TV News Values Its Ratings in HBO’s ‘The Image’

It was hard to like almost anybody in “Network,” Paddy Chayefsky’s angry satirical film about television news, which seems less and less a fantasy with each passing year.

It was hard to really like almost anybody in “Broadcast News,” James Brooks’ cutting look at network journalism. Even Albert Brooks, though lovable in the movie, was really a wimpy nerd, or maybe a nerdy wimp.

And it is hard to like almost anyone--oh, except maybe one old-time, reasonably principled producer--in tonight’s HBO movie “The Image,” which stars Albert Finney as the most trusted man in America, the headliner of a hugely successful network TV news magazine, “Here and Now,” which, of course, bears no resemblance to “60 Minutes.”

Why are most of these people so hard to take? What does it say about our image of television news? The people in TV news are certainly no better or worse as human beings than those who toil in print. There are wonderful TV news shows like “Nightline” and exemplary reporters such as Ted Koppel and Charles Kuralt and David Brinkley.

Yet why does one feel like taking a bath after associating with the characters in “The Image,” a hard, unpleasant and glitzily slimy band of folks whom only a person with warped values could possibly think of as glamorous?

Answering that question is where “The Image,” which airs at 10 p.m.--and is repeated Wednesday and Feb. 5, 8, 11 and 17--succeeds best. What the story tells us most effectively is that talented people who presumably wanted their jobs for good, solid reasons have been bent out of shape--principles, personas and all--because of the crazy race for ratings, which sometimes can result in stories being rushed onto the air before they’re ready in order to win, win, win.

Several years ago, Roger Mudd, one of the best of all TV journalists, gave a historical perspective to what he termed “the intensified competition.” He noted that it “followed the dramatic change in the network situation dating from the ‘50s, when you had, in effect, two networks, CBS and NBC, and that competition was gentlemanly, so to speak. You had great documentaries. You had men like Cronkite and Brinkley on the nightly broadcasts. . . .

“With the rise of ABC and cable and Ted Turner (CNN) and C-SPAN and VCRs and home movies, the demand on viewers’ attention became greater, and CBS and NBC and ABC had to compete more heavily. To maintain their share of audience, they had to reach further and further, and that meant lower and lower. The first victim was the documentaries.”

Packaging and marketing the news became as important as the substance. Hey!--Peter Jennings is flying to California to do a story. Wow!--Dan Rather is going to Midwest farm country to originate his newscast. Gee!--Tom Brokaw will do his program from the Berlin Wall. Well, isn’t that what they’re paid to do--cover the news? Who cares about their travel plans? What’s the big deal?

The image, that’s what. So back to “The Image.”

Once you accept the fact that America’s favorite newscaster (Finney) has a British accent--I know, I know, Jennings is Canadian, but that’s different--the story is perversely entertaining as a nasty and therefore reasonably intriguing B-movie.

What we are dealing with is a charming but fatheaded TV news star who has lost touch with the human side of his job as he glibly suckers people into ambush interviews and sleeps very nicely afterward--but not with his wife (Marsha Mason). That’s another part of the story--he’s lost touch with her, too, and takes up with his researcher (Kathy Baker).

His old producer-pal (John Mahoney) keeps playing on his conscience. But the ramrod producer who controls the series (Swoosie Kurtz) could frighten off the Wicked Witch of the West; she also says things like, “OK, folks, let’s make television history.” In short, not an original.

And that’s the only reason to hope as you watch. You ask yourself whether Brian Rehak, who wrote “The Image,” and Peter Werner, who directed it, perhaps really hated the whole frantic setting and the phonily charming dialogue and most of the characters. Perhaps not, but one hopes they did. Surely the message is that this is what can happen when things run amok in TV’s new pressure cooker.

A strong message. And the crunch comes when a story about a savings and loan scam is rushed onto the air to fill a hole in the show during the ratings sweeps, and one of those interviewed for the segment commits suicide. Finney’s old pal Mahoney is convinced that “Here and Now” screwed up, causing the suicide. He flies back to the scene to learn the truth and invites Finney to follow--in short, to go back to basics as a human being and a reporter.

It’s painful to witness the well-intentioned but cloying ending. Suffice to say that Finney finds redemption and nasty producer Kurtz suddenly is born again, too. Looks good between Finney and his wife, too. Oh boy.

You couldn’t sell that Andy Hardy ending to “Murphy Brown,” the delightfully skeptical CBS sitcom that stars Candice Bergen as a top reporter on a TV newsmagazine. And therein, perhaps, lies a clue to the images we now hold of television news. After such films as “Network,” “Broadcast News” and even a lesser but ambitious entry like “The Image,” we know the parameters within which TV news must now operate. Viewers are smart and tough and understand what’s going on.

Thus, in “Murphy Brown,” TV has found the perfect and perhaps only antidote for the reality of network news in the 1990s--acceptance of the truth, wrapped in humor and observed with a cocked eyebrow. No, Virginia, there isn’t any Santa Claus.

“Murphy Brown” and all of us, of course, can give a deep bow to “The Mary Tyler Moore Show” for cluing us in on the excesses of TV news right smack in prime time no less than 20 years ago. It debuted in 1970, and its wondrous collection of characters working in the newsroom of a Minneapolis TV station not only made us laugh but hinted at the darker truths of empty-headed anchors and broadcast priorities. It was more optimistic than “Network” and even “Broadcast News,” but perhaps just as devastating because of its weekly impact for seven years.

In their own way, “The Mary Tyler Moore Show” and “Murphy Brown” are angrier and more probing about TV than “The Image.” Despite an attractive cast, tonight’s HBO drama doesn’t draw its battle lines sharply, grandly or profoundly. It is angry, but not angry enough.

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