"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.

My Media Vacation (Part 1 of 3): New York City

[NOTE: Due to the amount of research I've been doing for my current journalism class and work-related activities, my brain is a little too "fried" for a deep-thought posting.  A while back, I shared parts of a vacation trip that I made with my son over to the East Coast in late July/early August 2012.  These are some of the photos that I took along the way--I hope you enjoy them!] 

"30 Rock" serves as the anchor of New York City's Rockefeller Plaza (and the headquarters of NBC News)

After the reunion/family-related activities of our visit back in Pennsylvania was completed, our first stop for this father/son "road trip" was Secaucus, New Jersey--just across the river from Manhattan and the recognized media capital of the world, New York City.  I chose the cross-river location due to expenses (a two-night stay at a quality hotel in "the Garden State" was roughly equivalent to a single night just five miles to the east) and easy access to the city itself (we were just one exit away from the entrance to the Lincoln Tunnel and mid-town locations).  Fortunately, a day-long tour bus stopped right outside our lobby and we made sure we were up bright and early for day one of our two-day visit to "the Big Apple".

"Talking Heads" are Not News Anchors

As much as I might like them in their regular roles, Ed, Al and Chris are not at their best when anchoring live news events.

This past Monday, our nation experienced its most recent mass shooting tragedy when 12 workers at a US military installation in the District of Columbia were killed and 14 were wounded when a lone gunman opened fire on a crowded atrium within the Naval Sea Systems Command headquarters building at the beginning of the work day.  At around 8:20AM, Aaron Alexis, a 34-year old defense subcontractor and former Navy reservist, drove his rental car inside that defense-related installation with a recently purchased shotgun and 24 rounds of ammunition (he would also acquire a 9mm semi-automatic pistol from a security officer he shot on his way to that electronically protected main building and possibly one more from an internal official) and made his way to a strategic position on a 4th floor walkway overlooking that congested food service area during their breakfast service.  Facility and district law enforcement officials responded within 2-3 minutes of the 911 call and eventually encountered Alexis along the walkway.  After wounding an officer and at the end of an approximately 30 minute standoff, he was fatally shot and killed at around 9AM.  These are facts that, in the span of 24 to 48 hours after-the-fact can be succinctly conveyed in a 12-line area of a blog; however, in the immediate aftermath of such a rapidly evolving event, brevity and clarity is nearly non-existent and these scenarios pose significant impediments to those who have been trained to tell us the news.  A much more dire situation occurs when we must endure this process with people who have no formal journalism backgrounds and must ramble on because they must fill their outlet's unlimited air time and I personally witnessed that embarrassment on Monday afternoon on MSNBC.