TV’s New Reality | WBUR and NPR - On Point with Tom Ashbrook

TODAY IS THURSDAY, MARCH 18, 2010

Thursday, January 30, 2003 at 11:00 AM EST

TV’s New Reality

Who gets the rose? Who gets voted off the island? Who cares? Reality television is scorching the airwaves and even President Bartlett is feeling the heat. The West Wing is feeling the sting of The Bachelorette. When true love is on the line, who cares about national security?

Reality TV is altering the way we watch TV and the way TV does business. It’s real people, not actors that are in demand and that’s means shrinking jobs for Hollywood writers and actors.

What’s driving America’s fascination with other people’s lives? Have we become a voyeur nation, or just an exhausted one looking for an escape from the real world?

Guests:

Clay Calvert, author of “Voyeur Nation: Media, Privacy, and Peering in Modern Culture, ” professor of communications and law at Pennsylvania State University

Bill Carter, national media reporter for the New York Times

Rory Evans, freelance editor

Jeff Gaspin, executive vice president of Alternative Series Programming for NBC

Comments are closed.

After ‘No Child Left Behind’
Thursday, March 18, 2010

The Obama administration wants to rewrite No Child Left Behind. We’ll ask what’s coming for American education.

Comments [24]

The U.S.-Israel Blowup
Thursday, March 18, 2010

Top Pentagon brass complain the Israel-Palestinian impasse is undermining American interests. We’ll look at the US-Israel moment of crisis.

Comments [63]

Jazz Great Sonny Rollins
Wednesday, March 17, 2010

We’ll talk with tenor saxophone great Sonny Rollins about his six decades at the pinnacle of jazz.

Comments [21]

Ireland’s Epic Boom and Bust
Wednesday, March 17, 2010

For more than a decade Ireland boomed. It was Europe’s Celtic Tiger. Then it came crashing down. We’ll look at Ireland’s wild rise, and what went wrong.

Comments [23]

IED’s in Afghanistan: Hard Numbers

The Department of Defense provided On Point with some statistics about IED attacks in Afghanistan, where there has been an increase in the use of such weapons over the past 14 months. It’s striking to see the spike in numbers — from 2,677 IED incidents in 2007 to 8,159 last year.

More » | Comments [2]

Christopher Hill: U.S. Troop Withdrawal ‘On Schedule’

U.S. Ambassaor to Iraq Christopher Hill spoke with On Point live from Baghdad today as early voting gets underway, part of the run-up to Sunday’s elections. “So far so good,” Hill said, despite scattered violence. Hill said that the plan to withdraw U.S. combat troops by Sept. 1, and to leave only a residual advisory force of 50,000 or fewer, remains “very much on schedule.” Observers worry that a spike in violence could derail that timeline.

The Supreme Court’s Radio Silence

For radio listeners, a key element of our conversation about the Supreme Court gun-rights case was conspicuously absent: the audio recording of the oral arguments. Here’s why.

More » | Comments [5]