Watching USA Today

Sept. 25, 1988

After two years of gaining ground against enormous start-up losses, the huge Gannett chain's "USA Today" has taken off, giving other newspapers something to aim at.  Introduced as our country's first national daily, USA Today brings new standards of printing quality, four-color graphics, photographs and ads of computerization, and of organized packaging to the daily newspaper industry.  The Bennington Banner's new look couldn't  help but be influenced by Gannett's child, and the staid New York Times announced that it will go to full color on it's news pages within a decade.

USA Today provides neither in-depth coverage of local events, as the Banner does, nor does it give the deep investigation of national and international events that you'll get from a major big city outfit like the The New York Times.  Reading USA Today is rather like scanning the first three paragraphs of each story in the The New York Times, and then going on to the next article.

Though its coverage is superficial, USA Today gives an extensive overview of the nation's news and is the ideal medium for people who really don't much like newspapers, much as light beer is for people who don't care for real brew.  And it's weaknesses lead to its strengths:  the sports section is very complete, and a stockbroker friend of mine says it's business section is a gold mine for someone looking for the latest trends and the largest quantity of useful business stories in a  quick-to-read package.

So Gannett hopes to bring USA Today's magic to television and on the Monday Sept. 12, Schenectady's WRGB on Channel 6 carried the premiere show.  This new half hour syndicated program will run at 7:30 p.m. Monday through Friday.

I planned to watch for at least three days, by any standards a decent sample, but had to stop after the second commercial of the second show to prevent permanent brain damage.

USA Today, which cost $40 million to bring to the small screen, is careful to avoid the hard news coverage already provided by the networks and local stations because people will not want to watch a repetition of what they've already seen.  In-depth coverage of one or two important events or newsmakers is out, because this would lack the mass appeal necessary to attract broadcasters and advertisers.  Long, light features would carry more information than the newspaper itself does, so that idea's out.

What's left?  Not a helluvalot, as it turns out.

The show opens with attractive, glitzy graphics and that's the high point.

On Wednesday Sept. 14, we got an apparently live, one minute eight second look inside the National Hurricane Center.  That told us nothing useful.  A National Geographic magazine article about a tribe in Thailand that has become the U.S.'s smallest minority, an article that was two years in the making, got two minutes and thirty seconds of attention, and I couldn't figure out what was going on, it went by so quickly.  The "Cover Story," apparently about hard-line school principal Joe Clark, turned out to be a report on a new film about Clark and his New jersey high school.  Complete with superficial interviews with some of the students; that one lasted for two minutes and 24 seconds.

But there seemed to be some confusion about whether that was the "Cover story," or whether the next feature, "What it is Like to be a Kid," three minutes and one second worth, was.

So what about USA Today the newspaper's strong points, business and sports?  Under the title "Money" was the a one minute 40 second feature on two men who found the world's largest blue star sapphire and a one sentence item about Bloomingdales opening a branch in Chicago.

The "Sports" department had a 94 second interview with baseball commissioner Peter Ueberroth that was to simplistic for words (a "no comment" on the question of expansion cities, and a "the judge was wrong" concerning the charges of a collusion on the part of ballclub owners).

This new show is very big on polls:  USA Today readers and watchers mail or phone in replies to questions, and the results are announced on the TV and in the newspaper.  Well, the USA Today audience is hardly a representative sampling, and the questions -"What city should get an expansion team?"- are so inconsequential that one wonders who would wast a stamp or a 50 cent phone call on a poll that is silly, inaccurate, and nonsensical.  This, I suppose, is audience participation?

Images and interviews come and go too quickly.  A talk with the Iranian ambassador to the U.N. spent 30 seconds on how he likes driving in New York City, and 15 seconds on the huge losses of an entire generation of teenaged soldiers in the Iran-Iraq war.  Some useful tips from a financial advisor went by too quickly to digest, and a bit about an Elton John tour had a single bar of a song in it.

USA Today manages to be both frantic and boring, boring, boring.  One item said that the National Association of Broadcasters is about to announce the radio of the future.  That was it - no explanation, no information, nothing.  And then on to something else.

This stuff isn't even "light" news or entertainment; it is childishly trivial drivel that makes "smurfs" seem profound.  I don't know what niche in the broadcasting spectrum USA Today is suppose to fill, but I think Gannett faces a $40 million hangover.

Mac Rush works in the Banner's composing room.

I get the distinct impression my dad didn't like USA Today.  I actually laughed out loud, while typing out his extreme distaste for the show.