Word: nbc
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...Wrote and Miami Vice. A fresh burst of nonfiction programming -- news shows, pseudo news shows and other "reality" fare -- has rediscovered those old reliables of tabloid journalism, sex and violent crime. America's Most Wanted, the highest-rated show on the Fox network, and Unsolved Mysteries, which joined NBC's schedule this month, solicit viewer help each week in tracking down fugitives. The syndicated magazine show A Current Affair, drawing good ratings on 125 stations, goes for the gut each night with stories on crime and celebrity scandal. Typical subjects on Fox's The Reporters, a tabloid version...
...sealed vault on live TV. The cupboard was bare, but ratings were huge, and Rivera followed up with melodramatic specials on such topics as drugs and death row, as well as with a daytime talk show. This week he returns to network TV with a two-hour special on NBC, Devil Worship: Exposing Satan's Underground. The sometimes graphic show dwells on criminals purportedly influenced by satanic beliefs, among them a 14-year-old boy who slashed his mother's throat and then committed suicide, and Robert Berdella, a Kansas City man under investigation for multiple tortures and murders...
Still, once sex and violence start drawing ratings, the slope can be slippery. NBC is the only network not to have a weekly hour of news programming in prime time; yet it had no trouble finding two hours for Geraldo's devil special (being produced under the auspices of the entertainment division, not news). TV's new fascination with real-life crime, moreover, has the whiff of pandering. The correspondents on 60 Minutes have been called prosecutorial, but they at least come armed with sheaves of evidence. The hot-button journalists of The Reporters and other tabloid shows pursue their...
FAVORITE SON (NBC, Oct. 30, 31, Nov. 1, 9 p.m. EST). A charismatic young Senator (Harry Hamlin) schemes for the vice-presidential nomination in a three-part mini-series, based not on Dan Quayle's life story but on a novel by ex-network executive Steve Sohmer...
Whoa. Kill members of one protected species to save three of another? What was going on here? In his nightly commentary, NBC's John Chancellor singled out the sound of the whales' labored breathing, a reminder of another mammal's desperate urge to live, as the signal that triggered the national flood of empathy. But there was something more at work. Once the whales entered America's living rooms, they became, in effect, giant pets. Nicknamed, anthropomorphized and even serenaded by guitars, the whales prompted straight- faced comparisons with last year's dramatic rescue of Jessica McClure from a Texas...