The Site
((10-11 p.m., Mon.-Fri.))
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Hosts: Tom Brokaw, Katie Couric, Bryant Gumbel, Bob Costas. Bill Moyers, Ed Gordon, Jane Pauley, Brian Williams, Soledad O'Brien. Criticized by affiliates for NBC News' coverage of the student uprising in Tiananmen Square in 1989, NBC president Bob Wright remarked, "We're not CNN." On the eve of NBC's saturation coverage of the Summer Olympics in Atlanta and the presidential election campaign following, Wright just may be eating his words -- and liking the taste. For with the unveiling Monday of MSNBC, the network's 24-hour cable news/Internet co-venture with Microsoft, NBC has, indeed, become CNN -- or so Wright dearly hopes.
The heart of MSNBC is its four-hour, post-broadcast network news lineup featuring equal doses of nostalgia ("Time and Again," hosted by Jane Pauley), longform interviews by a rotating cast of NBC News' top-priced talent ("Internight"), a news program anchored by Brian Williams for folks too busy to make the regular evening news broadcasts and unfussily dubbed "The News," and, finally, "The Site," for computer users. "Internight" debuted at the White House with Tom Brokaw going mano a mano with President Clinton in the Roosevelt Room. An hour is forever on TV, and Brokaw was prepared with questions ranging from Whitewater to tobacco interests' campaign contributions.
It was several cuts above "Larry King Live," but not altogether different: This is a setting over which Clinton has total mastery, and despite bad lighting and makeup, the president came across as utterly composed, in control of his responses, empathic and unflustered when telling Brokaw he had his facts wrong. Call it "Larry King Live" with a chip on its shoulder.
Speaking of chips on shoulders, there's Williams, the current golden boy and heir apparent at NBC News. "The News" features Williams in exaggerated Peter Jennings mode: body slightly atilt, a back-slash before the camera, head cocked just so, his delivery aloof and disengaged enough to be, over the long haul, quite annoying.
A longform daily news broadcast is a rare thing, and one available at 9 p.m. even rarer, so give "The News" the benefit of the doubt. It's a show that can really benefit from the resources available in this shotgun nexus of news and the Net, and it deserves time to grow.
The Pauley show, on the other hand, looks like a loser. Drawing on the NBC News archives (read: "free stuff"), opening night for "Time and Again" recapped the Apollo 11 moon landing in 1969, beginning with JFK's 1961 TV speech declaring that America would put a man on the moon by the end of the decade.
The anchors' prose tended toward the purple, the background music toward the inspirational. It was all very quaint and deserved about 10 minutes instead of an hour.
"The Site," hosted by Soledad O'Brien, belies its laid-backness with a forced and unfocused attempt to stress the high-tech resources of MSNBC and news about the digital revolution. Opening-night visitor Tori Amos admitted, "I don't know how to turn a computer on." Wrong guest, perhaps.
MSNBC's daytime programming is quite fresh, and it chalked up successive scoops over CNN, including those Monday and Tuesday with Dallas Cowboy Michael Irvin's plea bargain and remarkable mea culpa regarding his drug trial.
Anchoring much of the afternoon session was John Gibson with contributors Jonathan Alter of Newsweek, political insider Lawrence O'Donnell and Brian Jones of the Center for Black Leadership. They're a cranky trio capable of some lively repartee. Gibson displayed a nice balance between easygoing affability and seat-of-the-pants resilience crucial to making this kind of programming work, and he seems indefatigable.
What remains to be seen is whether MSNBC will become an excuse for de-emphasizing NBC News' coverage of the kinds of events that brought Wright criticism seven years ago. On first viewing, MSNBC looks like a good entry in the cable news wars. MSNBC may indeed be another CNN. But it's not NBC.
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