Does it mean much that one-time Channel 2 news anchor Holt now the big guy at NBC's prime newscast?

I kind of got a kick out of the way I learned the latest in the Brian Williams/NBC News saga that he is no longer the face of the evening newscast and has been permanently replaced by interim news anchor Lester Holt.

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.

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.

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!

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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It’s that graduation time of year; should we call the cops more often?

High schools and colleges all over the place have had their commencement ceremonies; which leads to an annual problem.

School's commencement gained more attention than athletics

How to deal with those self-absorbed people who can’t control their behavior during a ceremony.

PARTICULARLY THE ONES who think the ceremony is all about their kid; without regard for anyone else around them or any of the students – for whom the ceremony is just as important for them as it is for you.

This issue popped into my head Thursday morning while watching the HLN cable channel, and Robin Meade (I need my daily dose of news from her to start my day) gave her accounting of the Senatoba High School ceremonies where four people wound up being kicked out because their screaming and cheering became disruptive.

So disruptive, in fact, that  somebody, perhaps with the school, filed a complaint with the local police.

Arrest warrants were issued!

THE FOUR PEOPLE, according to WREG-TV in Memphis, now face disturbing the peace charges. They will have to show up in court on Monday, and could wind up paying $500 fines each.

Robin, whom many of us will remember from her Chicago days with WMAQ-TV, seemed to imply she thought certain people were a little too uptight, what with feeling the need to call the police.

The people now facing charges seem to think say, telling their local television station that all they did was called out their kid’s name when she was called on stage to receive that diploma she he worked for so hard in recent years.

Now I realize for some people, particularly those who come from families where college attendance is a new experience, and even high school graduation is noteworthy, there is a need to make a big deal out of those few seconds of a graduation ceremony where the focus is on you.

I RECALL MY own college graduation having both my parents and my step-mother on hand, along with a brother and step-sister, my grandmother and a pair of step-grandparents. Along with several uncles and aunts.

There also was a step-great-grandmother who a week later rather vividly expressed to me her regrets that she couldn’t be part of the festivities on that day I became a college graduate and over-educated unemployed bum. For the record, I began working at a Chicago Heights-based newspaper eight days later.

So I get the idea that it’s a big deal, one of those rare moments that comes along in a family’s overall story! I have no problem with the idea of celebration, or ceremony or ritual. It’s not like commencement is a funeral.

Perhaps we'd be a better world if we all began the day with Robin Meade

But every single ceremony I ever participated in included a vocal announcement to the spectators to try to control their behavior. Why should someone else’s few seconds of the spotlight be drowned out because somebody else called just before them couldn’t pipe down.

USUALLY, PEOPLE MANAGE to comply.

In fact, I remember being mocked by my step-mother’s father for a few days following the ceremony because of how well my college graduating class and their families were behaved.

So I’m inclined to think that if this particular group of people got the cops called on them, maybe they did something out-of-the-box. Or else put up such resistance to being removed from the premises that a school official felt compelled to “drop the dime” on them.

Then again, I’m also willing to concede that perhaps there is a high school administrator who gets a little too uptight about trying to control every little detail of life; resulting in the call to police and creating an incident that has given Northwest Mississippi Community College (where the ceremony was actually held) more national attention than it ever expected – or desired – to receive.

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No idea is really new

I couldn’t help but be amused Monday morning when Robin Meade (the one-time WMAQ-TV reporter-type who now anchors the morning news on CNN’s headline news service) sounded so perky in telling us that IKEA is now in the business of selling us actual houses.

The Ideabox pre-fab home ...



Now, one can not only go to IKEA to buy a batch of build-it-yourself furniture, you can even plunk down some $86,000 and buy a build-it-yourself house.

ACTUALLY, A KIT with all the pieces needed. What a new innovation! How clever!

Except for a couple of things.

First off, it seems that the prefab houses are not actually an IKEA product. They were designed (and the kits put together) by an Oregon-based company called Ideabox.

Although, Ideabox got input in the design of the kits from IKEA officials in Portland. So naturally, everybody was quick to give IKEA the credit. The company had to go so far as issuing a statement last week to clarify the situation.

YET THERE IS another, more important, reason why this particular “story” amuses me. The idea of buying a prefab house is so NOT a new concept.

Anybody who thinks that buying one of these kits and putting together a residence puts them at the forefront of the 21^st Century will be depressed to learn that they’re, “So last century!”

Because we all either remember, or have heard the stories about, the days when Chicago-based Sears, Roebuck & Co. was in the business of selling pre-fabricated houses – many of which are still standing even though it has been just over seven decades since Sears got out of the house business.

... and its century-old Sears predecessor



In fact, the concept is so similar that a part of me wonders if it is possible for the Sears types to sue Ideabox for stealing their idea. (It probably isn’t, but I’m sure Sears officials are feeling so desperate these days that they’d consider just about any concept that didn’t involve closing more stores).

THE IDEABOX HOUSES are in kit form, with all the pieces needed to put together a house. You have to figure out how to buy a plot of land to build it on and pay for the connections to electricity and other utilities (otherwise the structure becomes nothing more than an overly-elaborate outhouse).

But it’s literally a build-it-yourself project. Invite a few friends over, particularly if you have friends who actually have some skills when it comes to construction or repair projects.

Which sounds so virtually identical to the concept of the old Sears Modern Homes that I have to wonder who ripped off whom.

Those homes were also sold through the catalog (you couldn’t go to an actual Sears store to pick out a “house”) between 1908 and 1940 – with the company estimating that some 70,000 kits were sold during those 32 years.

THE KITS WERE shipped literally in railroad box cars, with every single piece labeled properly so that (if you were capable of following instructions) you could put it together yourself.

Or perhaps invite the friends and neighbors over to help – almost like the days of old when this was still the frontier and you might literally turn a home construction into a “barn-raising” party.

These Ideabox people have literally resurrected an idea with origins in the early days of this nation (the 18^th and early 19^th centuries) as we are now one decade into the 21^st.

And just as the Ideabox houses are advertised as having all of the equipment needed for modern technology (it won’t be a primitive shack), the Sears houses of old incorporated the now-standard ideas of central heating, indoor plumbing and electricity.

IN FACT, I can only think of one real difference between the two ideas.

The Sears Modern Homes idea ultimately died with the Great Depression, which caused many people to default on the mortgages that Sears offered to help people pay for such a financially-substantial purchase – which ultimately made the idea of a new home purchase too expensive for enough people to buy for Sears to keep the product in their inventory of goods for sale.

MEADE: Told us about it



Whereas it seems the Ideabox houses are being marketed in part as a cheaper alternative to a more conventionally-constructed residence; although Meade on Monday morning quipped that the prefab houses could be a cheap way to have a small, “vacation house” on an isolated plot of land.

I suppose anything is possible, particularly in these times that many people feel economically-strapped, and some think it is the worst downtown SINCE the Great Depression.

SO SINCE THIS Ideabox concept seems to be a Portland-based concept for the time being, it may be some time before we start seeing such structures being erected here.

Which means it remains to be seen whether they will take on the lasting character of the Sears Modern Homes. Will we someday see clusters of Ideabox/IKEA houses being boasted of – similar to how places like Elgin think it adds to their historic character because their roughly 200 Sears homes are the largest-known collection of such houses anywhere in the world.

And for those of you wondering why I'd write up something on this trivial topic, would you really rather read yet another piece of commentary about "Super Tuesday?" I didn't think so.

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