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| HOLT: From BBM to natl. newscast head |
I
woke up Thursday morning and started the day with a few minutes of Robin Meade
at CNN’s Headline News channel, where the one-time anchor of WMAQ-TV’s morning
news segments told us all of how Williams was “demoted” to MSNBC and how Holt,
the former WBBM-TV news anchor, now has the top broadcast position at his
television network.
IT
SOMETIMES SEEMS like one can’t get away from Chicago no matter how much they
may try.
But
back to Holt, who hasn’t worked in Chicago television for 15 years. But he did
leave a memorable presence on the CBS station back when he worked in Chicago –
helping to keep the channel’s news presence alive in those years AFTER Bill
Kurtis and Walter Jacobson completed their domination of the Chicago news
scene.
He
even left his image on our city proper.
I
found it amusing when I had to do a day of jury duty back in February that the
Cook County Sheriff’s police continue to use a decades-old video featuring
Holt, as he explained to us exactly what a jury is and what would be expected
of us if – by chance – we were picked to be on a jury and asked to render a
verdict on some poor schlub who theoretically is among our peers in society.
THAT
VIDEO LOOKED like it had seen better days; having been played over and over and
over again throughout the years since Holt had left Chicago – even though the
basic message hasn’t changed one bit.
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| WILLIAMS: Was he really demoted? |
But
now, Holt has moved up to the top of the broadcast news scene – being in charge
of what is supposedly the top priority newscast that NBC puts on each night.
He
has the same job title that David Brinkley, John Chancellor (himself a former
Chicago Sun-Times reporter-type person) and Tom Brokaw once held.
Yet
I don’t know that anyone views Holt’s job as being anywhere as prominent as the
role those men once held.
THE
FACT IS that fewer people tune in to a scheduled newscast to learn news –
preferring the notion of being able to tune to a news channel for 20 minutes or
so at a time to get a jolt of information about what is happening in society
then tuning in to whatever entertainment program it is they’d really rather
watch. Just think of all the odd-hour newscasts our local television stations
have created for those who can’t wait until 6 p.m.
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| MEADE: Is she now more prominent than Holt? |
It
may be that people seriously interested in news are still turning to the
newspapers with the declining circulations – which could show that fewer people
are seriously interested in “the news.”
So
what should we think of this latest move – brought about by the fact that
corporate officials felt the need to demote Williams without actually firing
him. That would have brought too much shame to the network.
I’m
not going to get too worked up over what Williams is alleged to have done – the
whole account of whether he exaggerated his experiences while reporting in Iraqi
war zones. It is proof that the memory is flawed.
I
ALWAYS GET concerned anytime I have to write copy about some past event based
off my own memory of it, rather than being able to look through the files of
notes and old clippings I have accumulated during the past three decades.
Invariably, some of the details are off. (Insert premature senility gag here).
So
Williams is no longer on the network proper, but he’s now a reporter-type for
MSNBC, the cable channel – which in some circles may actually be regarded as a promotion
of sorts. A more prominent spot that gets watched by some, rather than an
evening newscast whose timing isn’t convenient for people who want a fact or
two right now!
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| Holt from the old days lives on in Cook County jury rooms |
Holt
winds up getting the allegedly prominent post when it no longer means as much
as it used to.
And
in Chicago and suburban Cook County, at least, some people are bound to stumble
across the NBC Nightly News in coming weeks and say to themselves, “That’s the guy
from the jury duty video. What a mustache he used to have!”
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