3 My 2¢ June 2025 MAIN OFFICES 216 EAST 75TH STREET NEW YORK, NY 10021 TEL: (212) 288-3933 WWW.VIDEOAGEINTERNATIONAL.COM WWW.VIDEOAGE.ORG VIALE ABRUZZI 30 20131 MILAN, ITALY EDITOR-IN-CHIEF DOM SERAFINI EDITORIAL TEAM SARA ALESSI (NY) ENZO CHIARULLO (ITALY) LEAH HOCHBAUM ROSNER (NY) SUSAN HORNIK (L.A.) CAROLINE INTERTAGLIA (FRANCE) OMAR MENDEZ (ARGENTINA) LUIS POLANCO (NY) MIKE REYNOLDS (L.A.) MARIA ZUPPELLO (BRAZIL) PUBLISHER MONICA GORGHETTO BUSINESS OFFICE LEN FINKEL LEGAL OFFICE STEVE SCHIFFMAN WEB MANAGER BRUNO MARRACINO DESIGN/LAYOUT CLAUDIO MATTIONI, CARMINE RASPAOLO © TV TRADE MEDIA INC. 2025 Television can be a refuge for the masses. Happy talk shows, temps measured in Celsius, football (soccer) coverage, and a desire to make money are useful ingredients to revive U.S. broadcast television. In the pages of The Wall Street Journal, 81-year-old Jeff Greenfield, an American television journalist and author, argued that morning TV shows are too happy-go-lucky when the mood of many viewers is the opposite. One wonders if Greenfield was influenced by the Apple-TV+ series The Morning Show and observed how unhappy the hosts of such shows actually are. And if so, it’s no wonder that he wondered, “How About a Morning Show For the Sullen And Sleepy?” in the pages of the WSJ. I vividly recall that Dick O’Leary, the ABC-TV executive who invented the “happy talk” newscasts in the 1980s, used to tell his staff that their main business was not making television, but making money. Today, however, it is difficult for broadcast TV to make money when all morning shows on U.S. television — ABC’s Good Morning America, CBS Mornings, FOX and Friends, and NBC’s The Today Show — reach a combined 7.5 million viewers. “With some 315 million Americans living in homes with TVs, there is clearly a huge market inefficiency here,” explained Greenfield. However, television, as churches and temples have always been, can be a refuge from the prevailing social environment. If society or politics tends to be progressive, people need to balance it with conservative religious values, and vice versa. With the U.S. seemingly embracing conservative values, and the economy now in shambles, television — especially broadcast television — needs to become a refuge for the masses. After all, as is inscribed on the plaque of the Statue of Liberty’s pedestal: “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.” Broadcast television, which is free, can make money, but first it needs to attract more viewers. How? By serving as a refuge from the prevailing conservative movement — but not politically, socially. For example, sports segments on broadcast news programs focus solely on basketball, American football, baseball, and hockey. In order to find any news about football (called soccer in North America), viewers — including the 4.7 million Europeans living in the U.S. and millions of other nationalities — have to tune in to Spanish-language TV stations, which, by the way, are thriving. Then, on weekends, sports programs cover all of the above, plus golf and specials about horse and car racing. To watch regular football (i.e., the soccer variety), the world’s most popular game in number of fans, one has to either tune in to Spanishlanguage TV stations or, at times, to FOX. Let’s move now to the weather services. Here, temperatures are still given in Fahrenheit instead of Celsius. Currently, in addition to the U.S., only the Bahamas, the Cayman Islands, Palau, the Federated States of Micronesia, and the Marshall Islands use the Fahrenheit scale, all other countries use the Celsius scale. This is due to historical inertia and somewhat cultural familiarity, but shows a disconnect with progressive society. And what about Jeff Greenfield’s desire for the morning shows to be sullen? I disagree. I’d leave them happy-go-lucky to contrast with the collective sullen mood of the viewers. Let me conclude with a maxim from a New York City restaurateur: “The welcoming is very important, because if patrons seated at the table are already unhappy, no matter what delicious dish you can offer, they will not come back.” Dom Serafini “Who shall we let aggravate us today, CBS…NBC… ABC… FOX?”
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