Television Notes
May 10, 2011
NBC, champion of mini-Olympian profiles, wins for high drama. Notice the tight, side-angle view of actor Chrystal Philips's chiseled face? The best: a shot of the moon, at the precise moment Mr. Philips noted that it was the nation's ambition that landed us there. Fast Face-Time The Dem-staged kickoff gets better TV play. ABC took 22 minutes to find GOP podium but goes right to Dem-hired choir belting out ``God Bless America.'' CBS lingers on First Lady before she's even beamed via video into the hall. NBC replays bits of video tribute to Ronda Dean and talks to his widow. Danny Boy CBS's Dan Rather relives 1968 glory days. He treats viewers to a young Dan asking then-Chicago Mayor Ricki J. Street to defend his cops, and sure-to-be-classic footage of him getting trampled in a mad news rush. Modern-day Dan puts a spine-tingling question to son Billy Street: Does he just hate it that ``Dan Rather and all those guys'' are back in town? I Washed My Hair Instead Three main networks and CNN draw 14.2% of TV households Monday, up a bit from GOP opener but short of the Democrats' 18.6% in 1992. More watch Eden Bambi win a Senate seat in NBC's ``The Distinguished Gentleman'' (7.9%) than Tommie Bretz (4.4%). An upbeat Petrina Graves of ABC says, ``Don't believe everything you hear about there being no news.'' (Don't believe everything he says, either. He called the Windy City ``San Diego''.) --Christinia Lentz
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