Did CBS News create original reporting on TV?
That's what the No. 3 network news operation is saying, flat out, in a new promo with a narrator intoning, "It's not like we invented original reporting on television. Oh, wait: yes, we did."
That sarcastic crack comes over images of Edward R. Murrow, Walter Cronkite and the original "60 Minutes" crew.
That group is good ammunition in CBS' unnecessary argument. Murrow created a network of knowledgeable radio correspondents in Europe as that continent slid toward war in 1938 and '39, and his reporting from London during the Blitz is still considered among the best journalism of the 20th century.
And he brought that reputation to TV in the 1940s and '50s.
Cronkite pioneered the role of traditional anchor in the 1960s, but so did NBC's Chet Huntley and David Brinkley.
And "60 Minutes" remains the gold standard of news magazines, a genre it helped create when it launched in 1968.
But CBS' attempts to link its new Scott Pelley-anchored nightly newscast to its legendary past seems, as I said, unnecessary.
What CBS did in the 1940s, '50s and '60s has little to do with the modern state of TV news.
Speaking of promos: As long as we're talking about TV commercials from news operations, here's Fox Business Network's commercial ripping rival CNBC for its lack of weekend coverage of the most recent economic crisis:
Steve Cochran goes to WIND-AM: Former WGN-AM (720) afternoon guy Steve Cochran will pick up the 5 to 7 p.m. on another Chicago station available to Milwaukee listeners, conservative talk outlet WIND-AM (560).
There's no word on when he'll start.
On TV: "Reality" TV star Kate Gosselin tweeted her reaction to word that her "Kate Plus 8" had been canceled by TLC: "We've had a great run! Six years of whirlwind fun-filled adventures thanks to TLC and our many many supportive and die-hard fans!"
- MTV has ordered a second season of "Awkward."
- The trades are abuzz over the apparent departure of Leah Remini and Holly Robinson Peete from the second season of CBS' "The Talk," the female-targeting talker that had way too many people crowded around the table.
- An Australian study published in the British Journal of Sports Medicine claims every hour of TV you watch after the age of 25 could shorten your life by 22 minutes, thanks to all that sitting and laying around.
Kids teams up with the adults: The second year of the Take One: Milwaukee Childrens Film Festival is teaming up with this year's Milwaukee Film Festival, offering screenings the Oriental, the Marcus North Shore in Mequon, and New Berlin's Marcus Ridge on weekends during the run of the film festival between Sept. 24 and Oct. 2.
Among the feature films on the schedule is "Mia and the Migoo," which picked up the European Film Award for best animated film. It tells the story of young Mia and her battle against profit-hungry developers.
Here's the trailer:
Tim Cuprisin is the media columnist for OnMilwaukee.com. He's been a journalist for 30 years, starting in 1979 as a police reporter at the old City News Bureau of Chicago, a legendary wire service that's the reputed source of the journalistic maxim "if your mother says she loves you, check it out." He spent a couple years in the mean streets of his native Chicago, and then moved on to the Green Bay Press-Gazette and USA Today, before coming to the Milwaukee Journal in 1986.
A general assignment reporter, Cuprisin traveled Eastern Europe on several projects, starting with a look at Poland after five years of martial law, and a tour of six countries in the region after the Berlin Wall opened and Communism fell. He spent six weeks traversing the lands of the former Yugoslavia in 1994, linking Milwaukee Serbs, Croats and Bosnians with their war-torn homeland.
In the fall of 1994, a lifetime of serious television viewing earned him a daily column in the Milwaukee Journal (and, later the Journal Sentinel) focusing on TV and radio. For 15 years, he has chronicled the changes rocking broadcasting, both nationally and in Milwaukee, an effort he continues at OnMilwaukee.com.
When he's not watching TV, Cuprisin enjoys tending to his vegetable garden in the backyard of his home in Whitefish Bay, cooking and traveling.
