First, let me report that my therapy is going well. An entire week so far without Chris Matthews! I feel cleaner; much less anxious about missing out on "critical," "breaking news" blow back from Clinton campaign guru Howard Wolfson's latest conference call; and have fewer spittle stains on my shirts as a result. It's morning again in Lambert land. The down side—besides a month without Lost—is that I've become a prisoner of the DVR. Too many movies. Too little time. Broadway Danny Rose awhile ago, The Purple Rose of Cairo the other night, and now Antonioni's L'Avventura. Great flick. (We are all windswept islands, you see.) So I'm still losing as many hours to the damn tube as before except I guess it isn't a tube anymore, is it?

Anyway, early this week, I let fly some statistics on the rather dramatic die-off of viewers for the local late news. A few sharp-eyed (and annoying) commenters pointed out that these were "share" numbers, percentages of people actually watching television, and that, theoretically, it was possible to have more actual viewers and still have a declining share/percentage of everyone watching. As I say . . . annoying. Priggish, even.

So, OK. If there was some tremendous, almost exponential increase in viewers in the Twin Cities market—as if we annexed Wisconsin (toss back all the 3.2 dribblers)—maybe you could make that case.

But it ain't workin' that way.

A valuable source for historical ratings info kicked over this breakout of ratings—thank you Ms. S—for Twin Cities late news from February 1999 compared to February 2008.

The first number (rating) represents the percentage Minneapolis-St.Paul area households with televisions (almost all of them) watching that channel at 10 p.m. The second (share) is the percentage of households with their TVs on watching that channel.

STATION       Feb. 1999         Feb. 2008    Percentage change of rating

KARE             16.3/28            9.1/17          -44 percent
WCCO            13.6/24            11.8/22       -13 percent
KSTP               10.5/18           6.3/12         -40 percent
KMSP  (10 p.m.)    2.6/5         4.5/8           +73 percent

Nice going FOX9. But the rest of you guys, "Ha-chi-mama."

Population increases in the past nine years mean that the Twin Cities area has grown from 1,457,130 households in 1999 to 1,706,740 today. What that tells me is that you have to do a little sleight of hand to convince anyone that a 40 percent decline in tuned-in households really means a lot more viewers.

(Factoid I came across en route to digging out that last business: LA has more Hispanic households than we have altogether.)

Tonight: Altman's The Player.

Let's see. Newspapers? Check. Local TV news? Check. Gargantuan radio conglomerates? Ditto, check.

Even civilians have caught wind of the looming collapse of the $19 billion deal that would have placed Clear Channel Communications, the Jabba the Hut (or Darth Vader, take your pick) of twenty-first century electronic media in the hands of a couple private equity firms (one of them being Bain Capital, ex-candidate Mitt Romney's personal profit engine). The basics of the sale were worked out in 2006, back when the smartest kids on Wall St. were making fresh fortunes every other day by swapping low-collateral debt with each other. With taxpayers now picking up the tab for this latest exercise in "free market" dynamics, the giant banks that once agreed to finance the deal now have feet so cold they could re-freeze the ice caps.

Threats of lawsuits are flying as banks are trying to back out without looking like they're backing out, and Clear Channel's royal family, the Mayses (chairman, CEO, and CFO), who has watched its stock drop from $90 a share in 2000 to something like $25 as you read this, is talking about wreaking "immeasurable harm"—via a blizzard of lawsuits—on the bankers who were its closest, coziest bosom buddies up until a couple months ago. (The current deal called for a price of $39.20 a share, which some other very smart dudes on Wall St. thought much too low.)

Having followed (and worked for) Clear Channel for a long (very short) time, I'm tempted to say it couldn't be happening to a nicer bunch of guys. If ever a group of sharks deserved to have their dorsals ripped off, it's this crowd. The Clear Channel ethos, which requires bland-to-monotonous content and constant cutting to profit to deliver the kind of baronial ching the Mayses and other investors feel is their genetic due, is very much a model for other competitors in the big media game. (Can you say, Avista Capital Partners?) Although small investors have taken a bath in Clear Channel's dreary performance, this public-to-private deal would mean yet another monster payday for the Mayses, who took it public only a few years ago.

Here's a good backgrounder.

Any who, looking for some deep insider insight of how this clash of the titans (Clear Channel v. Citigroup, Credit Suisse, etc.) might effect us here in the Twin Cities, I dialed up someone with, um, "familiarity" with the characters and strategies in play. Someone with vast experience in the Twin Cities media game. For perfectly understandable reasons, this gentleman, whom I'll call "Bentley," asked that his identity not be revealed.

"This is just like every other industry out there," Bentley says. "It's just like newspapers. The time has come to take a major haircut, and the people with money in the game are getting a pretty serious cut."

"Personally, I don't see how Bain recoups their money on this thing. I mean, what do they do? Do you force the banks to lose money? Radio is not strong right now. It may come back. But I think Clear Channel's outdoor group is the part of the company with a future."

Bentley likes the cash potential in those crisp and eye-catching electronic billboards. "Seven times the revenue off a single board!" he practically shouted, terrifically excited by that kind of resource exploitation. (Clear Channel has nearly 1 million outdoor signs worldwide.)

"Outdoor is appreciating. Radio is depreciating."

But what about Clear Channel's Twin Cities properties? KFAN, Cities 97, K102, KTLK, KOOL108, The Score 690 and KDWB? Does Jabba sell off any of those?

Prior to the banks turning tail and running, Clear Channel had begun selling off stations in smaller markets with the idea of concentrating all their, uh, "resources" (i.e. profit squeezing) on major markets, such as Minneapolis-St.Paul. Will a desperate Clear Channel sell off any of the "Twin Cities 7"?

"Don't know. Can't say," Bentley says. "What I think is that radio is a local business" as opposed to a local business run by computers and consultants in Texas. "I don't think they'll sell large market stations anytime soon. I'd think they'd try to ride this out in the courts as long as they can, another year maybe."

There are rumors around town that he, Bentley, might be positioning himself to bottom feed at a Clear Channel fire sale. Maybe Jabba doesn't sell K102 or Cities 97. But weak sisters KOOL108? KTLK?

"Well, there's no way they're going to sell 'em alone. There won't be any cherry picking. If they get to the point they think they have to sell, they'll get more by selling the whole group or in a package."

So horse[bleep] as revenues are now and with no simple answer to Internet and iPods, Bentley would get back in the game? (He loves the sound of this. It's like asking a politician if he's considering running for president. The mere question is an act of supreme flattery.)

"It's what I know."

One last thought, though, on a sale of local radio signals. Assume the Pohlads are ready to shop for a permanent home for the Twins.

I swear to God I promised myself I'd be upbeat today. No more ranting about the "knuckleheads," nothing about Dick Cheney in a top-secret bat cave torturing Islamo-Facist gerbils. "Loosen up, dude," I said to the sullen face in the mirror. "Go see what's on TV."

So what happens? On the way to the tube, intent on nothing more than letting the alleged brain atrophy through a mini-marathon of Dancing with The [British] Bachelor's Rock of Love III, I get an e-mail hyping the release of the demographics (i.e. the "money") ratings for local TV news. Damn. I have a sick fascination with this stuff, if only because so many people rely on the the late local news for everything they know about the world. And yes, I can already hear the usual suspects bored out of their brains, howling about the irrelevancy of it all. Local TV news. "Who cares?" "A time-warp aesthetic straight out of June and Ward Cleaver." Maybe, but as long as they've got numbers well in excess of total newspaper readership, it's tough to make that "irrelevant" tag stick.

But do they? Bear with me.

When I last mentioned this, the story was that KMSP FOX 9 was the only local news show (its hour-long 9 o'clock) showing any serious audience growth among total viewers (i.e. "households"), comparing February 2007 to February 2008. FOX 9's rivals grumped that this was primarily due to the TV writers' strike, which left very little prime time TV worth watching and consequently drove more viewers into 9's arms at nine.

The "demos," the breakdown of which age and gender is watching what station, take a bit of the luster off FOX 9's "victory," but compared to long-time market leader KARE, FOX 9 might as well take a victory lap.

(These charts represent audience "share." That is to say the percentage of Twin Cities metro area viewers of that particular group actually watching television at 10 p.m.)

Look at this:

10 p.m. News Adults 25–54.

Station     Feb. '08        Feb. '07

KARE        19.3             27.2
WCCO      16.9             17.3
KMSP*       15.4             15.8
KSTP        10.2              11.5      
KMSP         7.5               6.6

Now, my Montevideo math isn't all that good, but we're looking at something close to a 30 percent slide for KARE and only FOX 9's 10 p.m. growing at all.

Just for gender kicks. Let's look at women age 18-49, always a very sought-after crowd. (Among advertisers.)

10 p.m. News Women 18–49

Station   Feb. '08      Feb. '07
KARE        18.8           23.9
KMSP*       14.1          15.0
WCCO      13.3          16.3
KSTP          8.3          11.2
KMSP         8.4             6.6

Again, those would be audience losses in the 20 to 25 percent range for KARE, WCCO and KSTP among a very important group of viewers. A more cynical character than me might go so far as to say, "a group to whom TV news panders relentlessly and without shame."

Or, do you want to see the real face of TV news of the future? It isn't pretty. Or maybe it will be since it looks as though women will be their only viewers. Check out the audience of young men—that rapidly expanding, to-hell-with-TV, all on-line-all-the-time crowd. Granted, most of what they're staring at is porn, sports, and offshore gambling, not exactly serious news consumption. But gone is gone. It's lost eyeballs, whatever they're doing.

10 p.m. News Men 18-34

Station   Feb. '08       Feb. '07

KARE       14.6            23.2
WCCO      14.2           10.5
KMSP*      11.7            13.0
KMSP        3.9               6.9
KSTP        1.4               4.3

That last set of numbers, for KSTP, is not a misprint. Only 1.4 percent of Twin Cities men age 18-34 watching TV at 10 p.m. were tuned to KSTP—1.4 percent! I think Oprah does better with guys than that. But again, KARE lost approximately 40 percent of those young male viewers in one year. So what's up with 'CCO? I can't say. It may be that Amelia is looking that good. Or maybe it's the laddy-mag  'tude of Shelby, Rosie, and Douglas.

For all that has been said about the miserable state of newspapers—and it really is as miserable as it sounds—the picture for local TV news is no brighter. Obviously, skillful salespeople will convince a high percentage of customers that although these numbers are down, they still represent a far larger share of  women, young men, whatever, than they'll get in any other single place. But they've been selling that argument for a very long time now. Eventually, even Denny Hecker is going to ask if he's getting his money out of the deal.

I have another angle to pursue. But this is enough happy talk for one day.

[UPDATED, RE-GROOMED]

By its count, Frontline has produced more than forty documentaries on or around the subject of the War in Iraq. (Yes, it has been going on that long.) With Bush's War, a four-hour, two-part opus premiering Monday and Tuesday on PBS (TPT, channel 2 locally), it collects essentially everything knowable about the chain of events leading up to the war and lays it out for all to be reminded, refreshed, informed, . . . or ignore. It's terrific.

Here's PBS's list of the forty-plus.

Producer Michael Kirk (The Lost Year in Iraq, The Dark Side) gives us interviews with the by-now familiar cast of characters, from Colin Powell's right-hand man, Richard Armitage (the self-confessed original leaker in the Valerie Plame story); first-pass, short-lived occupation leader retired Gen. Jay Garner; multi-administration intelligence adviser Richard Clarke;  CIA veterans Tyler Drumheller, Michael Scheuer, and Paul Pillar; and journalists, such as Bob Woodward, former Wall Street Journal senior national affairs editor Ron Suskind (his book The One Percent Solution remains a personal favorite), and on and on.

Among the missing, besides, of course, President Bush and the war's true architects—Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, and Paul Wolfowitz—is The New Yorker's Seymour Hersh, whose reporting from the get-go has proved remarkably accurate in every regard, beginning with Cheney's manipulation of "intelligence" in order to "fix it around the policy" as the infamous Downing Street Memo said. Hersh will deserve a prominent place in the tale of the Iraq catastrophe. But not here.

Here is a link to Hersh's classic on intentionally-mangled intelligence, "The Stovepipe", from October 2003.

As I watched this film, in raw-cut form, pretty well draining a bottle of scotch to restrain my nerves (I mean, why throw crap at your own TV?), I found myself rehashing the handful of professional, Shakespearean-worthy tragedies. The destroyed reputations of Colin Powell, George Tenet, and Tony Blair, for example. Each of them were played for chumps, most likely by failing, as most of Congress did, to appreciate that although Bush might be telling them one thing and offering reassurances, at the end of the day, it was Cheney who had Bush's ear, it was Cheney who knew what Bush didn't (and didn't care if he didn't), and that it was Cheney's policy and strategic preferences that would carry the day each and every time.

(It is also painful, although much less surprising, to see, repeatedly, how far over her head Condoleezza Rice was/is in playing insider hardball with the likes of Cheney and Rumsfeld.)

As I was watching it (in parcels over a few days so as not to risk cirrhosis), Barack Obama gave his "More Perfect Union" speech in Philadelphia, and Howard Fineman of Newsweek popped up on Countdown to offer a view. As tireless a "horserace" reporter as there is, Fineman, who was in the room in Philly, was clearly sobered by what he had heard. He told of leaving the auditorium and asking a local Philadelphia politician what he thought. Whomever it was (Fineman didn't say), agreed it was something special and valuable. But when Fineman asked how he thought it'd go down among the public at large, the politician replied that he couldn't say for sure because "there are a lot of knuckleheads in this town."

The "knuckleheads"—such as the unemployed guy on 60 Minutes a couple weeks back who told Steve Kroft he "heard" that Obama is a Muslim, but somehow never quite gets around to finding out for himself if its true or not —will, of course, never watch Bush's War. Nor will the less pitiable "knuckleheads" who choose not to understand for purely partisan reasons. as a result, both will remain highly suggestible and impressionable when the inevitable campaign scare tactics resume to selling them -- again -- on the idea we went to Iraq to fight Al Qaeda and must stay there to finish the job . . . and that Iran is in cahoots with Al Qaeda as we speak. Moreover, each will very likely respond favorably, again, to the pitch that it is "elitists" who don't see things as they do, are manipulating "facts" and mocking them, and that they, the "knuckleheads," are the true salt of the American earth, apparently because they don't really know as much as they should.

Point being that I couldn't help jumping from the remarkably well-documented "case" presented in "Bush's War" with it's coalescing of the forty previous Frontline docs, along with obvious bows to Charles Ferguson's excellent theatrical release, No End in Sight; Rajiv Chandrasekaran's Imperial Life in the Emerald City; and Thomas Ricks's Fiasco (the last two are among those interviewed in Bush's War) to "knucklehead" reality. I couldn't help but jump from all that has been documented by first-hand participants and observers and be astonished at how many Americans still believe Saddam had something to do with 9/11. How many are still "uncertain" about the now demonstrable lie that Saddam and Osama bin Laden were working together. Likewise, it is flabbergasting how many "knuckleheads" are still unaware that the Niger yellow cake story (if they've heard of it at all) was a fraud, and that Cheney and Rumsfeld had set up their own intelligence system and invented their own "facts" at the Pentagon to blunt, divert, and override anything the CIA might come up with that might challenge their plan for attack.

This "knucklehead" factor was on a lot of people's minds after Obama's speech. (As in: "Well you and I get it, but what about, you know, them.")  My point here is that the "Knucklehead Factor" is an issue both for everyone hopeful of reversing course of the last seven years and American media, much of which is in the business of pandering to "knuckleheads" in order to make a buck.

Where would we be, I wonder, if the majority of the American media (daily newspapers and major television news) had been more aggressively skeptical in the run-up to the Iraq War rather than wringing hands and fretting over blowback from a public freaked into Chicken Little "patriotism"? Most editors and news directors knew better I believe, but, fearing the wrath of the knuckleheads, pulled their punches. Or even today, what if local newspapers squeezed back coverage of the latest teen fashion craze, advice columns and how to bait your hook featurettes for wider, persistent coverage of . . . take your pick of any of two dozen relevant national scandals?

Similarly, how much better off would we be now if the major commercial networks produced even two or three prime time, hour-long documentaries such as Frontline has, instead of wallowing around in the latest reality dating craze? (Sorry to be such a downer, but really, what do we need more? Clarity on where billions of dollars have gone in Iraq, the lunacy of Shia Iran "training'" Sunni Al Qaeda and why bin Laden is still spitting out propaganda tapes? Or two hours of Diane Sawyer at the Bunny Ranch whorehouse?)

And even now, in the midst of an election cycle, what if the cable news outlets devoted an hour here and there to reminding their viewers how all this happened? How the trillion or so bucks sucked out of the credit markets to pay for Iraq impacts the economy? Instead of, you know, the millionth variation on "horse-race" analysis? "Ooooh, did you hear? Hillary gave Obama the stink eye!" ... followed by three hours of specious punditry.

You don't have to listen to FoxNews flog and re-flog Obama's line about his grandmother being a "typical white person" to remind yourself how one variety of knuckleheads are fed and maintained in their ignorance. (Check out Chris Wallace of FoxNews trying to talk a flicker of sense with his colleagues on that one.) That crowd is practically hopeless. They have chosen ignorance. It's the "salt of the earth" crowd -- the folks who don't know who to believe but may be nearing the point where they realize they've been played for chumps by the "tax cuts for working America" and "terrorist fighting" conservative elite -- for whom there is some glimmer of hope.

The same dilemma Thomas Frank described for liberals in his book, "What's the Matter with Kansas?" could apply to mainstream American media. Namely, you may think you have to pander and play the "something for everyone" game, but it is  just as likely all you'll do is dilute your credibility, which is the bedrock of your business.

Meanwhile ... being an old Catholic, I take the attitude we get the government and culture we deserve. But another part of my Catholic DNA—the part that thought The Inquisition was a great idea—says its time to apply "Knucklehead Testing" at polling places.

If you can't answer correctly the question, "True or false: Did representatives of Saddam Hussein's government meet with Mohamed Atta in Prague?" you don't get to vote. Instead you're turned away with your six-pack of Keystone Light and DVD set of American Gladiator.

In its latest assault on real American values, the "Red Star" Tribune has dumped  Mallard Fillmore, the Hillary-hating, right-of-center duck, from its comic pages. I suspected as much when it occurred to me that I hadn't seen it for about a week. ("Maybe," I thought, "the artist had a breakdown? Probably a nasty meth habit that finally got the worst of him.")

The trigger-puller on this decision was apparently Christine Ledbetter, the Strib's new features editor. (She came up from the Chicago Sun-Times last summer.) When I first called, Ledbetter was in one of those almost all-day, fuzzy-slippers-and-catered-lunch retreats newspaper "top editors" love to slink off to a couple times a year. (It is there where they paint their faces, mix blood, and drink the ceremonial Kool-Aid that reassures them "local, local" is the only way to go because we readers are all dying to know more about the new CVS drugstore in Eagan.)

It turns out that Kristin Tillotson, one of Ledbetter's capos, was well aware  of Mallard's departure, "a couple weeks ago."

Tillotson (yet another Strib-er with whom I have multiple interlocking conflicts), says she took "less than twenty calls" complaining about Mallard's deletion, "all of whom I think used the phrase 'Red Star,'" referring of course to the paper's much over-hyped reputation for, let me see, embracing socialism, hating freedom, not supporting the troops, coddling Clinton, being nothing but a mouthpiece for Michael Moore, yadda, yadda. Ledbetter would have taken more calls.

The problem, says Tillotson, was that Mallard, which I found irresistible probably for all the wrong reasons, was not popular with what she presumes was the other end of the spectrum. "We got a lot of complaints about it," she says. "And, just my opinion, but I thought the artist [Bruce Tinsley] was getting meaner and less funny." Not that her opinion mattered as much as the reader complaints, probably from—she doesn't know and either do I, but I'm guessing here—lefties annoyed by Mallard's "ripped from Laura Ingraham" comic riffs.

Ledbetter, back from her retreat ("and I'm not saying anything about that", she said), explained that she and other Strib-ers, who ran a basic poll asking readers to vote on four possible new comics, were stunned by the "unsolicited" vituperation aimed at Mallard.

"We didn't ask anything about Mallard, but, as I say, completely unsolicited we got this reaction from  readers, and it was huge for something like this."

My view is not that I thought Mallard was particularly funny, at least no more than the drunk ranting on the street corner, but I just liked the idea of it being there every day.

So, too, does Ledbetter, who says the current plan has the Strib replacing Doonesbury while Garry Trudeau goes on a three-month vacation (nice . . . ) with a brand new "very conservative" strip to be titled Prickly City, a daily venture from widely syndicated editorial cartoonist Scott Stantis of The Birmingham News.

But what, I asked, is the tipping point here? I mean if enough righties complain about Doonesbury or, I don't know, Beetle Bailey, do they get whacked? Ledbetter's reply was that there isn't any hard and fast rule only that when the reaction "is a big as it was here," she figured it was time to make a call.

"Sometimes we drop syndicated pieces because we don't think they're any good anymore. That's what we're supposed to do. I mean, we dropped Ann Landers because we decided it just wasn't as good a column as it used to be. But the response to Mallard was something you couldn't miss."

The bandwagon on Barack Obama's speech in Philadelphia today hasn't just started to roll, it already seems to be moving in excess of the posted limits. And I'm not about to disagree or quibble. It was a classic—the sort of calm, adult-to-adult conversational presentation of personal belief, personal experience, historical perspective, and fundamental optimism that I was this close to thinking I'd never hear from a serious contender for the presidency.

It runs thirty-seven minutes. You can watch it here.

I've been saying for a while that I'm impressed not just by the guy's thoughtfulness but by his demeanor. If this guy is flappable, I haven't seen it yet. I haven't seen him flummoxed by a question in a debate (he has stammered a time or two, but in the end, he has come up with something digestible). I haven't seen him panicked into reactionary nonsense by any attack on him from Clinton to the echo chamber. Aware of the building wave of suspicion back in the Chicago press over his relationship with Tony Rezko, he went back home and apparently so thoroughly charmed the not-exactly wild-eyed and school-girl giddy Chicago Tribune editorial board with his answers to every question they threw at him. The paper released an unprecedented statement declaring his performance "a standard for candor."

Brother. You don't hear a big, professionally contentious, status quo news organization say that every day. What's next? A mash note in lipstick slipped into his locker?

I'll be glued to cable news tonight ...again ... as usual .... someone help me, please ... I'll be looking to see how the usual suspects react to and analyze today's speech. I can pretty well imagine how it'll go down. The primary focus will be on whether or not Obama was effective in quelling the "controversy" over remarks made by his ("former," as he said) pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright. There will be little to no concession to the fact that much of the "controversy" was goosed by the very same people behind anchor desks tonight deciding whether he quelled it sufficiently or not.

Likewise, there will be, for the most part, no reference to John McCain happily accepting the  endorsements of  Texas mega-church/TV-evangelist John Hagee and the Rev. Rod Parsley of another mega-church in Columbus, Ohio, both of whom have, shall we say, rather unevolved notions about the West's interaction with Islam.

Nor will there be any serious debate over whether it is more problematic to stand by a friend of two decades, albeit while explaining where you part company with his most excessive rhetoric, or vigorously embrace someone with whom you have no personal relationship (McCain and Hagee, McCain and Parsley), people who make no apologies for their lunk-headed, divisive religious bombast. Put another way, Obama isn't palling up to the Rev. Wright for the good it'll do his campaign; McCain is.

But beyond that, I continue to be intrigued by the mainstream political pundit-ocracy's struggle to get a handle on Obama. And I'm not talking about FOXNews here. That's freak-show stuff. I'm talking about the George Stephanopouloses of the game.

I still can't get over Stephanopoulos's reaction to a small moment in a Democratic debate a month or so back. It was the one where Clinton was hit with a question about whether she was "likable." Hillary handled it pretty well. She made a joke about about how, "that hurts my feelings." But off to her side, Obama, making notes and without looking up or into the camera for full effect, merely cracked offhandedly, "Oh, you're plenty likable, Hillary." It was like . . . well, pretty much like what they are . . . competitive colleagues. It played—to my ear—like the kind of casual, semi-grudging joke/assurance you'd offer anyone you knew well in a similar circumstance. But Stephanopoulos, (over) analyzing it afterward, took the angle that by not pulling himself up to full posture, by not looking squarely at her (and the camera), Obama put himself in the position of appearing "arrogant."

"Arrogant?" At worst, Obama seemed bored and pretty damned exhausted by the three-thousandth debate of a two year campaign. What point of reference are you operating from if you grab at a moment like that and detect "arrogance?"

The point being that the Blitzer/Matthews/Russert/Stephanopoulos crowd are lifelong players in a very incestuous, stratified inside game, where all campaigns sound and react pretty much alike. (Love the grumbling about how Obama doesn't schmooze the press as much as McCain.) The horse race isn't just  the thing, it's everything. They display little, if any, ability to assess truth or honesty. Moreover, after years of  "objectively" reporting the transgressions of Bill Clinton and then failing badly to apply the same laser-like intensity to the fundamental and epic connivery of the Bush administration, I seriously wonder if George and the kids are capable of re-programming their software for someone who delivers the kind of parse-free, bullshit-free, nuanced and personal assessment of so unequivocally relevant a subject as race as Obama did today?

I'm a fan of Vanity Fair columnist James Wolcott—he's in my "recommended" list to the right here. There's something about his literate, bulls**t-resistant snobbery that I find immensely refreshing. In the current issue, he delivers a hefty recap of the innumerable Bush-related books already published and the gobs more due up this spring and summer. (At some point after three or four of these things, any sane person either has a gun to their head or is stocking canned goods for that tar-paper shack in Patagonia, but Wolcott soldiers on.)

I've been watching a new Frontline documentary (a four-and-a-half-hour opus titled "Bush's War" that I'll post on that later this week), and along with this morning's news of gargantuan Wall St. money house Bear Stearns being sold for $2 a share and Lehman Brothers on the verge of impacting into the same smoldering crater, I was fascinated by this excerpt, which Wolcott pulled from a London Review of Books piece by a guy named Jim Holt.

Here's the entire Wolcott.

And here's the entire London Review of Books piece.

All this can be filed somewhere under the heading of the old adage about paranoia. You know, where you're not paranoid if they really are out to get you? The present moment is so monumentally chaotic and FUBAR—with the President of the United States "unaware" about $4 gas prices, not knowing much about the new President of Russia, and babbling almost incoherently last Thursday in front of highly stressed Wall St. bankers (nice Gail Collins Saturday in The New York Times), you—hell, WE—have every reason to suspect more strongly than ever that there has to be some kind of grand plan behind this much mayhem. (We conspiracy-minded types like to think as much, you know. It makes us feel good. I mean, otherwise it'd be like the government and the biggest banks on Wall St. are being run by the fools of the class, not the smartest kids like they always said they were.)

The underlying media criticism to all this is simply to ask, again, ad nauseam, how much of these points of view do you ever get in your hometown ("local, local, hyper-local") media, newspapers, or 10 o'clock news, and why? Moreover, if the rationale is that these are national and international controversies already well-handled in the national and international press, ask yourself what was the last time any major national  news outlet (those would be the biased-ones always unfairly pillorying the current administration) have  devoted four-and-a-half hours to a definitive history of the Iraq debacle or thorough discussion of theories, such as Mr. Holt's.

(The answer is, of course, that even at this late date, other than on PBS or Countdown, The Daily Show, or Colbert, people such as Wolcott and Holt and their kind of thinking are still considered too whacked out for prime time and insufficiently relevant for "local, local" consumption. I mean, "It's all about oil?" How 2003 is that?)

Finally, if all of this hasn't just made your day, I gotta include this clip of CNBC money man, Jim Cramer, ranting about the business of terrestrial radio.

Quoting from the copy in the link above:

These stocks are so intrinsically broken, Cramer said, that they are not fit to own even when the broader market rebounds.

Terrestrial radio’s biggest problem is retaining advertising revenues as more ad dollars are siphoned by the internet. In 2007 total ad dollars for radio fell to where they were in 2003. That point to an industry going backwards, not forward, Cramer said.

The average market cap of terrestrial radio companies has declined by a staggering 80 percent throughout the last five years. But the bottom isn’t even in yet, as far as Cramer can tell.

Before we get too carried away with Cramer the TV money guru, let's not overlook this choice piece of advice.

I haven't quite figured out how to slide Dick Cheney into the collapse of terrestrial radio—other than, of course, a politicized SEC getting greased by K Street—, but I'm working on it.

There, everyone feel better?

Maybe tomorrow I'll check in and see what's up with American Idol. I hear they eliminated a stripper last week.

In a deal that has been percolating and negotiating for months, Dolan Media, publishers of Finance & Commerce, Saint Paul Legal Ledger, and Minnesota Lawyer, among several of its publications around the country, is buying up the long-established Politics in Minnesota (PIM) newsletter and has already begun the process of bringing an eight-person staff to bear on reporting at the state capitol. (The Star Tribune and Pioneer Press combined field seven.)

PIM owner and publisher Sarah Janecek, besides collecting an—undisclosed—fee for the sale, is staying on as Dolan's director of political content. Dolan currently operates a publication similar to PIM in Arizona, and Janecek says that once this changeover and expansion is completed and the bugs worked out, "we hope to expand to other states."

Now, full disclosure, I don't know how one story could involve so many conflicts, but yes, Janecek and I once did a radio show together; we have recently appeared on FOX 9 as pundits together; my oldest kid, a.k.a. The Weasel, is currently working for PIM; and, finally, she did once loan me a kennel when our dog had knee surgery. So . . . consider all that before going any further.

Dolan's move here is significant if for no other reason than it is not halfhearted. By all indications, Dolan and Janecek appear well financed to play. Once constructed, possibly before the end of the current legislative session, Dolan's office space in the media warren at the capitol will include not just eight work stations (with flat panel TVs, to impress the rubes) but also a broadcast/video studio. With both local newspapers aggressively . . . pretending . . . to do more with no more and often much less, Dolan is positioned to be significant competition immediately, depending on how it staffs the operation.

Janecek says Dolan's coverage of Minnesota politics will be year-round, meaning during the session and wherever the action takes them the rest of the year.

Is this all straight news? Or will we also see commentary and analysis?

"Everything," she says. "There are so many political stories not getting covered in the major media. We see all sorts of opportunities to add to coverage."

She wouldn't say who or what type of staff she might be adding, other than that she'll be looking for people, "who can do aggressive reporting and write creatively and with attitude." It goes without saying that there are literally dozens of out-of-work/grossly underpaid ex-newspaper writers kicking around town for Dolan to choose from.

Down the hall from where Janecek and Dolan will be setting up shop, WCCO-TV's Pat Kessler (yes, I know him, and he knows her, and she knows me) says, "the more the merrier" while completely agreeing with her view about excess untapped story material. "On any given day," Kessler says, "there are a hundred stories around here that should be reported beyond the one or two we can get on the news.

"In the best of all worlds," he goes on, "we'd all have huge staffs, cover every story there is, and cover them all well. But in reality, deadline pressures and other issues prevent that from happening."

And that business about "aggressive reporting" and "writing with attitude?"

"Yeah," Kessler says. "We all say that. But she's right in that, to use a cliché, the paradigm is shifting. Viewers, listeners, and readers want so much more from us, it just isn't enough to sit in a committee hearing all day and interview a politician. We've been doing vertically delivered news since forever, but now our viewers are coming at us horizontally, with bloggers and people like that interacting with us directly. We have to figure this out. We're going at it pretty hard at our place."

The rise of well-financed competition, such as Dolan, is very much a good thing to Kessler's thinking, in that it pushes WCCO faster down the path it is already plotting, with analysis and attitude and point-of-view reporting. "CNN meets ESPN," he says.

Janecek, who has owned PIM outright since 2005, has been a registered lobbyist for eighteen years. "And for the last fifteen, I've been trying to find a way out of it," she jokes. She says she has now "completely unregistered as a lobbyist."   

Since nothing—I doubt even a nuclear attack on the Grand Ole Opry—can push a story about a big (media) state governor and a $4,300 hooker off the tube, it is not surprising that President Bush's speech in Nashville yesterday to the National Religious Broadcasters made no wave at all. (By the look of it, only the Austin American-Statesman saw any reason to cover the speech.) Bush spent thirty-five minutes pandering to one of the most reliable elements of his (dwindling) base, so-called religious broadcasters who just happen to be 99 percent conservative and eternally, irreducibly committed to his (or Dick Cheney's) policies.

The topic of interest here are the few paragraphs where Bush vowed to veto reinstitution of the Fairness Doctrine, a requirement killed off by Ronald Reagan twenty-one years ago that forced broadcasters—operating with cost-free licenses on the public airwaves—to provide equal time to both (or more) sides of a political argument. Reagan's stake through the Doctrine's heart is regarded as a primary factor in the meteoric rise in the number of conservative talk stations as well as personalities such as Rush Limbaugh and James Dobson, both mentioned by name by Bush yesterday. Unfettered from making any claim to balance or fairness, which is to say, any reasonably accurate representation of factual reality, the conservative talk format exploded. Stations and talent were suddenly free to devote 100 percent of their air time and energy to telling listeners solely what they wanted to hear and nothing at all that they didn't.

Congressional Democrats have made periodic noises about bringing the Fairness Doctrine back, but only now, after the Democratic rout of '06 and in anticipation of another this fall, are the noises being given any credibility. Bush was all bluster yesterday. He will be long gone and in no position to veto anything when, and I think it will be "when," the return of the Fairness Doctrine lands back on the Oval Office desk.

Bluster or not, restoration of The Fairness Doctrine is coming over the horizon and looking like yet another culture war battle for '09, one the Democrats should push, could win, and for which the country as a whole might be a better place. Why? Because in stark contrast to Bush's version of reality—(he isn't "reality-based," remember?)—the current system, without the Fairness Doctrine, is actually what is stifling "free speech," "diversity," and, dare I say, a much better informed public.

Here's a choice slice of Bush's speech:

"This organization [the religious Broadcasters] has had many important missions, but none more important than ensuring our airways - America's airways - stay open to those who preach the 'Good News.' The very first amendment to our Constitution includes the freedom of speech and the freedom of religion. Founders believed these unalienable rights were endowed to us by our Creator. They are vital to a healthy democracy, and we must never let anyone take those freedoms away"

"I mention this because there's an effort afoot that would jeopardize your right to express your views on public airways. Some members of Congress want to reinstate a regulation that was repealed 20 years ago. It has the Orwellian name called the Fairness Doctrine. Supporters of this regulation say we need to mandate that any discussion of so-called controversial issues on the public airwaves includes equal time for all sides. This means that many programs wanting to stay on the air would have to meet Washington's definition of balance. Of course, for some in Washington, the only opinions that require balancing are the ones they don't like."

"We know who these advocates of so-called balance really have in their sights: shows hosted by people like Rush Limbaugh or James Dobson, or many of you here today."

As with so much of what Bush says, you don't know where to begin. But when he says, meaning it in a bad way, that "Supporters of this regulation say we need to mandate that any discussion of so-called controversial issues on the public airwaves includes equal time for all sides," what reaction can you have other than to slap your face and shriek, "the horror!"

The public air waves requiring equal time for all sides! What is this? Well, it wouldn't be Nazi Germany, Stalinist Russia, or even Putin's Russia since they all pretty well prohibit "equal time for all sides."

The wing nut base—to which so much of talk radio is devoted to sustaining in its ill-informed and toxic antagonisms—has no problem believing that the return of the Fairness Doctrine is gross censorship and that if allowed to return it will muzzle—if not ban—their heroes, such as, well, take your pick of any of a couple hundred foghorns from Limbaugh to Michael Savage.

Of course, nothing of the sort was true prior to 1987, and nothing of the sort is intended by the sketchy outlines of legislation suggested by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and Rep. Maurice Hinchey (D-NY). In reality—that word again—stations carrying Limbaugh, Savage, and the rest of the choir would be under no pressure at all to take them off the air, censor them, stuff a sock in their yaps, or make them kiss posters of Hillary Clinton. In the worst-case scenario, those stations would only have to provide equal time for all sides in which case some liberal foghorn would be granted access to their public airwaves for which they pay no license fees to refute or present information that might (very likely) counter much of what these otherwise uncontested paragons of deep thought had said.

That sort of free and equal format is, obviously, a disaster for huge media conglomerates such as Clear Channel (which is currently controlled by acknowledged Bush partisans, the Mays family, and directly descended from the consolidation strategies of Thomas Hicks, Bush's invaluable pal—he was, after all, the man who turned George W.'s $600,000 investment in the Texas Rangers into $15 million). The value of a conservative talk station that could no longer string together twenty-four straight hours of misinformation and distorted logic (excuse me, "truth") without interruption or confrontation would most likely plummet since its base can't tolerate anything that interfers with its vision of the American Way.

But the bottom line here isn't and never should be the bottom line of the Clear Channels, CBS Radios, or Citadels of the world. Rather, the bottom line is the public airwaves. As a limited commodity owned by everyone, the government, representing all of us—not the private marketplace, representing shareholders—should, hell, must insist on a healthy balance of opinions on "controversial issues."

Who knows, some of the big "controversial issues" of recent years—Terri Schiavo, gay marriage, Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, etc. ad nauseam—might not even gain a foothold in public consciousness if they were "balanced"/"debated" simultaneous with their partisan hyping.

That would be a good thing.

James Lileks, who has been through a handful of incarnations at the Star Tribune, most recently evolving from author of the very short and pithy "Daily Quirk" to editor/writer of "Buzz.Mn" on the Strib website, is going to commence regular Friday and Sunday metro column writing  more or less alongside Nick Coleman and Katherine Kersten. His column will not, however, and I repeat, will not, be political.

"I'm absolutely delighted," he said this afternoon, even as he was gathering himself to cover "something at 5 o'clock" for Friday's debut. Despite enjoying relatively high standing among conservative bloggers and talk show hosts, some of whom rallied to his cause when it appeared he might be one of those targeted for a buyout last summer, he says, "No, no politics. There's enough of that out there as it is.  These will be basic stories, stories not precisely what I've been doing in this market. It'll be a metro column, maybe a little less domestic than what I've been doing."

It would be generous to say the Strib's attitude toward metro columnists is a bit muddled. The paper—under the previous management regime—stole Nick Coleman away from the mostly hapless Pioneer Press. Then, under withering fire from the likes of the right wing bloggers at Power Line, the paper hired Katherine Kersten, a conservative think tanker and one-time Pawlenty advisor to "balance" out Coleman and Doug Grow, who has since exited. (The paper's brass—Anders Gyllenhaal at the time—would never completely cop to trying to modulate attacks on it for excessive "liberal bias" with the hiring of Kersten, but most of us weren't born yesterday.) The resulting "Frick and Frack" routine, with Kersten and Coleman doing a kind of estranged point/counterpoint is imbalanced by Coleman working under standing orders to "report" all his columns while the definition of Kersten's "reporting," by all indications, seems generously confined to  phone calls (more than a few with the boys at Power Line, many of us continue to believe).

So, will Lileks, an indisputably talented essayist but no one's idea of a dogged reporter, be required to slog through housing projects, Memorial Day observances, Native American powwows and the aftermaths of senseless violence to feed his column?

"There will be reporting when appropriate," he says. "But there will also be essaying and some navel-gazing, as they say."

His videos, often prominently hyped on the front page, will be a part of his column work, he says. "It's all part of one great big wad."

(I should point out that in the twisted, tiny world we live in, Lileks is one of my stable of freelance writers here at Mpls.St.Paul Magazine. I wouldn't say I'm his boss. But I do get to fire off semi-testy e-mails if he misses a deadline.)

He insists he simply doesn't want to wade into politics, and when and if he does, he'll  drop it into his blog. "There are three reasons for avoiding it. One, I have my own blog. Two, I'm not really reliable on issues. I'm all over the map. [I take this to mean he can't be relied on to regularly stoke fears of an Islamo-Facist takeover of public schools]. And three, we already have Nick and Katherine. There's really no place for me in that Manichean dichotomy."

I have no doubt Lileks will turn out entertaining copy. But my gripe has long been that the Strib should allow both Coleman and Kersten to do the same—be entertaining—assuming she can. The "reported column" meme is both tired and unexamined. Basically, it confines people with a voice, people hired for their voice, to mute that voice.

For a paper such as the Strib, which no one accuses of being too provocative, too entertaining, or enjoyable to read, you'd think some savvy editor/business person would realize that the ability to combine relevant storytelling with an occasional laugh is a rare, wonderful, and valuable commodity  and encourage writers capable of such work, especially those with decades of back story in these (local, local) cities, to relax and entertain the customers—maybe even a couple times a week.

Do they have a lot that is any better?

I was reminded that TV's Nielsen ratings system begins a possibly significant evolution this May. That's when the new, so-called "People Meter" finally arrives in the Twin Cities. Here's a story on the system from the Seattle-area Business Journal. (A similar high-tech device for the even more anachronistic radio ratings—"Personal People Meter"—is scheduled for arrival here in late 2009.)

The People Meter's arrival makes the recently concluded February "sweeps" the last of their kind, where roughly 400 clunky set-top devices and a few hundred diaries written four times a year compiled all the numbers for determining winners and losers in a local TV market as well as the all-important ad rates associated with winning and losing.

Because this new gizmo can deliver every sort of demographic information instantly—it requires individual viewers already ID'ed by age and gender and ethnicity to sign in every fifty-two minutes and can be passed around to anyone else watching to log their personal particulars, it might—might—eventually eliminate the need for "sweeps months"—you know, those months (February, May, and November) where the networks pile in all the good stuff for twenty-eight days then leave you with pretty much bupkis for the rest of the year while cable networks eat the networks' lunch.

That, anyway, is what May will bring. For the moment, the story is what February brought, and that was some encouraging news for FOX 9. KMSP sent out an e-mail blast crowing about overtaking KARE—KARE, for God's sake—as the second most-watched station in the market.

Here are a couple graphs at a glance:

Late News February 2008 Monday–Friday (Five-Day Average)

Late News Monday–Sunday (Seven-Day Average)

Since I expect to hear from the usual purists demanding to know why I waste any time at all on this, let me say how much I enjoy a good ratings spin.

TV stations live and die by these numbers. (They actually live and die by the demographics numbers that will be out next week, but these are good for brawling over.) For years at the Pioneer Press, I'd get these ratings, make a few calls, and listen to everyone, even those dead last and choking on dust, tell me how the numbers were actually showing great things for them (provided you held them over your head, chanted in Aramaic and spun like a dervish until you fainted from dizziness). They also told me how "key demos" were turning their way; how the other guys' demos were a sham and worthless; and how by this time next year, Paul Magers would be living in a box under a bridge, and they'd be eating his regular lunch of caviar and dulce de leche.

Very little of that ever happened. For twenty years, WCCO and KARE have battled back and forth over these so-called household numbers (total audiences with no breakdown according to age, gender, etc.). KARE always wins the key demographics, mainly women twenty-five to fifty-four and, therefore, makes more money in this market.

But these numbers don't bode well for KARE's long-term dominance and do suggest that FOX 9 is making some kind of inroads with viewers. (Full disclosure: My old radio partner Sarah Janecek and I are doing some—currently unpaid—political punditry for FOX 9. So if you want to think I'm blowing smoke up their tuckuses—tucki?— go right ahead.)

KARE's GM, John Remes, who is as wily as they get when it comes to parsing ratings numbers, authorized a press release arguing that KARE will again win the February demos, had won the January demos, is the only station broadcasting its news in high-def, and that everyone at his station is better looking than everyone at FOX 9. (I made that last one up.) His basic explanation for what looks like bad news for his shop is that, "you're comparing apples to oranges here" (meaning FOX 9's 9 p.m. show to his 10 p.m. news) and that the writer's strike had an unusually negative impact on NBC programming, giving viewers more reason to switch away . . . to FOX 9's news, perhaps.

Remes's "apples to oranges" complaint has some validity. But it strikes me as more as a comparison of separate but mostly equal varieties than completely different fruit. Kind of like a Honey Crisps to Zestars comparison, if you want to stick with the apples analogy.

FOX 9 news director Bill Dallman argues, "It's our marquee news against their marquee news."

In a brief conversation with WCCO-TV GM Susan Loyd at Bill Carlson's visitation yesterday, she was more willing to acknowledge FOX 9's audience growth than Remes, complimenting KMSP on its appeal to younger viewers before quickly asserting her station's long-standing appeal to hard news audiences.

I could go on with this, but I won't. The bottom line here is that WCCO still leads in total audience, FOX 9 is having a good run, and KARE is suffering unusual audience erosion, which, if it is reflected in the demographic ratings to be released next week, could begin a long-awaited realignment in revenue among the local news stations. Beyond that, technology-driven refinements in measurement might—might—soon bring even bigger shifts.

I was feeling pretty silly about my prediction, prior to Tuesday night, that the Democratic race was over, with Hillary Clinton composing her conciliation address before St. Patty's Day. That was until I got a load of the pros on cable. If I was wrong, and I most definitely was, the lavishly remunerated, cocktailing-with-insiders gurus anchoring sleek and gleaming "Election Central" news sets (some, such as MSNBC's, two stories tall) were off on another plane of wrongness, something extraterrestrially wrong, something out beyond the Oort Cloud wrong.

By now, I should know better than to place any great credence in the "learned" views of anyone, anywhere on television much less cable network circus acts that, let's face it, practically have to make crap up just to fill twenty-four hours a day. But I'm weak. This year's race is very interesting, and, frankly, from the media perspective, the train-wreck aspect of people such as Chris Matthews is a reliable spectacle of ongoing disaster. Boilers exploding. Tracks twisting. Giant wheels rolling downhill. You—that is to say I—can't bring myself to look away.

Despite getting mauled by New Hampshire and Super Tuesday, CNN and MSNBC have flogged for a month the meme that Clinton was toast. Fork in the pant suit. Matthews, who was the real central figure in the David Shuster "pimpin' out" Chelsea Clinton flap as best I can tell, had a couple of classic moments Tuesday night. The first was when he was trying to make an analogy of the Clinton campaign—I think—making a change of strategy, and he started babbling about them having a "moment like Damascus and the road with Saint Paul, or I mean Saint Paul going to Damascus."  Biblical scholars out there can correct me, but the Saul on the road to Tarses story, as the nuns taught it to me, was all about a generally reckless, wicked fellow being thunderstruck with an epiphany and turning his life completely around—none of which even vaguely related to whatever Matthews was yabbering about.

After watching so many, many hours of Matthews and Keith Olbermann (who was staring at him in near total befuddlement as he said this), I think Matthews jumps the tracks more often when Olbermann is around because he's trying to keep up with Olbermann's really-brainy-kid-in-the-front-row shtick and can't. (Here's a Media Matters survey of many things Matthews.)

The other classic was shortly after McCain wrapped up the 1191 delegates he needed to win it all, and the conversation was what advantage this might give him over the Democrats as they continue to brawl. The safe comment was that McCain can go around and handhold (i.e. pander) the various wings and belfries of his party and stash away dough for the fall campaign.

But no. Utterly unconcerned about his woeful record for accuracy predicting anything about this race—something you think might be a critical criteria for keeping his job—, Matthews launched off into a wholly irony-free analysis that put McCain out as the "clear leader" to win the White House in November based on . . . getting his party's nomination first. What? Again, Olbermann looked at him as if to say, "Are you smoking that blond Lebanese hash, again?" Good God, man, even if Obama and Clinton rough each other up another seven weeks until Pennsylvania (and I buy the argument that a roughing from team Clinton makes Obama stronger in the fall), it is still only April 22, four months before the real campaign begins and more than six—a half year—until we vote. Who remembers what any of these people said three months ago, much less six?

In fairness, Matthews was good trying to nail down Clinton-consigliere Terry McAuliffe on whether team Clinton would live by the final delegate vote. (McAuliffe wouldn't go there.)

I think I've said before that I get Matthews's appeal—and Wolf Blitzer's, and Olbermann's and so on and so on. It's just grist for the politics-as-sport mill. ESPN for political wonks and junkies. Just keep throwing—anything—out there, loudly and "authoritatively," and enough really pathetic people (me) will tune in to pay the bills. Being timid with opinion is far worse than being wrong, even regularly wrong. Everyone is bored by the former, and no one really cares about the latter.

That said, and this is grist for another post, what I would dearly love to see is some kind of amalgamation of National Public Radio and PBS that delivered up the much broader array of pundits (than cable's hard and fast "teams") without the dessicated, airless quality if "The News Hour." Maybe that requires more of what I'm bemoaning here—the willingness to be loudly wrong day after day for weeks and ignore it all the day after something such as Tuesday night.

Bill Carlson died Friday night after a very tough fight with prostate cancer. Those of us who knew him understood pretty early on that his chances weren't good. But Bill and his indomitable wife, Nancy Nelson, threw themselves into every possibility they could grasp. Bill didn't pass away for lack of trying.

I last saw Bill a couple months ago at a birthday party Nancy hosted for him at their home out in Eden Prairie. The cast of characters was pretty impressive. The WCCO-TV staff was to be expected. But John Najarian, MD; boxer Jim Beattie; and others were examples of the range of people with whom Bill and Nancy cultivated long-term relationships.

I got to know them—and there's no way or point of discussing Bill without talking about Nancy, i.e. "them"—via the so-called movie press junket circuit more than twenty years ago. I was the sarcastic snob working for an alternative weekly (the defunct Twin Cities Reader), soaking up free airfare, four-star hotels, and studio booze. They were the established gentry of the small, uh, highly idiosyncratic, community of junketeers that convened a couple times a month in New York, LA, or wherever Paramount and the rest thought would guarantee maximum positive pub. (I swear to God there's a Robert Altman-style movie in that scene, Junket!)

The signature quality of Bill and Nancy was a generosity of spirit untainted by any detectable ego, insecurity, or misplaced sense of status. I don't remember the first time we crossed paths, but it wasn't long after I started showing up. Being a naturally suspicious bastard, I initially dismissed their effusive, yet relaxed, friendliness as "TV shtick," that sales-like thing everyone in the infotainment business learns to do just well enough.

But as time went by, it dawned on me that these were simply two genuinely nice people, devoted to each other and blessedly lacking in the kind of snippy (a Minnesota word), pissy, backbiting that infected so many other people on the fringe of the Hollywood bubble. And that isn't to say they were chumps. They knew their game—Bill's TV news anchor role and Nancy's myriad infomercial ventures—and were plenty hip to the jerks. They paid close attention to politics and had very clear, progressive points of view. What they had, fundamentally, was maturity, self-confidence, and the unequivocal support of each other, a happy consequence of which was that I never had the feeling they dwelled on the snakier side of life.

I think it was on a long, west-to-east, cross-country flight back in the mid-'80s that Bill and I formed a bit of a bond. Leaving LA for New York meant it was happy hour on takeoff, and by the time we crossed over Utah, we were feeling no pain. Five captive hours and free drinks can tell you a lot about a person, and I was struck, "charmed" might be a better word, by Bill's sane, balanced world view. Life is both worth living and enjoying. Problems are to be identified and resolved. There's no limit to the things you can be interested in. The real bastards will eventually feel the weight of the karmic wheel. Every relationship works better if you pay attention and put a little positive energy into it, and humor plays best as a primary ingredient, not an afterthought.

By the time we touched down at LaGuardia, I was convinced that Bill, though in most ways a classic product of the fifties—the hair style, the business attire, the generally proper demeanor— could have been a tie-dyed hippie were he twenty years younger.

I see Don Shelby quoted talking about Bill being a real person in a business not often noted for its sincerity. I get the sentiment, but that might be a bit harsh. Throughout the years, my assessment of TV "types" has actually improved. The vast majority are just working schmoes whose names we happen to know. The majority of the "stars" freely acknowledge the shtick (and the underlying responsibility to their employers). Delusional levels of self-importance might come, but they also go . . . pretty fast.

But very few of them have or will survive fifty years in the business with the level of grace and decency Bill Carlson displayed.