The Merry Magazines

It is a channel flipper's delight. On CBS, Mike Wallace kicks off 60 Minutes with a profile of Texas Zillionaire H. L. Hunt. On NBC, Sander Vanocur introduces First Tuesday's study of guns and violence in the Philippine Islands. Back to CBS, where Harry Reasoner is watching the New York City police track down dope pushers; then switch to the peacock as Vanocur presents the life of a typical New York City policeman. Now Reasoner is reading humorous letters to the editor; Vanocur is winding up a light look at wigmakers for tots . . .

As the battered 1968-69 season limps toward summer reruns and oblivion, two of the liveliest shows left on the air are the network newsmagazines. Since they compete head to head, the problem is figuring out a way to watch them both. One solution is to watch First Tuesday the first Tuesday of the month and 60 Minutes the third, when its rival does not appear. However they're watched, the shows prove that network news, thinly sliced, can be as entertaining--and sometimes as superficial--as most variety shows.

Easy Answers. After introducing the TV magazine format last fall, 60 Minutes found a pleasing combination in its team of Harry Reasoner (wry essays, light sociology, neighborly wit) and Mike Wallace (aggressive interviews, hard-hitting reporting, biting wit). Yet aside from two informative stories on inequities in the U.S. welfare system and homosexuality in a state prison, 60 Minutes has drawn most of its items from the world of pop sociology. Lighthearted bits have been aired on the ski boom, shoplifting and the esthetics of ugliness. One piece on Rock Singer Janis Joplin might better have been on the Ed Sullivan Show. Seemingly for lack of imagination, the CBS magazine has built many of its more serious stories around interviewing celebrities. Too often, television inquisitors seem content with the most flatulent answers, though in one feisty exchange with Student Leader Daniel Cohn-Bendit, Mike Wallace seemed more intent on discrediting Cohn-Bendit's radical ideas than on hearing out his position.

NBC's First Tuesday has problems of a different order. At two hours, it is far too long, no matter how good the stories. Last week a sensitive--and not always flattering--portrait of a New York City policeman was buried deep in the program. Sander Vanocur's evocative interview with Clay Shaw, portraying Shaw as Kafka's loseph K. in the Mardi Gras world of New Orleans, was the night's ninth story. First Tuesday's 50-minute investigation of the Army's chemical-biological warfare program, by far the best single story produced by either video magazine, came on after some overlong exotica on Turkey's whirling dervishes. The show's sluggish pace is not always quickened by Vanocur, who seems faintly uncomfortable in the studio's surrealistic, futuristic setting.

In strained efforts at sophistication, both 60 Minutes and First Tuesday often take what one producer calls "lightly satirical" potshots at easy targets. Though irony sometimes amplifies a story--as in the case of NBC's report on religious bigotry in Northern Ireland and CBS's caustic look at Palm Beach millionaires--it can just as easily be gratuitous. Last week the First Tuesday segments dealt with a weight-reducing "fat farm" and a Christian anti-Communist crusade. Both fell into the void between irony and farce. Harry Reason-er's 60 Minutes visit with the Duke and Duchess of Windsor was stretched for 20 minutes-- and then its mood was shattered by one of the show's sophomoric "Digressions," involving inane wisecracks from a pair of silhouettes. Like many TV news shows, the magazines resort to seemingly significant film clips--slum dwellers lounging on doorsteps, bearded students on motorcyles--that are becoming visual cliches.

Still, the TV magazines have brought a welcome sense of whimsy to the unblinking big eye. In a piece on Joe Namath, CBS rang a cash register every time he passed the football. To spice up an interview with Karl Hess, Barry Goldwater's onetime speechwriter, First Tuesday flashed on stills of Robert Taft and Henry David Thoreau every time their names were mentioned. The NBC sound men played Zing! Went the Strings of My Heart during an interview with Philip Blaiberg and spun off Tchaikovsky's 1812 Overture while a French count's hunting party slaughtered hundreds of pheasant.

An innovative style, coupled with rising popularity (both shows have in the past topped ABC's That's Life in the ratings), promises to make the TV newsmagazines network fixtures. If the trend continues, TV news may finally find its place as a marketable commodity, turning out jokes as well as Laugh-In, making satiric thrusts as well as Gomer Pyle.

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