Reuven Frank, the former NBC News president who passed away Sunday, had a way with words, and he proved it in a series of commentaries for TV Week magazine.
Frank’s last piece, dated Dec. 5, 2005, was titled “The Clock Is Ticking for the Evening News.” Here is a sample of his other commentaries:
> Nov. 28, 2005: Culture Wars Create Hard Times for News
“At this nasty time in our history known as the culture wars, the news business has become a favorite target because it is the vehicle transmitting everything everyone dislikes, giving rise to panels, forums, interchanges, scholarly discussions and learned dissertations, primarily devoted to the principle that we in news are wrong and they’re right, that we must do something to improve our general reputation and our welcome into the American home. Things are terrible, terrible…”
> April 11, 2005: Anybody Seen My Old Friends Dan, Tom, Ted?
“Maybe America is just sick of news, wants no more. Maybe we can be satisfied with what they give us in the mornings, three-line bulletins between the rock bands, the cooking hints and the almost famous peddling their books and movies. But for how long? Sooner or later someone is going to ask, what the hell is going on? What’s happening? What’s new?”
> Jan. 24, 2005: Only Pro Reporters Get the Whole Story
“When there is real news to be reported, only a professional reporter will get it to you. It has been that way for more than a century. Advancing technology gets it to you faster, and in color, but for there to be news, someone has to go get it. And it is better if that someone knows what he or she is doing.”
> Dec. 6, 2004: Broadcast News Can Still Trump the Web
“As for the network evening newscasts themselves, as long as enough people watch to keep them profitable, as long as they make more money than any program that might replace them, they will be with us. Not forever, perhaps. But for a while.”
> Aug. 18, 2003: The Television Mystique
“People in television tend to lose sight of how TV looks to the rest of the world, the ordinary Americans, rich and poor, who have accepted it as part of their lives but still, after more than half a century, look on it as something special, magical, alluring…”
> Feb. 24, 2003: TV should turn the table
“The all-news channels have nothing but time to fill. The medium started by proclaiming all news all the time. Then they learned there isn’t news all the time. So the news there is gets stretched thin enough to read through.”
> May 12, 2003: Pictures Scarier Than the Pen
Television “is more sought-after than other media; it is more feared. Television has become more than a medium; it is part of the family. That is its strength. And weakness.”
> Jan. 13, 2003: Media access, war by war
“Vietnam was called the Living Room War because Americans watched it on their TV sets. The next war, in Iraq or wherever, will be in every room of the house.”
> Dec. 2, 2002: Images from war zone come at a deadly price
“Information we get from pictures differs from information we get from words. It sheds a different understanding. For us to get it, young people put themselves at risk. Looking at those pictures involves no risk. Commentators never die in combat, but sometimes cameramen do.”
> Mar. 11, 2002: Late-night soap opera
“The definition of news has changed, that young people define news differently. How do they define it? I don’t know. I am not sure I want to know. I’m retired. It’s not my problem anymore. But somebody better find out or it will all go down the drain. And that, we all agree — don’t we? — will be bad for America.”
> Sept. 17, 2001: A different infamy than Pearl Harbor
“This attack targeted people working at their desks, in coffee shops, men and women without known enemies. That is what kept everybody at the TV set, the feeling of disbelief, of personal vulnerability. But as The New York Times said Sept. 12, ‘Imagine how much worse the nightmare would have been if broadcasting had been destroyed.””
Remembering Reuven: In His Own Words
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