Overdressed

My god, what has happened to the Today show?

I know that the 8 o'clock hour has always been for the "soft news." But now! Now, they've gone too far. Now, they've gone and hired the after-8 a.m. MUSIC EDITOR.

Every. Single. Report after 8 follows this repetitive formula:

(some themed music)
Katie reads the lead to some emotionless b-roll
(Switch to second song of related interest)
Katie reads second sentence that generally starts with "But..."
(Yet another theme-realted song)
Sound bite from applicable personae
ad nauseum for the entire report until finally the music stops and Katie interviews a topical expert in the studio (without music).

For example, during the report on whether teens are getting enough sleep, they started out with "Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go" and segued into Billy Joel's "Pressure." It just went downhill from there. During the insomnia report, of course they made great use of that song, "Last night, I didn't get to sleep at all...no, no"

It's completely appalling. Really.

Posted by Kalisa on Friday, March 03, 2006 at 9:36 AM | Permalink