The LuLac Edition #55, Sept. 6, 2006

PHOTO INDEX: The first ever CBS anchor, Douglas Edwards, WYOU TV's David DeCosmo, the new interactive WYOU TV news team and WBRE TV reporter Amy Badley.


FOCUS: TV NEWS

THE NEW NEWS SHOWS……….Let me weigh in on the new WYOU TV interactive news. The show’s opening was informative, energetic and exciting. I thought the program was fast paced and presented a Magazine Type quality in its presentation. The program was not your typical newscast, yet it incorporated much of what a traditional newscast does. I am getting from this presentation that the idea is to give a cursory overview of the events of the day and then focus on a big topic like gambling, Katie Couric’s debut and whatever else comes down the pike. In the future the true challenge will be how this news format will deal with a huge story like a 911 tragedy or a major, earth shattering event.
The two anchors were energetic, professional, well spoken and had minor glitches. Candace Grousklaus should have been dressed in blue, that would have been a tad more professional. The guests seemed to be comfortable in the call in segment. I would prefer a roundtable rather than a Merv Griffen/Mike Douglas type chair lineup but that’s me. A roundtable would make it less glitzy. The callers were not ringers because I know two of the people who called and they have no connection whatsoever with WYOU TV.
The set is something to behold. I think it makes for an easy on the eyes presentation. Of course anything could beat the recent set used by WYOU TV. There should be more interaction with the station’s reporters, give them more face time, especially on bigger stories.
Many will be critical of this new news effort but I believe most of them are media insiders. The general public will be the judge and jury on this new program. They will be the power behind the eventual rise or fall of this format. Much credit has to be given to the WYOU TV management for taking the gamble. I’ll watch again and hope they do well in the future.
Now, on to the CBS evening news with Katie Couric. This is not your dad’s evening newscast. I felt the first part which featured on terror was very good reporting on a subject important to America. The exclusivity of the material was a key factor in kicking off this effort. Again, the interview chair segment with Tom Friedman from the Times, give me a table. It looks more serious, especially when discussing a serious topic.
I loved the nod to Douglas Edwards, the original CBS anchor. (We have a segment on his life and career in this edition.) The juxtaposition of the Price Charles baby photos with the Cruise baby was well done. The commentary piece is under the heading “something old is new again”. CBS for years had Eric Severaid’s commentaries on the evening broadcast. Instead of one commentator, there will be many. That has been missing from a national network broadcast.
The show was well put together and I’ll watch again. The only clinker was when Couric asked viewers to help her develop a sign off. That smacked of “Dialing For Dollars” or “Name the Mascot”. When you’re making that much money as an anchor, come up with something. A sign off is a signature, and it worries me that if Couric doesn’t have the depth to think of a sign off on her own, perhaps she doesn’t have what it takes to carry a national newscast.
Females I spoke with made the comment that they thought she looked tired and seemed better looking in prior appearances. Believe it or not, I did not notice. (Seriously, I didn’t.) What I noticed was that she seemed to connect each story in a seamless, non offensive way and in my view, for any newscaster, you can’t ask for much more.

NICE TOUCH: Walter Cronkite, former CBS anchor doing the voice over intro to the newscast.

COMMENTARY/ DAVID DECOSMO....Since this edition of LuLac seems to be centered on TV media, let me add this to the mix. One of the local blogs reported that David DeCosmo almost quit his post at WYOU TV because of a scheduling deal. I don't know the details nor do I want to. But let me say that DeCosmo is the real deal. He has more knowledge of what has occurred in this region the past cenury than any other journialist working in print or TV. With TV reporters younger than some of my shoes (hey, I buy classics that last long and have my own personal shoemaker) it is important for a guy like DeCosmo to be treasured and respected. So much of this area's news, especially the political news, is interconnected from one generation to another. DeCosmo's radio and TV career span those eras. Putting the news in a historical perspective is something viewers expect, need and want. Unfortunately, with small staffs and lower budgets, they don't get that extra dose of knowledge and background. DeCosmo has always added critical thinking with solid reporting. Keep him around until he decides to go or drops! And treat him nice!


NEWS REPORT HIGHLIGHTS DESPERATE HEALTH CARE SITUATION

A bomb threat at a grocery store on July 31 was made to divert authorities from a bank robbery 15 minutes later but as WBRE TV reporter Amy Bradley reported, there was much more to this story. Police said Adam Andrew Sprau, of Dallas, called the Price Chopper in the West Side Mall in Edwardsville claiming he put a pipe bomb inside the store.
Kingston police responded to help Edwardsville authorities evacuate the store. Knowing Kingston police were busy elsewhere, Sprau held up the PNC Bank branch nearby getting away with an undetermined amount of money.
Sprau admitted to police that he had his mother, Judith Sprau, drive him to John Street in Kingston under the premise that he was meeting an attorney.
Sprau walked to the PNC Bank and robbed it. Sprau fled the bank, but not before dropping an envelope that helped police find him. Police said the envelope contained a bank check to his mother, Judith Sprau.
Sprau told Bradley that he was in desperate need of health care because he was being treated for kidney cancer. His health care options ran out and could no longer get medical treatment. The inmate told the WBRE TV reporter that a TV documentary on prisoner’s health care on the Discovery Channel prompted him to take such drastic action. He intimated to Bradley that it was tough to trade his freedom for health care, that it even annoyed him, but he did what he needed to do.
If you take a look at this case, you can see that by Sprau’s actions, the dropping of the envelope, the involvement of his mother, and even the diversionary tactic of getting the police busy elsewhere indicates he did not have malice on his mind. Even though he engaged in a criminal activity, which was wrong, the greater question has to be is this society in the 21rst century really meeting the health care needs of its people. Bradley’s story told of Sprau’s reasons why he did it. But in this society, how many other desperate people are out there being denied basic rights of survival?
In the depression, people stole loaves of bread to feed their family. Now, 70 years after that period in American history, we still hear of stories like this one where good people do desperate things. The right wing Republicans will tell you about how great things are in this country and how stories like this are exaggerated. But health care costs have gone up and the consumer is getting less. Remember the health care crisis where doctors were moving out of the state in droves? How’s that working out? Last I checked, most are staying put with their Hummers and Back Mountain palaces. I don’t begrudge those doctors their income or the accompanying things that come along with that. I really don’t. These doctors are paid by corporate hospitals and depend on insurance companies that care only about the bottom line and not sick people like Adam Sprau.
In a way, the Health Care system in America has become the survival of the fittest and the rest of the weaker be damned. The state of health care in the United States has been rapidly deteriorating on President Bush's watch. The ranks of the uninsured have swelled by 6 million Americans, insurance premiums have been rising at five times the rate of inflation, deductibles are increasing by nearly 20 percent per year, and benefits are shrinking.
Facing growing public pressure for action, the president recently unveiled a bundle of health care initiatives. Although fairly modest in scope, the proposals embody a conservative theory for fixing America's health care ills that is quite radical. According to this theory, the way to restrain runaway health care costs is to make individual consumers more cost conscious. The more people use their own money to pay their medical bills, instead of relying on insurance, the more they will insist on getting good value for their health care dollar.
The problem is that most people do not relish the idea of comparison shopping when they are sick. And even if they did, they would not have access to reliable information about what constitutes high-quality health care or a good value. Moreover, the administration's attempts to encourage Americans to shift from group coverage to individually purchased health insurance favors the fittest among us at the expense of the sickest. By undermining the risk-pooling benefits of group coverage, it could create the worst of all worlds -- a Darwinian health care system that is even less equitable than the current system without being more efficient.
Taken together, the President's proposals would undermine the employer-based system of group purchasing through which the overwhelming majority of Americans get their health insurance. Moving away from the job-based system might make sense if the president was proposing to replace it with something better, but he is not. Instead, the administration envisions a world in which individuals "go it alone" in buying health care, rather than pooling the risk of major medical expenses with their fellow workers. That would indeed be a boon for healthy people, since they would be able to buy cheaper coverage. Yet it would mean higher costs for sick people, whose premiums would rise, and it would fail to reduce the number of Americans without any kind of health insurance. Finally, the Bush plan would not even restrain runaway health care costs, since insurance companies -- not cost-conscious individuals -- would still cover the bulk of all health care spending. In short, it represents yet another instance of the triumph of radical individualism and market fundamentalism over a progressive politics of mutual responsibility for health care security.

THE MASSACHUSETTS PLAN SPEARHEADED BY A REPUBLICAN GOVERNOR...............
Massachusetts has become the first state in the nation to enact a law that will ensure nearly all of its residents have health insurance. It is a bipartisan achievement that passed with nearly unanimous support in the state legislature; only two Republicans voted in opposition.
The plan relies on an individual mandate -- an idea that PPI has championed for more than a decade -- as part of a new bargain between the commonwealth, employers, and Massachusetts residents: The state government will accept the responsibility of making health care coverage more affordable and widely available, using subsidies and other measures. Employers will either offer traditional coverage, or provide their employees access to a menu of private coverage options. And Massachusetts residents will be responsible for getting covered.
Once subsidies to needy families are fully funded, we can in good conscience require everyone to obtain coverage. An individual mandate would add more young and healthy individuals to the insurance pool, thereby lowering everyone's premiums and reducing cost shifting.
The challenge now will be for the state to ensure that there is an honest and sustainable stream of financing to make coverage affordable. It will also be more important than ever to restrain runaway health care costs. But Massachusetts starts with a solid framework that has three key provisions:
1) Subsidies to make coverage widely affordable. The state will provide subsides for health insurance based on a sliding scale for all residents with incomes up to three times the poverty level. Many poor Americans don't have coverage because Medicaid, the low-income health care program, usually doesn't cover adults without children. Another problem is families with moderate incomes who make too much to qualify for Medicaid, but still cannot afford health insurance premiums that average $11,000 each year. Massachusetts will fill these gaps in coverage in large part by redirecting public funding for hospitals that provide free care for people who do not have coverage.
2) A purchasing pool to make a choice of coverage widely available. The new purchasing pool -- the Commonwealth Health Insurance Connector -- will offer a menu of private health plan choices similar to the one available to federal workers through the Federal Employees Health Benefits (FEHB) program. Massachusetts employers that don't currently provide coverage will have a strong incentive to participate in the pool; they will be liable in some circumstances to pay a "free-rider surcharge" when uninsured employees or their dependents rack up big hospital bills. Employers will not be required to pay for their employees' coverage under this provision, but at a minimum they must play the administrative role of providing employees access to the Connector's menu of private health plan choices. Even without mandatory employer contributions, employees' out-of-pocket costs for their coverage will be considerably less than if they tried to get coverage on their own, because of all the new subsidies in the law and because employers will be required to let their employees pay for health coverage with pre-tax income.
3) Penalties for individuals without coverage. Massachusetts will require all residents to obtain coverage or face a penalty. Initially, the penalty will be the loss of a personal exemption on the resident's state income tax return. Subsequently, the penalty will be pegged to half the cost of health insurance coverage. The goal of this individual mandate is to stop people who have the financial means to obtain coverage from relying on free care. Nationally, a quarter of the uninsured have family incomes over $50,000.2 But often they do not pay for their own care when a catastrophe strikes because hospital emergency rooms must provide care regardless of a patient's ability to pay.
The only part of the Massachusetts reform where bipartisanship has broken down is over a nominal, so-called "fair share contribution" that employers would have to pay if they don't contribute to the costs of their employees' health coverage. It would max out at $295 per employee per year, an amount calculated to reflect a portion of the costs that the state absorbs when it provides free hospital and physician services to uninsured people. Gov. Mitt Romney (R) made a show of labeling it "a new fee on businesses," and used his line-item veto to strike it from the law, even though the legislature is likely to override him.
Despite that bit of local political theater, Massachusetts' reform achievement is laudable. It is nonetheless important to keep in perspective. The state started from an enviable position. It ranks 8th among all states for its level of employer-based coverage, and 14th in overall coverage.3 The nation as a whole has much further to go to cover everyone.
That's why it's critical for the federal government to pass reforms that will bring the rest of the states up to the level of coverage currently enjoyed in Massachusetts. As an immediate step, it should provide subsidies or tax credits to make coverage widely affordable and create purchasing pools that a make a choice of coverage widely available. That's the idea behind the Small Employers Health Benefits Program Act, sponsored by Sens. Richard Durbin (D-Ill.) and Blanche Lincoln (D-Ark.), and Reps. Jim Cooper (D-Tenn.) and Ron Kind (D-Wis.).4
Ideally, subsidies for coverage and purchasing pools would be part of a large-scale reform that would require everyone to obtain coverage. Reform should also restrain costs by rewarding health care providers and plans that reduce waste and improve the quality of care. It should promote information technology that enables everyone to protect the privacy of their medical records and to improve their health and health care. Finally, it should include an American Center for Cures to speed medical breakthroughs, especially for the growing problem of chronic diseases.
Massachusetts has taken a bold step forward. It is time for the nation to do the same. Maybe then people like Adam Sprau won’t have to go to such extreme lengths to get the basic necessities of life in the richest country in the world.

BEFORE THERE WAS KATIE, THERE WAS DAN, WALTER AND DOUGLAS! DOUGLAS WHO? DOUGLAS EDWARDS, THAT'S WHO!!!

Douglas Edwards began his career at CBS serving under Edward R. Murrow, during the final days of World War II. He stayed on as a correspondent in Paris helping to prepare for CBS's coverage of the Nuremberg trials. Edwards returned to the States in June 1946 and was chosen to anchor the "CBS World News Roundup". He soon became the first major radio news reporter to take up television duties, reporting twice a week. It wasn't an easy decision for him to make, in fact his initial reaction was to say no to the offer. Television was considered unworthy for serious journalists, a sideshow and dead end, by many in broadcasting and print. Not only that, but Edwards would have to give up the substantial additional income which radio advertising provided to announcers. It took Frank Stanton, the president of CBS, to convince him that, far from being a dead end, television was the wave of the future, and Edwards accepted the job.

Edwards and his small staff wrote and edited each broadcast and were, indeed, pioneers in developing the format for television new reporting. While Edwards and his crew found solutions to many unique situations in this new world of television, one particularly difficult problem was fundamental in video broadcasting. In order to read the news, Edwards, along with all other news broadcasters, would look down at his text, then back at the camera. This was distracting to the viewer and disrupted the flow of the reporting. Cue cards were introduced, but had the disadvantage of being to the side of the camera, so that eye contact was still not maintained with the audience. Don Hewitt, the director/producer of the program, and future producer of "60 Minutes", suggested memorization, which wasn't a real possibility for so much material on a daily basis, and even asked if Edwards would learn braille. In the end, a CBS technician created an early version of the teleprompter which scrolled the text over the camera and, finally, solved the problem of the newscaster and the viewer looking at each other.
The "CBS Television News" began as a Saturday night broadcast, expanding to two nights in 1947 and becoming "Douglas Edwards and the News" on a nightly basis on August 15, 1948. Another major leap forward in television news reporting came in 1948 when Edwards led the broadcast team at the Republican, Democratic, and Progressive national party conventions in Philadelphia. At this time the broadcast was seen by 30,000 views in just five eastern cities. By the mid-1950's it would be viewed by over 30 million.Rival NBC began its television news efforts in 1949 with John Cameron Swayze as the newscaster. From this point forward the competition between the networks for viewers was intense. With the flashy Swayze as anchor and his "hopscotching for headlines" approach to the news, NBC quickly jumped into the ratings lead. Viewers' tastes matured as the 1950's progressed and Edwards more business-like approach put his program back in front by 1955. Ratings would have significant behind the scenes effects on television news, and Edwards' career. This period was Edwards' heyday. His ubiquitous presence at CBS was remarkable--Anchorman of "Douglas Edwards and the News" (1950-1962), the main evening news broadcast; host of the "Armstrong Circle Theatre" (1957-1961); host of "Masquerade Party" (1952-1960); "anchorman" for the Miss America Pageant (1957-1961); host of "Answer Please" on the radio (1958-?); host of "FYI" (1960). One of his more unusual posts was on the radio soap opera "Wendy Warren and the News" (1947-1958). Edwards appeared as himself in each episode to read the news and chat with Wendy Warren, as played by Florence Freeman.
He covered the attempted assassination of President Truman, Queen Elizabeth II's coronation, the attack on the House of Representatives by Puerto Rican nationalists, and presented an eye-witness account of the sinking of the Andrea Doria. Edwards was recognized for his work by Emmy nominations for Best News Commentator or Reporter in 1956 and for Best News Commentator in 1958 and 1961. He won the George Foster Peabody Award for distinguished achievement in television journalism for his coverage of the Andrea Doria sinking, and the Hamilton Times Award for his "objective and dramatic presentation of the news of the world" in 1956. He was recognized as one of the "Immutable Images of Oklahoma in 1960 and received the Big Red Apple award from San Jose State for meritorious service in American journalism in 1961.Even while Edwards was riding his wave of success, the ratings underpinning his ride were beginning to weaken and internal jockeying for the anchor's chair began at CBS. Walter Cronkite had taken over the anchor duties at the 1952 political conventions and become the regular, and very popular, CBS reporter for major events over the next decade. There was an ongoing campaign by some at the network to put him into the anchor's seat, but Edwards continuing success precluded that move through the late 1950's. Meanwhile, Chet Huntley and David Brinkley had taken over the NBC evening news broadcasting duties, and their attractive teaming put NBC back into the ratings lead as the 1960's arrived. Without mentioning those ratings, the administration decided that it was time for a change at CBS and, on April 16, 1962, Cronkite took over the anchor duties from Edwards.While a number of issues were raised in the decision to replace Edwards as anchor, the primary one was his generally bland image. His voice and presentation were comfortable, but the network felt a more powerful approach was necessary to fight the ratings battle and Cronkite's presentation fit the bill.
Edwards wasn't too surprised by the change, but was disappointed when CBS wouldn't release him from his contract or reassign him to a position at a level his long service seemed to deserve. Whatever the reasons for the change, and however he felt about it, he was the first to congratulate Cronkite on his new position and to let him know there was no ill will. Cronkite would later say that it was " the classiest damn thing I ever saw." And, perhaps, that's as good an epitaph as any for Douglas Edwards' career in broadcasting. He stayed on at CBS, working on both television and radio for another 26 years before retiring in 1988, though his career as a major player ended that day in April 1962. On his retirement, his old colleague from the early days in Detroit, Mike Wallace, said, "He has not been flashy, and he has not been sensational--he's been solid."After a long fight with cancer, Douglas Edwards died Oct. 13, 1990.

WLYN NEWS FANS.....If you'd like to show your support for Hazleton's news source, WLYN, visit the WLYN news store. Here's the link to their website.http://www.wylntv.com/default.html