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TYNDALL HEADLINE: HIGHLIGHTS FROM APRIL 22, 2011
The inevitable is happening already. A week before the event, the royal wedding in London has already qualified as the Story of the Day. Thus a very slow week of news culminated with trivia dominating a very slow day of hard news. At least NBC led with a real story: the brutal crackdown by the ruling Baath regime, using live gunfire, against opposition protestors in Syria. CBS chose a Nancy Cordes recess feature about popular dissatisfaction with Congress for the second straight day, following Jan Crawford with an opinion poll on the same theme; ABC opted for the Nissan Leaf, a hi-tech angle on that old chestnut of rising gasoline prices.
TYNDALL PICKS FOR APRIL 22, 2011: CLICK ON GRID ELEMENTS TO SEARCH FOR MATCHING ITEMS
THE BRITISH INVASION BEGINS The inevitable is happening already. A week before the event, the royal wedding in London has already qualified as the Story of the Day. Thus a very slow week of news culminated with trivia dominating a very slow day of hard news. At least NBC led with a real story: the brutal crackdown by the ruling Baath regime, using live gunfire, against opposition protestors in Syria. CBS chose a Nancy Cordes recess feature about popular dissatisfaction with Congress for the second straight day, following Jan Crawford with an opinion poll on the same theme; ABC opted for the Nissan Leaf, a hi-tech angle on that old chestnut of rising gasoline prices.
There was no breaking royal news, just a trio of weekending features. NBC survived with dignity intact, avoiding next week's wedding altogether--a short-lived badge of honor, one suspects. CBS called its build-up series The Royal Wedding, unimaginative yet informative, surely better than ABC's A Modern Fairytale, whose entry by Sharyn Alfonsi on Wednesday was insufferable.
In case you happen to be interested, you can see David Muir designating Prince William as ABC's Person of the Week. You can see CBS' Early Show anchor Erica Hill go on a guided tour of Westminster Abbey. And you can hear Mark Phillips' wry calculation on CBS about the harm that Britain's Gross Domestic Product will suffer as a result of the public holiday for all those royalist parties. At least the British can look forward to an eleven-day spring holiday; here, we have the prospect of incessant television coverage without compensatory vacation time.
FRIDAY’S FINDINGS &fSyria closes its doors to most foreign correspondents so all three newscasts had to rely on handheld eyewitness video of the protests after Friday prayers…
…NBC's Andrea Mitchell and ABC's Martha Raddatz narrated from DC; CBS' Barry Petersen from London. Mitchell did manage to contact al-Jazeera in Damascus
Libya was also covered on all three newscasts, thanks to the visit of Sen John McCain to Benghazi in endorsement of the opposition: CBS' Allen Pizzey, ABC's Miguel Marquez, NBC's Richard Engel
NBC's Jim Maceda continued his Far From Home series of profiles from the battlefield in Afghanistan: bomb disposer Adam Wontrop, helicopter pilot Jessica Cioci, now 101st Airborne Col Johnny Davis. Maceda has not yet introduced us to a single Afghan
Earth Day! ABC's Made in America has Sharyn Alfonsi see incandescent light bulbs turned into halogens at a Sylvania plant in Pennsylvania (no price comparison, no energy comparison)…
…NBC anchor Brian Williams relied on a onetime NBC celebrity for its eco-minded Making a Difference. Actor Ted Danson was invited to plug his book Oceana
NBC's Pete Williams & CBS' John Blackstone covered the iPhone database that stores users' locations Thursday. Williams & ABC's John Berman follow up with Goggle's Android tracking GPS too
How to find a new way to make rising gasoline prices interesting? NBC's Kristen Welker looked at Easter driving…CBS' Ben Tracy offered high-mileage tips…ABC's Jim Avila publicized the electric Leaf
More rising commodity prices: five of the last nine stories on the inflating price of gold have seen consumers cashing in jewelry for meltdown. CBS' Dean Reynolds is no exception
There was no breaking royal news, just a trio of weekending features. NBC survived with dignity intact, avoiding next week's wedding altogether--a short-lived badge of honor, one suspects. CBS called its build-up series The Royal Wedding, unimaginative yet informative, surely better than ABC's A Modern Fairytale, whose entry by Sharyn Alfonsi on Wednesday was insufferable.
In case you happen to be interested, you can see David Muir designating Prince William as ABC's Person of the Week. You can see CBS' Early Show anchor Erica Hill go on a guided tour of Westminster Abbey. And you can hear Mark Phillips' wry calculation on CBS about the harm that Britain's Gross Domestic Product will suffer as a result of the public holiday for all those royalist parties. At least the British can look forward to an eleven-day spring holiday; here, we have the prospect of incessant television coverage without compensatory vacation time.
FRIDAY’S FINDINGS &fSyria closes its doors to most foreign correspondents so all three newscasts had to rely on handheld eyewitness video of the protests after Friday prayers…
…NBC's Andrea Mitchell and ABC's Martha Raddatz narrated from DC; CBS' Barry Petersen from London. Mitchell did manage to contact al-Jazeera in Damascus
Libya was also covered on all three newscasts, thanks to the visit of Sen John McCain to Benghazi in endorsement of the opposition: CBS' Allen Pizzey, ABC's Miguel Marquez, NBC's Richard Engel
NBC's Jim Maceda continued his Far From Home series of profiles from the battlefield in Afghanistan: bomb disposer Adam Wontrop, helicopter pilot Jessica Cioci, now 101st Airborne Col Johnny Davis. Maceda has not yet introduced us to a single Afghan
Earth Day! ABC's Made in America has Sharyn Alfonsi see incandescent light bulbs turned into halogens at a Sylvania plant in Pennsylvania (no price comparison, no energy comparison)…
…NBC anchor Brian Williams relied on a onetime NBC celebrity for its eco-minded Making a Difference. Actor Ted Danson was invited to plug his book Oceana
NBC's Pete Williams & CBS' John Blackstone covered the iPhone database that stores users' locations Thursday. Williams & ABC's John Berman follow up with Goggle's Android tracking GPS too
How to find a new way to make rising gasoline prices interesting? NBC's Kristen Welker looked at Easter driving…CBS' Ben Tracy offered high-mileage tips…ABC's Jim Avila publicized the electric Leaf
More rising commodity prices: five of the last nine stories on the inflating price of gold have seen consumers cashing in jewelry for meltdown. CBS' Dean Reynolds is no exception
