Word: anchorman
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Network starts out with an honest premise. A distinguished anchorman from UBS, the fourth network, is about to be axed because of poor ratings. Instead of existing politely he makes a scene on the air, replete with words rarely heard on television. The network respectables are outraged. But the network's younger technocrats, who don't care about the integrity of the news, point out that the anchorman's antics have caused the ratings to zoom...
...then there is the biggest whore of them all, anchorman Howard Beale (Peter Finch), who is supposed to be UBS's Cronkite, the difference being that he is instantly willing to cash in 30 years of journalistic integrity to transform the evening news into the Nuremberg rally of the airwaves...
This town is about the dullest thing since Sydney. (Rupe says he likes my face may make me the anchorman of the Today show someday. Yep.) Later, Rich...
Each night the commercial net works give you exactly what you would get on your car radio, except for the pictures and the visual presence of the anchorman. Much, therefore, turns on these two factors. CBS, which consistently leads in the ratings, has also long led in the excellence of its news-gathering staff. This strength began with Edward R. Murrow (Charles Collingwood and Eric Sevareid remain from that era), continued with a middle generation of Roger Mudd and Dan Rather, and has now resulted in a set of people as good as Bob Schieffer, Ed Bradley, Richard Threlkeld...
Schumacher wants to yank Beale off the air, but Diana Christenson (Faye Dunaway), the network's head of programming, senses enough viewer interest in a nutty anchorman to boost the ailing network into Nielsen heaven. The news department becomes part of Christenson's entertainment empire, and, as the "mad prophet" of the air waves, Beale gains 60% of the audience and puts the double-whammy on such stolid, sane types as Walter Cronkite and John Chancellor. "Howard Beale is processed instant God," Christenson gushes, "and right now it looks like he may just go over bigger than Mary...