On Television
KITMAN, MARVIN
On Television DEFEAT BY ASSOCIATION BY MARVIN KITMAN I would like to compliment television for its very beautiful job of reporting the returns on election night, November 3. The results were...
...After that blunder, Goodell couldn't be elected dogcatcher in New York...
...On election eve, I was as busy as Walter Cron-kite trying to make sure the voting patterns did not get mixed up with the test patterns...
...Then the video went dark and the audio silent...
...And let us not forget that Dick Nixon reportedly decided to run for President in 1968 after the networks cancelled Gilli-gan's Island...
...Why is there no agitation for legislation limiting the number of soap or aspirin commercials...
...Let's take an election that was not advertised on Tv this year: the 3rd precinct state senatorial race in Andover, Massachusetts...
...The candidates I watched on Tv this fall stuck pretty much to the same old hack method of talking earnestly to the voters...
...Tv candidates Richard Ottinger of New York and Howard Metzen-baum of Ohio--two of the medium's finest products--lost...
...Machine politics--the use of computers to project winners and count votes--has all but eliminated the cries of fraud we hear in the undermechanized countries...
...But that is hindsight...
...There is a rumor about that the President's daughter is modeled after a real person...
...But all commercials do that...
...Here, again, guilt by association apparently swung many elections...
...A. Well, it has been said that there are striking physical similarities...
...it may even be their function...
...Unfortunately, Nancy is a situation comedy that really needs a laugh track...
...Senator Charles Goodell (R-N.Y...
...A. I've heard the talk, but I deny it...
...I personally think your role is based on Tricia Nixon...
...I have been able to detect this deficiency in any number of losing candidates...
...They taught the voters the names of the candidates, a fantastic step forward in political sophistication...
...As early as September, it seemed apparent that the idiocy of Nancy would be the one important factor the polls and computers would not be including in their calculations for the 1970 elections...
...President Smith--Is the Chief Executive is called in the program--is never shown on screen...
...A. Where did you get that idea...
...It has also eliminated the need for padding out the story, although somehow that message does not seem to have reached the medium...
...Like bookmakers, they collect the vigorish regardless of who wins the race...
...That may be so...
...And they were educational, too...
...About five minutes before Forbes' show was scheduled to begin, Meyner's campaign manager, Robert J. Burkhardt, ordered the playing of "The Star Spangled Banner...
...Who should better reflect the father than the daughter...
...Personally, I blame the defeats on what the political experts term "a lack of votes...
...This item is a somewhat obscure politico-video reference deserving of a more thorough explanation...
...I really believed then that television would be crucial...
...The 62nd voter, probably some egghead college professor, discovered the discrepancy...
...On balance, though, this was a black year for television in politics...
...Your relationship with the horse doctor is a political metaphor for Margaret Truman's romance with Clifton Daniel, the handsome New York Times editor...
...Despite all the talk about the negative impact of television, people will continue to vote in a discriminating way--on the basis of the man's religion, his sex appeal, and his party...
...Every Republican would like to think that his chief is the master media manipulator...
...Meyner went on the air first, in prime time...
...There was an error on the ballot...
...It is distinguished, though, by not having a laugh track...
...She lived in the White House from 1945-52 and was unmarried...
...Q. Well, the speculation runs that you're too old to be Caroline Kennedy...
...When Renne Jarrett, the beautiful young blonde who plays the title role, came to New York several weeks before election day, I asked the network for a press conference...
...But by not showing Smith, Nancy maintains the illusion that the Tv President is Every President...
...The Republicans seem to have suffered from guilt by association...
...That so many people fear the influence Tv may have had on the elections comes as no surprise to me...
...my guess is that President Nixon is too busy reading books--statistics, computer print-outs, Poor Richard's Almanack, things like that--to have much time for Tv...
...Goodell losing in New York because of Lassie vote...
...But nothing he has done comes close to matching the Democrat most skillful in the television art sometimes called "political skulduggery...
...is one of your average situation comedies about a President's daughter and her affair with a Midwestern veteranarian...
...That winning formula was created by President Nixon in 1968...
...Q. Don't get me wrong...
...Debates and press conferences on Tv--two other ways to keep the voters informed--also have drawbacks...
...A. That's ridiculous...
...When Forbes finally came on the air, the Tv audience had diminished considerably...
...The terrific election coverage is traditionally followed the next day by another predictable event: the cries that television was responsible for the defeat of this man or that one...
...The first 61 voters proceeded to cast their ballots anyway...
...He is not bad...
...the same men won on all three networks...
...That surely would never have happened if the candidates had spent two or three million dollars on Tv commercials...
...Woody Allen said that...
...I could be Julie...
...Q. President Truman's daughter...
...Who will ever forget that it was supposed to kill the movies...
...That's what I call really using the medium...
...So did dozens of other candidates who spent millions on commercials...
...The five leading image-makers--David Garth, Charles Guggenheim, Roger Ailes, Joseph Napolitan, Harry Tre-leavan--had 13 winners, 13 losers and one still unresolved...
...We don't see President Smith for the same reason we never see God on Tv--it would detract from the mystique...
...If a politician is lying in a commercial, at least he is limited to 60 seconds...
...Tv voters turning against Administration nationally because of Nancy...
...But I'm not necessarily playing Tricia...
...The only consistent winners on November 3 were the broadcasters...
...Critics of Tv political advertisements say they mislead the people...
...Linda and Luci Johnson were both dark haired...
...Maybe all the talk about television's ability to build a false image is only a ploy by the Tv station owners and the advertising agencies to get politicians to spend their money on Tv instead of squandering it on newspapers, billboards and direct payments to voters...
...nbc's position, however, consistently has been that any relationship between reality and Nancy is coincidental...
...Removing the marvelously funny Miss Burnett from the air in a lOth-hour election eve blitz (on wcbs-Tv from 10-11 p.m...
...In place of the candidates in the 5th Essex senatorial district (Senator William X. Wall, Democrat of Lawrence, and Helen M. Comeau, Republican of Andover), the ballot listed the candidates in the 3rd Essex senatorial district (Senator William L. Saltonstall, Republican of Manchester, and John A. Brett, Democrat of Danvers...
...The Tv political commercial, the target of much abuse in newspaper commercials, came out of the election in especially good shape...
...Ordinarily this would win votes...
...Q. Thank you, Mr...
...Buckley winning because he preempted The Carol Burnett Show...
...Some experts feel the politicians forgot that television has a reputation for mediocrity...
...Robert Meyner, in his second New Jersey gubernatorial race in 1957, bought time for an election eve talkathon back-to-back with Malcolm Forbes, his Republican opponent...
...I took down some notes which should be invaluable to any political scientist studying Tv's impact on the 1970 races...
...That's easy to understand...
...President's daughter...
...In the early days of the medium, Tv was always being described as a threat to one art form or another...
...preempted Lassie on October 25 so he could explain to the New York voters why he was not planning to drop out of the campaign, wcbs-Tv received 400 phone calls that Sunday night complaining about the Senator's judgment...
...The political pundits are putting two and two together and that makes you Harry Truman's daughter...
...In the old days of political speeches to the voters, there was no limit to the perfidy...
...On Television DEFEAT BY ASSOCIATION BY MARVIN KITMAN I would like to compliment television for its very beautiful job of reporting the returns on election night, November 3. The results were accurate...
...It definitely had an impact on the 1970 elections, just as the release of students from universities under the Princeton Plan influenced air travel to the Caribbean...
...I don't mean to imply that television can't play a more serious role in shaping political events...
...Everybody knows conservatives have no sense of humor...
...Q. Is it true that you're playing Margaret Truman...
...worked wonders for Buckley...
...Nancy (NBC, Thursdays, 9:30 p.m...
...A. Who...
...The plugs I saw this fall were consistently more entertaining than the programs they interrupted...
Vol. 53 • November 1970 • No. 23
