Entertainment News (Blog Post #2)!

Sidney Lumet’s critically acclaimed 1976 film, Network, is in part a satire and a warning about the state of television news programs, their business structures, and the effects they have on their viewers. The movie follows the story of Howard Beale, played by Peter Finch, an aging newscaster who becomes an overnight sensation after ranting about the “hypocrisies of his time” on a national news program. This sparks the producers of the show to change their traditional, informational format to a more, superficial, and entertainment based program. The film culminates with Beale being killed off by hit men hired by his own show’s executives for garnering low ratings after his musings took a turn to a more depressing and somber tone.

I think that the plot of this movie is very relevant to the television age in which we live today, which constantly blurs the line between what is news and what is entertainment. In the years following the release of Network, major news channels across the world gradually, in a very similar, yet more subtle, fashion to the aforementioned example presented in Network, started to switch their programming towards a more entertainment based slate. This can easily be seen by the current popularity of news/entertainment shows such as The Soup, Showbiz Tonight, E! News, Inside Edition, and TMZ News, along with many others. It seems as though as we venture into a new technological age, we crave to take in our information in a way that’s faster and more superficial than ever.

Network, also presents another very prevalent warning. Towards the end of the movie, Howard Beale’s proclaims, “You’re beginning to believe the illusions we're spinning here, you're beginning to believe that the tube is reality and your own lives are unreal. You do. Why, whatever the tube tells you: you dress like the tube, you eat like the tube, you raise your children like the tube, you even think like the tube. This is mass madness, you maniacs. In God's name, you people are the real thing, WE are the illusion.” This is something that the general public should think about today at a deeper level. It is something that now refers not only to television news anchors, but also to anyone through whom, or even anything that we receive our news and information through.