Not long ago, Today was fairly well respected and their hosts performed several pertinent interviews with heads of state, high ranking officials, and many other people who have impacted our country through the news. Now, we get interviews with socialites, actors promoting movies, authors promoting books, and just the general topic of the day or “National Enquirer” type news. This week, our country’s economic crisis has been the number one factor weighing on our collective conscience. On top of that, the final Presidential debate was scheduled and held midweek.

Well, I’ll give it to Today, they did interview the Treasury Secretary in a much needed look into the government’s stance on our economic condition… for all of about two minutes. What other pressing news relegated this particular interview to such a minimal effort? Try a “major event” involving one of the Flying Wallendas performing a death defying stunt live on The Today Show. I gave up counting the minutes attributed to this breaking news story which put to shame the importance of our economic crisis not to mention the Presidential debate later that evening.

I know television shows need ratings and there usually isn’t enough news to fill three hours of time with specific and important information. But, when did The Today Show become NBC’s version of E!? I’m sick and tired of actors hocking their latest movie on the show, listening to socialites speak about their lives, and hearing nonsense interviews with the latest 15 minutes of fame people. If The Today Show had access to the Treasury Secretary, they should have appropriated more time for such an important segment of the show. Sure, they gave the debate some minor attention, but just enough to say they did.

I guess I just have higher standards associated with The Today Show than they do for themselves. In the past, I remember Bryant Gumbel interviewing sitting Presidents, Prime Ministers, etc. I remember Katie Couric doing several important interviews. Matt Lauer has even had his fair share. However, for every one of those segments these days, we are treated with a multitude of interviews with Paris Hilton talking about her latest “funny or die” video. Or we are treated with an interview about the latest Harry Potter book. We are even given special access to gourmet chefs and cooks so we can work on some great recipes for our family.

How do these subjects fit together: interviews with heads of state, actor interviews pitching their latest movie, authors hocking their latest book, concerts featuring the latest music releases, record setting events, cooking segments, and general news reporting? That is the state of The Today Show these days. It’s a smorgasbord of bullet point information. I said information, not news.

If they want a “Regis and Kathie Lee” show, then do a talk show. Stop trying to keep the “rep” up by trying to look important with sparse amounts of important interviews which are given miniscule time segments. Maybe I’m expecting too much out of the show, but when you have the public’s attention and are given special access to important guests who have important information regarding critical issues, they should be given the primary time slots and catered too.

I’m still in awe that I know more about the Flying Wallendas than I do about what the Treasury Secretary is doing to help our country’s economic crisis. They had him in person, in an interview, and gave him two minutes… sad and with a complete lack of direction. The Today Show has deteriorated into the Oprah show of the morning.

The only thing I know about fashion is that you’re not supposed to wear white after Labor Day. Not exactly sure what exact piece of clothing they are talking about, so I just assume white is out for everything, hats, shirts, pants, and shoes. Better to be safe than sorry right? I wouldn’t want to be seen as someone lacking fashion sense now would I? Trends are necessary though, otherwise, we would all be wearing the same clothes we were 10 years ago, or even 20, or 30. We could even be wearing the clothes our grandparents were wearing if we didn’t change our tastes and trends. I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t enjoy wearing what they wore, not to mention if we all were wearing garments from the 1970’s…

Who establishes the trends which impacts our clothes wearing behavior? Segments of society have a great deal of power creating trends. These segments are catered to by the fashion industry and as they grow, different trends are injected into the mainstream. Bikers, country clubbers, musical genres (rap, rock, country, etc), moms, young adults, and the list could continue forever. Remember the “grunge” period of fashion in the 1990’s? That trend came to us via the music scene of alternative rock. Today, we have the “baggy” fashion which has been brought to us by the rap community.

Baggy used to be exclusive to wearing oversized clothing. However, now baggy has gone to the point where clothes are literally hanging off of people. Pants are left hanging on for dear life as underwear is prominently exposed. I’m sure you’ve seen it. Oversized pants barely stay up which forces the individual into constantly “tugging” on them to keep them from turning into ankle weights. Oh, and the pants aren’t shorter so the remains of the pants are always under the person’s feet so they are actually walking on the lower portion turning them into frayed ends of shaggy looking hand-me-downs.

I’m one for feeling comfortable, but the baggy trend has gone a bit too far in my opinion. Since when was it considered “trendy” to show your behind to the public on purpose and walk around on your pants? There was a fantastic invention from years gone by that alleviated such issues. If memory serves, I believe it’s called a belt.

Saturday Night Live featured a performer who chooses this trend as his fashion statement. Corporate executives for NBC were “worried” about his appearance mostly due to his musical content, but also his attire. Lorne Michaels, producer of SNL, went on record and said, “I’m not saying you should wear yours that way, but clearly it’s our job to set trends.” My question, is it really the job of SNL, or television for that matter, to set fashion trends? If so, then no wonder why our younger generations are wearing such attire and believing it to be “trendy.”

Trends used to involve making clothes better looking, more comfortable, or better suited for a particular event. Today, fashion sense is more about making statements. Do we need our society following trends “set” by mainstream media? If someone really believes wearing pants below the butt while walking on the pants legs makes them look good or fashionable, I would like to see their IQ score and compare it to that of a lemming.

Allowing mainstream media to set our trends is one avenue they effectively utilize in an effort to “control” the general public. A large portion of that control involves money. Fashion trends change from year to year, or even month to month, meaning wardrobes must change. Media receives the majority of their revenue from advertising and as they “set” trends, purchasing behavior is thus influenced creating a “need” for advertisers to showcase products. The lemmings are in line to follow the lead of someone trying to control their money. Since “fashion” these days is about making statements rather than making clothes look good and comfortable, money is at the root of these so-called trends. Do some homework, how many of these “trend setter” acts have their own clothing lines?

What I am going to do is focus on the monetary side of things and the impending greed from the studios. Greed from a studio, I know, it’s a pretty farfetched idea isn’t it? The way I see it and this is from a purely financial greed point of view (but I bet it is close to the reality we will see), is that when the studios decide to release the current “season” compilations of programming, they will still set pricing comparable to other “full” season compilations. How can they do that you ask? Think of this, Lost was supposed to have 16 episodes this year, but it will end on 12. That’s even down from the 24 per year or so shows they did the first 3 years. Think the retail price for the 4^th (current) season will be half the current list price of season 3? No way. Heroes ran 11 episodes from a scheduled 24! Think the retail price for this new season will be less than half of the first season? No way!

How can they not charge far less than the normal list price of season compilations? Half the show means it should be half as costly right? Wrong. The studios are going to feed us a very long fishing line of marketing “showing” us that they are giving us a huge pool of extra, additional content for the season releases. Prepare to see special behind the scenes footage, special interviews, and special cut scenes. Special, special, special. Never before seen this, not shown on television that. You get the idea. All of this supposed unseen information is going to be used to pack the rest of the compilation release to stuff the package to the gills to justify a nice little purchase price comparable to previous years. There has to be something to pile onto the DVD’s within the nice big box package to justify the manufacturing cost of it. Nobody but the most devout fans would pay $40 for a “box” set containing 2 DVD’s. The studios want to manufacture a nice big box set with 6-8 DVD’s packed with information to make the consumer feel like they are owning more than just a recording of their favorite television shows.

Without the extras, people with TIVO, DVD recorders, or tuner cards on their pc can directly record their shows through the season and have the season set for free. So, the studio has to come up with something to differentiate this product from a homemade one. Make it worth the buck for not only the hardcore fan, but also for the general fan to want and feel a certain need to have to stay in the loop with the additional information. So, when the half content current seasons come up for sale in the coming months (before the next season airs), remember that you should be seeing far cheaper pricing. However, don’t hold your breath expecting that. Should is highly unlikely. What you will more than likely see is comparable pricing from years past and a lot of additional “stuff” that you may not particularly care about anyway.

Is this greed or is this just plain ole good business sense? Greed. If you look at the past seasons, they are filled with this additional, “special” content also. So, if you run across Lost, Season 4 on the shelves in the late summer or early fall this year and see a price tag on it from $40-$60, remember, you are paying more for less. Similar issue with Heroes, its first season was packed with extras. If you see it priced anywhere from $40-$60, you are at the mercy of studio greed. Even if they were priced at $30, I would say Lost would be worth a look, but as for Heroes, not a chance, even at $30. Just think about what you will be purchasing and determine for yourself if you like playing the pawn in the network studio game. Of course, this is hypothetical because the season isn’t even over yet, but when the time comes, we’ll take a look back at this article and see just how close my “theory” is. Leave your comments below!

All of a sudden, the new hour of programming has become a talk show. It features guests like any talk show, it features random chit chat going over basically nothing, and it of course teaches you great fashion tips. When did our news programming, the NBC Today Show, need to resort to something as simple as a high profile celebrity name to run a blathering chit chat show? Now, we all know Kathie Lee has incredible journalistic skills, or not. Does this make any sense to any of you (outside of NBC’s blatant want/need to increase ratings and provide entertainment through their good name of the Today Show of course)?

I completely understand the need to have decent ratings to pull ad revenue to support the salaries of their employees and retain the ability to run a true, journalistic news program. But, I don’t understand why they have watered down their good name in such a way as this. Personally, I think they should remove the connection to the Today Show brand and create a completely separate title for their new hour. I expect information, not entertainment, from a morning news program. Well, there are entertainment facets of news, but even then, that’s a very small percentage of content. The new hour is ALL entertainment. It is not worthy of the tagline they are giving it.

As I think about this, all of our news programs on national television are dabbling with entertainment programming in their shows. The industry appears to desire higher ratings more than providing cutting edge news information. When is the last time you felt you saw a news show provide actual, real news? News that reporters utilized their journalistic talent to uncover, investigate, and give an unbiased viewpoint on what their story involved. You might read that statement and come up with a quick answer of recently or even today. But I say read closer. There was a word in there that cuts the mass quantity of supposed news we see and read into a sliver of actual, real news. Did you get the word? It’s unbiased of course.

Unbiased. That’s a VERY large word. It is also VERY hard to accomplish. Sometimes, if you can’t provide an unbiased view, your only way to provide a competent story is to provide an opposite or alternate view to support the other side. At least then you can be fair in your reporting. What I want to see is a return to news programming. Programming that informs us, not entertains us. Programming that teaches us, helps us understand, helps us think, and helps us relate to the stories. The thirst and hunger for true news information is out there. However, as long as our television stations are owned by corporations whose goal is to turn a profit, we will never see a true news program again. Profit motive negates truth telling. Unless of course it’s a truth telling all book about Paris Hilton. Maybe we should just have Ryan Seacrest host our news programming? Sounds awful, but basically that’s where we are.

If someone notices an interesting or entertaining piece coming to television, I welcome you to send me the information so I can possibly view the segment.  Our “boob” tube can offer some very interesting and often entertaining concepts and viewpoints that offer up very good platforms to start useful commentary.  So keep an eye out and we’ll have some fun.