For one thing, maybe he was smart enough to realize that not all the people watching him shared his views.)
On Thursday, the Israeli Army invaded the Gaza Strip, and pro-Russian separatists in Ukraine shot down an airplane, killing 298 people, including 23 passengers.
Barack Obama was off at a Democratic fundraiser.
That prompted a few people on Facebook to post what real presidential leadership looks like. This was Ronald Reagan after the Soviet Union shot down a Korean Airlines jetliner in 1983:
That, of course, compelled Reagan-haters to criticize Reagan specifically and America generally.
For those people, I post a speech from a Democratic president, John F. Kennedy, when he announced what the Soviet Union was doing in Cuba in October 1962:
By either of those standards, Barack Obama is a miserable failure and a joke. If he were just a politician, we could dismiss him as a joke, but he is supposed to be the leader of the free world. Despite what the media thinks, Obama’s failure to live up to the expectations of the presidency is having serious negative consequences for this country.
… which I actually remember watching, though at 4 years old, staying up well past my bedtime, I didn’t understand the significance of what I was watching.
Two years later came something unrelated and just odd, as the Washington Post reports:
The Nats will host the Brewers on July 20.
The last two times that happened, President Richard Nixon showed up.
The last time, in 1971, he came with about 3,800 of his best friends. He waved to Washington’s pitcher, chatted with Ted Williams and received a warm greeting from the crowd.
“Usually, a Chief Executive receives a mixed reception at the ball park,” The Post noted at the time.
Today in 1968, Iron Butterfly’s “In-a-Gadda-da-Vita” reached the charts. It is said to be the first heavy metal song to chart. It charted at number 117.
At the other end of the charts was South African trumpeter Hugh Masekela:
Quite a selection of birthdays today, starting with T.G. Sheppard:
A friend of mine pointed out that today is the 15th anniversary of John F. Kennedy Jr.’s fatal plane crash.
Actually, as I later found out, it’s not. The plane crashed July 16, 1999, though the news was reported the next day, a Saturday.
I remember that day well, not because I was a fan of JFK Jr. or any of the Kennedys, but because I’m a media geek (but you knew that), and the unrelated events of this day demonstrate that my life is indeed powered by irony.
July 17, 1999 started really early. Mrs. Presteblog had scheduled a trip to Guatemala to visit where she served in the Peace Corps in the late 1980s. So in those halcyon pre-child days, we (that is, she and I and our two dogs, who are key to this story) stayed the night before her flight at a hotel near Mitchell Field in Milwaukee. This morning, before 5 a.m., we got up and I took her to the airport, with the dogs staying in the car for the hour or so before her flight left.
(When she flew, I always stayed at the airport until her plane left, not for any morbid reasons, but because there was one flight to Detroit when her plane left the terminal, got to the taxiway, and then turned around and came back to the terminal. The stated reason for the plane delay was bad weather; the actual reason was a slowdown by workers at the Detroit airport.)
The plane left on time, and I went back to the car to head home. On my car was a note harshly criticizing me for leaving the dogs in the car, and how badly we were treating our “poor babbies.”
I am well aware of how hot car interiors can become in the sun. Those last three words are key, however, because the car was parked in the middle of an underground parking garage on a cloudy day at 6 a.m., when the air temperature was maybe 70. There was a phone number left on the note; I thought about calling the number, but that may not have been the phone number of the note-writer, and besides that anything I had to say for explanation probably would have flown right over the writer’s head.
So I drove back home, stopping around 6:45 a.m. at the Cracker Barrel in Menomonee Falls, a great place for old-fashioned breakfasts. On the way, I was listening to WTMJ radio, which then and now has news in the morning. I’m not even sure why I was listening because there is little of actual news taking place on weekend mornings. This particular morning, Gordon Hinkley, who had worked for WTMJ for approximately the entire existence of the radio station, if not of radio itself, was doing the weekend morning news. And as I pulled into the Cracker Barrel he mentioned that a small plane piloted by John F. Kennedy Jr. was overdue at the airport into which he was supposed to fly the previous night.
These were, remember, the pre-smartphone days. Had something like this occurred today, all of us smartphone owners who cared about the news would probably be intently surfing the Web looking for news. I had a cellphone. It placed and received phone calls, and that was it. (I don’t think I could even program cute ringtones with my first cellphone.) So I ate breakfast (probably country fried steak and eggs), read the newspaper, and drove back home.
The rest of the day was consumed on TV by, you guessed it, the breaking news of the plane crash.
John F. Kennedy Jr. was famous for exactly two things — being the son of John F. and Jacqueline Kennedy, and for what he did at his father’s funeral.
I had one, and exactly one, affinity with JFK Jr. (OK, two: We both married gorgeous blondes.) At the time, I was the editor of Marketplace Magazine, and JFK Jr. started a magazine, George, that tried to be for politics what Rolling Stone was for music or GQ was for pretentious men with too much disposable income.
Later, I became the publisher and editor of Marketplace. And the same thing happened to both George and Marketplace, though at least the founder and publisher/editor of Marketplace didn’t die in the process.
At one point, ABC-TV’s Peter Jennings announced that sports events supposed to be carried on ABC were moving to ESPN2 “while we are engaged in something in which the whole country is emotionally engaged in some way or other at some time or other.” OK, it was Major League Soccer, so that was no great loss, but the coverage was the very height (or depth, if you like) of Baby Boomer self-indulgence.
John F. Kennedy Jr.’s death was covered — more like smothered — because of his famous parents, who reminded such TV anchors as Jennings, CBS’ Dan Rather and NBC’s Tom Brokaw of their younger days, and the supposed Camelot of the Kennedy presidency. (That includes President Bill Clinton, who reminded those reporters of JFK, even though the “bimbo eruptions” were of a lower class than JFK’s extramarital dalliances.) Various JFK experts were brought on to pontificate on someone who was 3 years old when his father died, so they were really talking about JFK’s father, who had died 36 years earlier.
The media doesn’t usually cover crashes of small planes in which three people die to the extent of the JFK Jr. smotherage. The media should have been embarrassed to overcover the event, but I have yet to see anyone else in the 15 years since then ask what the media was thinking when it devoted an entire day of airtime and who knows how much money to the death of someone famous merely because he was famous.
The coverage, though, was not as stupid as the “documentary” on YouTube that suggests that JFK Jr. was murdered by George W. Bush. Really.
I have a lifelong habit of looking for something and finding something else. Here are today’s examples.
Readers know that my favorite sports announcer of all time is Dick Enberg, formerly of NBC. Enberg is known more for NFL football and college basketball (with Al McGuire and Billy Packer) than baseball. But before going to NBC, Enberg was the California Angels’ announcer.
And on July 16, 1972, Enberg announced the Angels’ game in Milwaukee County Stadium. (Actually both games, because they played a doubleheader.)
Enberg also was the Angels’ announcer in 1975, which means he was at County Stadium for my first baseball game, a 7–5 Brewers win over the Angels and their starting pitcher, Nolan Ryan, who gave up a home run to Hank Aaron. Ryan was making his second start since no-hitting Baltimore 1–0 two weeks earlier.
The Brewers’ lineup included shortstop Robin Yount and center fielder Gorman Thomas, who were still with the Brewers when they played in the 1982 World Series.
(Enberg’s on-air partner during his later Angels days was Don Drysdale, who had one of the nicest on-air personas for one of the nastiest pitchers in the history of baseball. Enberg’s excellent autobiography, Oh My!, includes details of Drysdale and Brewers announcer Bob Uecker trying to drink Enberg under the table when the Brewers met the Angels. Oh My! also includes details of how Uecker would drive Drysdale nuts by deliberately messing up Drysdale’s house on visits.)
Enberg was never a regular baseball announcer for NBC, but did several playoff series (including, bizarrely, one game from both League Championship Series in 1977) …
… and the 1982 World Series, though it seemed every time Enberg was doing play-by-play bad things were happening to the Brewers.
Enberg also announced for the Brewers — well, sort of, in the movie “Mister 3000,” which inexplicably cast Enberg instead of Uecker as the Brewers’ announcer. (Enberg’s son, actor Alexander, told his father he made a better generic baseball announcer than Uecker.)
Back to 1975, the first of Aaron’s two seasons playing for the Brewers.
The announcers on this clip are Jim Irwin, better known as the announcer of the Packers, Bucks, and Badger football and basketball teams, along with Merle Harmon, the last announcer of the Milwaukee Braves and the first announcer of the Brewers. (Uecker joined the Brewers in 1971 after one season announcing for the Atlanta Braves.)
Irwin called a later Aaron home run with Gary Bender. Irwin and Bender (or was it Bender and Irwin?) teamed up for Packer and Badger football (alternating quarters of play-by-play) in the early ’70s, and the Brewers in the 1975 season. Irwin worked for WTMJ TV and radio, and Bender worked for WTMJ radio while the sports director for WKOW-TV in Madison, until he left Wisconsin for CBS. WTMJ-TV was the Brewers’ TV outlet for their first 11 seasons, and WTMJ radio has carried the Brewers all but two years of their existence. (Those also were the Brewers’ first two playoff seasons, for what it’s worth.)
Bender was the number-two baseball announcer for ABC after he moved there from CBS. Irwin, who counted as his broadcasting influences Harry Caray (who did both college football and the NBA in addition to baseball), substituted for Uecker after Uecker missed part of a season for health reasons in the late 1980s.
WTMJ-TV was the first commercial TV station in Wisconsin, and for many years had the only mobile production truck in the southern half of the state. As a result WTMJ’s truck could be found at, among other places, the WIAA state basketball tournaments at the UW Fieldhouse, even though WTMJ didn’t carry the state tournament after 1969. A decade before that, WTMJ’s equipment and employees shot the 1957 and 1958 World Series games at Milwaukee County Stadium for NBC.
The same year as the two Aaron home runs, Hammerin’ Hank was chosen for the 1975 All-Star Game …
… played at County Stadium. Aaron’s teammate, first baseman George “Boomer” Scott, also played in the game.
It is difficult to remember a time when you could scroll through the social media outlet of your choice and not be bombarded with:
You’ll never believe what happened when…
This is the cutest thing ever…
This the biggest mistake you can make…
Take this quiz to see which character you are on…
They are all classic clickbait models. And they are irritating as hell. There’s no singular way to craft clickbait, but the essence is clear: Lure—no, trick—readers to your site.
“It’s social copy specifically intended to leave out information to create a curiosity gap. Some of it’s disingenuous. It’s not always, but the reader is always being manipulated,” says Jake Beckman, the man behind @SavedYouAClick, the Twitter feed devoted to “saving you from clickbait.”
In its few months of existence, @SavedYouAClick has amassed 125,000 followers, a sign of increasing frustration. And @SavedYouAClick is hardly the only fighter in the anti-clickbait crusade. It follows on the heels of other Twitter accounts, like @HuffPoSpoilers and @UpworthySpoiler, designed to call out and mock clickbait culture.
The clickbait backlash on various forms of social media is not only incredibly meta, but perhaps on first glance, overly dramatic. Yes, clickbait content is annoying, but is it harmful? “Clickbait is OK if you’re entertaining and have some personality with it,” says Alex Mizrahi, the founder of @HuffPoSpoilers.
Beckman also argues that Clickbait isn’t quite a recent, solely social media-driven phenomenon. “The concept of using ‘shouty journalism’ to move the needle isn’t new,” he says and cites the street corner newsies. “‘Extra, extra read all about it!’ That was trying to sensationalize a story. This [clickbait] is just the modern equivalent.”
But there is something more insidious to clickbait because it is based on the premise that “readers are being treated as stupid,” says Beckman. And this trend of duping and manipulating readers is becoming the unfortunate online news standard. Once the domain of Huffington Post, Upworthy, and BuzzFeed, old-school journalistic institutions, such as The New York Times, Washington Post, and the Associated Press are also relying on clickbait. And that’s what is so frustrating and, frankly, a little disturbing, to those seeking the news. …
“How can you be taken seriously when you leave out the ‘who, what, where, why, [and] how’ when it’s relevant to the news story,” says Mizrahi. “It’s obvious you can’t fit the whole story, [but] you have to give context. You can’t fall back on the same formulas.”
The incentives for even the most respected news agencies to rely on clickbait are obvious: traffic. “The bottom line for publishers is that digital media is still trying to find its footing in the revenue game, and revenue is largely dependent on how much traffic and how many uniques [number of distinct visitors going to a website during a certain time period] you get,” says Beckman.
While building an audience has always been the name of the game for a publication, in the current world of online news, the value of a regular, loyal readership has diminished financially. “Brand loyalty doesn’t matter. Advertisers care about bringing new readers into the fold,” says Beckman.
But as the increasing backlash against clickbait shows, the short-term gains in unique views may cost news sites in the long run. It’s not only Twitter accounts, but entire sites built around the making fun of the clickbait culture are becoming increasingly popular. The Onion’s ClickHole has been operating for less than a month and has already earned readers and praise for its skewering of BuzzFeed and Upworthy-esque listicles and quizzes. While ClickHole mocks the drive for viral content rather than merely tweets, it alludes to the same problem as @SavedYouAClick and @HuffPoSpoilers: the constant drive for clickability. …
This growing clickbait awareness may ultimately cost news agencies that are gunning for short-term gains. With “a whole generation of users [getting] their news online,” he warns there could be a critical mass of cynical readers may lose their trust in these sources. “In the news industry, you want repeat business with your reputation, and publishers are gambling with their reputation.”
Perhaps ironically, the next piece on The Daily Beast was “Hamas Has Already Won Its Rocket War with Israel,” which would seem to be obvious, though less blatant, clickbait.
Certainly readers are being treated as stupid, and perhaps because some readers are stupid. What other possible explanation exists for this?
That’s right. People who presumably reproduce, and may even vote, believe that Steven Spielberg killed a dinosaur that hasn’t walked the planet for 66 million years.
As far as clickbait goes, though, the Daily Beast (formerly known as Newsweek, by the way) correctly points out that predecessors of clickbait have existed for the entire history of mass media. The New York Post with the screaming front-page headline “HEADLESS BODY IN TOPLESS BAR” probably sold very, very well that day. The U.S. is too puritan to have Britain’s Page 3 Girls — women in various states of undress — but London’s tabloids are not. Magazines have tried to push single-copy sales through their cover designs — big type and fabulous babes or hunks — ever since they were able to print color covers. TV stations are as guilty when they try to amp up news ratings during the sweeps periods with lurid stories of dubious actual news value. Take a walk through the romance fiction section a bookstore for further evidence.
Clickbait, however, violates one basic rule of business: It is five times as costly to get a new customer as it is to keep a customer. Increasing readership through churn is hard work, and eventually reaches a point of negative returns.
Steve Prestegard.com: The Presteblog 