"The Sunday Rundown"

NBC "rebooted" its 66-year old flagship Sunday talk program with its 12th host last weekend

Although it took me about 36 hours to do (thanks to a very late-night airing on MSNBC and an aging DVR in our bedroom), I finally got to watch last Sunday's much-anticipated "reboot" of NBC's Meet the Press (MTP) early Monday afternoon. The longest running show on broadcast television history (it will be celebrating its 67th anniversary in early November) has recently been mired in a ratings slump in the years following long-time host Tim Russert's death in 2008. NBC announced last month that they would be replacing host David Gregory with MSNBC's Chuck Todd and that news put the media critics into overdrive in postulating how this change would affect this flagship Sunday talk program. While not a regular viewer of the show, I must admit that I thought that I was watching a weekend edition of Todd's former gig, The Daily Rundown (TDR), instead of the legacy of Martha Roundtree, Lawrence E. Spivak and Russert which, in the short term, might be a very bold move on the network's part.

Unspeakable Horror (and Sloppy News Mistakes)

[NOTE: although I began this posting in the week after the shooting, it has taken me a while to compose due to a variety of reasons, which include the year-end holiday season and finding out that I have a personal connection with this horrific tragedy.  You will see a 'break' below between my first attempt and the concluding information.]

The front page of the December 15th edition of the New York Daily News says it all (graphic courtesy of the Newseum)

This past weekend was supposed to be when I would "regroup" and start up my postings here but that all changed with the news last Friday of a school shooting in Connecticut.  Although Americans have grown used to hearing such information with growing frequency in recent years, this one was different due to the setting and the method in which the gunman committed his heinous deed.  When Adam Lanza put a semi-automatic pistol to his own head and pulled the trigger as first responders arrived on the scene, he had already taken the lives of 27 other people (his mother back at their shared residence and 26 at Newtown's Sandy Hook Elementary School).  Of the school fatalities, 20 were first grade students between the ages of 6 and 7 and all of them were shot multiple times with a semi-automatic assault rifle (one child, Noah Posner, was struck 11 times).  The other six were all women who worked at the school, to include the principal, the school psychiatrist, and four teachers and aides in the targeted classrooms.