EXTRA: May I have my 2 ½ hrs back?

I’m not sure what to think of the new Decades network (Channel 338 on my television set) that purports to give us programming that will fulfill our sense of nostalgia.

The effort seems to be led by the personality of one-time WBBM-TV news anchor Bill Kurtis, with former WMAQ-TV reporter-type Ellee Pai Hong and former WBBM-TV persona Kerry Sayers also along. It’s good to see them continue to be employed on television in some form.

YET THE IDEA of another channel loaded with re-runs of old television programming just doesn’t seem to be a need in need of fulfillment. Doesn’t ME-TV and its sister stations (which I must admit to watching to see “All In The Family” and “Sanford and Son” reruns) give us plenty of that?

Being able to spend my Memorial Day watching the first two episodes ever of “Hogan Heroes” was amusing – to a degree. Yet seeing the film adaptation of “Hair” for the first time ever definitely qualifies as two-and-a-half hours of my life that I wish I could get back.

It definitely doesn’t make me want to tune in later this week to see the film “Rio Lobo” or old Doris Day or Beverly Hillbillies reruns – no matter how lovely the late Donna Douglas’ “Ellie Mae” character looked while lounging around the “cement pond.”

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Do we really need ‘Anchorman 2?’

Could somebody explain the phenomenon of “Ron Burgundy” to me? Really!


Will it be worth excessive hype?

Burgundy, of course, was the character played by actor Will Ferrell in the now-decade-old film “Anchorman.”

WHERE HE WAS the tacky, no-class, pompous news anchor beloved by all of San Diego (until he told them to commit a certain sexual act with themselves) back in the 1970s. The 2004 film was a comedy (what else could Ferrell do?) and it took its shots at the cheesiness of ‘70’s pop culture.

All in all, it was a good laugh back then. Whenever I happen to be flipping through television channels and happen to stumble across it, I usually stop and watch a few minutes.

Particularly if it’s at the point of the news anchor gang fight!

I’m not sure what is more ludicrous – actor Steve Carrell’s character killing a man by suddenly throwing a trident or the other news person’s weapon of choice; lighting himself on fire.

OR PERHAPS IT is the sight (and sound) of actor Ben Stiller playing the anchor for Spanish-language news.

But it definitely is a piece, in and of itself. It’s not something that begs out for a sequel – because one could easily take the humor from the original film (best consumed in small doses) and blow it out into something bordering on the grotesque.

That is what seems to be happening now. After nearly a decade, we’re going to get “Anchorman 2” come Dec. 20. Maybe Hollywood producers envision us all going out to the theater on Christmas Day after we’ve opened our gifts and eaten our holiday feasts so we can get a chuckle at the self-absorbed, not-too-bright jazz flute-playing Burgundy.

Who will be Anchorman 2's 'Harry Doyle?'

They certainly seem to be anxious to feed us the concept already.

JOCKEY IS PRODUCING special underwear meant to tie in to the film, while Ben & Jerry’s ice cream has come up with a butterscotch-flavored product meant to mock the Burgundy character’s love of scotch – as in the alcoholic drink.

Ferrell is even appearing in television spots for Dodge Durango – where my own gut reaction is that he looks too old (Ferrell himself is 46 these days) to be playing the part of a news anchorman.

Somebody seems determined to market this film – which makes me fear it will be such a clunker. Will these products be living down the shame of being associated with a film sequel that will stinks?

Somebody is probably hoping for the next “Godfather II,” although I wonder if we’re destined to get “Major League II” – which beyond baseball broadcaster Bob Uecker as over-the-top broadcaster “Harry Doyle” isn’t worth watching at all. It may well be the most-pointless sequel ever.

THERE EVEN ARE people who ought to know better trying to tie themselves into the film. A special exhibit at the D.C.-area “Newseum” about the film? Emerson College naming its school of communication for Burgundy?

Even if just for one day, it still sounds odd for an entity supposedly dedicated to reporting something close to resembling the truth to be named for a fictional character!

The over-the-top promotional ties to the film actually have me skeptical. I doubt I’m buying any Jockey underwear in the near future, nor do I feel the need to get the new ice cream flavor (in part because I’m not fond of butterscotch).

And even though I am actually in the market for an automobile, I may avoid Dodge like the plague just because of its association with the film.

WHAT IS SAD is that the subject matter has potential for parody and humor – the sequel takes us to the 1980s when the Burgundy character is allegedly a cable news anchor. CNN in its early days was good for laughs!

Botching this subject would be truly sad.

Preserving them on celluloid?

Although I was intrigued to learn that Bill Kurtis will be involved with the sequel as well – reprising his role as the film’s narrator (while also giving us “the voice” of television so as to give the film some credibility).

It’s just too bad they couldn’t find a way to give us dual narrators – just envision Walter Jacobson alongside Kurtis as they tried to tell us the follow-up to the ludicrous life of Burgundy. That would be worth watching.

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You can’t live in the past

I remember being a kid back in the 1970s with a mother who made a point of regularly watching the television news. And her newscast of choice was WBBM-TV.

As in the station of Bill and Walter. She was devoted to their take on the news, along with their colleagues such as Harry Porterfield, Brent Musberger, and the guy I most recall from that era, Bob Wallace – who used to do all kinds of feature-y pieces for the newscasts.

MY GUESS IS that the CBS owned-and-operated television station in Chicago has management who think the key to success in producing a ratings-successful local newscast is to bring back Bill and Walter, and count on old farts like myself (and my mother, who shifted over to WLS-TV news after WFLD-TV let Jacobson go a few years ago) to tune in for nostalgia’s sake.

That attitude worked last year, when Kurtis and Jacobson were used to anchor a single 10 p.m. newscast, with the idea being that they were fill-ins for regular news anchor Rob Johnson. It was a one-time stunt, it was cute, and it gave the station some attention.

Since then, WBBM has tried to feed off the nostalgia factor by having Jacobson do “Perspective” pieces on a regular basis – although nowhere near as detailed or lengthy as the Walter Jacobson Perspective of old where Walter would get all worked up after his camera crews caught some Streets and Sanitation workers asleep on the job.

Now, he does straight opinion pieces. There’s nothing wrong with that (since it pretty much is the same thing one gets if they regularly read this weblog). But in some ways, it is a shallow shadow of what we once got from Jacobson.

WHICH IS HOW I expect the new pairing of Kurtis/Jacobson as the anchors of the 6 p.m. newscast to play itself out. Those people who remember how comprehensive the Channel 2 News was back in the old days will be disappointed.

Those people who are too young to remember those old days will probably watch once, then wonder to themselves what the big deal was about the sight of a couple old white guys – one of whom looks as though he needs a booster chair in order to do his job. All the grey you'll see watching the Channel 2 News at 6 p.m. won't be due to black-and-white photography.

I’m not knocking the contributions of Kurtis and Jacobson to those old broadcasts I used to watch. They did set a tone of a serious newscast.

But when I think of those old newscasts, I find I remember the other players just as much. Porterfield’s “Someone you should know” segments, or the fact that Musberger literally was once the backup local sports guy (before he became a nationally-known CBS Sports anchor).

JOHN DRUMMOND’S MOB and crime reports before the “Bulldog” became a parody of himself. And yes, I literally remember those old stories done by Wallace, who always seemed to be at a food festival eating something for Channel 2 News.

Without substance to a newscast like that, it really doesn’t matter what Kurtis or Jacobson say or do. Not that I’m bashing the current news crew at WBBM. I’m sure they’re trying their best to do a not-completely-trivial newscast within the constraints of the economics of broadcasting today.

But the anchors can only do so much, if the boat itself doesn’t amount to much.

If anything, I think the most significant change in Channel 2 newscasts in recent months is not the addition of Kurtis or Jacobson. It was letting long-time political reporter Mike Flannery leave to take a job with Chicago’s Fox affiliate.

NOT THAT I think Flannery himself is significant enough to raise that station out of its doldrums. But it shows that Channel 2 might want to give the image of going back to the old days. But they were not willing to do what was needed to keep that one old asset that was still producing quality work for them.

There’s also the fact that many of the younger crowd (the ones that want to rant that television news is “dead” because you can watch the snippets on the Internet at your convenience) aren’t going to want to be reminded of the past.

If anything, they probably view the significant part of Thursday’s announcement as the bit that Kate Sullivan is leaving her job with WCBS-TV in New York to anchor the 5 p.m. and 10 p.m. newscasts in Chicago.

She talks about “returning” to the Midwest U.S. (she once worked for WSBT in South Bend, Ind.), yet I don’t sense any special knowledge about Chicago that will come from her.

NOT THAT IT will matter much. She has a certain “look” about her, which will be the illusion of authority to some (and an ability to make Internet-based pervs drool and post anonymous comments about her looks).

Which is an image that seems more important to broadcast news these days than any other factor – even a nostalgic trip back to the days when one of my all-time favorite television programs (Redd Foxx in “Sanford and Son”) was a big hit that I would watch right after the news.

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Where’s Bob Wallace?

I’ll admit it. I watched WBBM-TV, Channel 2’s 10 p.m. newscast last week Friday just to see how the return (for a single night) of Bill Kurtis and Walter Jacobson would come off.

The reminiscing was intriguing, although I’m wondering how many 20-year-olds were turned off by being reminded of the significance of an era occurring before they even existed. Then again, who am I kidding?

TWENTY-YEAR-OLDS don’t watch television news, they just watch the clips of a story or two off the station website, before going to YouTube to find a “cool” video of somebody doing something stupid.

Clumsy cheerleaders, anyone?

I am old enough to remember the days when WBBM was a significant player in the Chicago news scene (and when the idea that “happy talk” WLS-TV, Channel 7 would ever top them would have been considered absurd).

When my mother and I watched the newscasts on television in my household during my youth, it was always Channel 2.

SO IT WAS nice to see the chatter between Kurtis and Jacobson and Harry Porterfield (before showing us that freaky magician doing that levitation trick with cigarettes). It was even amusing to hear the youthful sports anchor say he only got to be on the air that night because Johnny Morris was busy (although us real old-timers remember the days when Brent Musburger was the local sports guy who would have been covering Morris the football player for the Bears).

I chuckled when I learned that Jacobson’s “perspective” commentary about life these days at City Hall so got under Richard M. Daley’s skin that Hizzoner Jr. felt compelled to bash back. Like father, like son.

But I hope that WBBM officials have enough sense (they probably don’t, most television executives don’t) to realize the fact that they got a ratings boost that night (WBBM was Number Two in that timeslot with a 7.3 share, not that far behind WLS's 8.3 share) was exactly because the Kurtis/Jacobson pairing was a one-time event.

For better or worse, times have moved on. Trying to pretend we’re back in 1973 with Bill and Walter giving us the news from the ‘BBM newsroom (with Jacobson using a specially-crafted chair to cover up the fact that he is a height-challenged man) would fail.

THE GAG WOULD get old too quick.

Besides, in my mind, two factors were missing from Friday night. One would have been Mike Royko to write a newspaper column the next day finding some reason to puncture Jacobson’s pomposity.

The other was the absence of the one-time feature reporter, Bob Wallace, whose cutesy reports from assorted festivals and events across the Chicago area still linger in my mind some three decades later.

A part of me believes semi-seriously that WBBM hasn’t been the same since the day Wallace stopped covering food festivals for Channel 2 news.

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