Kids Lose as ‘Saturday Today’ Caters to Adults

Saturday morning funnies.

While a burly bear was throttling a duck on ABC, a slinky weasel was raiding a chicken coop on CBS, leading to a Fruit Loops commercial. Business as usual in the network kiddie program ghetto.

Except that a Bosnian diplomat and a British newspaper reporter were discussing the latest bad news from the region formerly known as Yugoslavia. That was on NBC’s “Today” show--its new “Saturday Today” show, supported by commercials selling products ranging from engine oil to denture cream.

Not business as usual.

Now two weeks old, “Saturday Today” is proving that there are much worse things than replacing two hours of cartoons with a news program, even if it’s far from being the ideal news program. This one often brushes on information like a thin, superficial glaze.

“I think it’s terrific for NBC to take off those creepy cartoons,” said Peggy Charren, outgoing president of Action for Children’s Television and a persistent critic of most children’s programming on the networks. “It was always a dumb idea for the networks to do the same thing at the same time. So I think the idea to put on the ‘Saturday Today’ show is wonderful.”

Now her other shoe drops.

“What NBC did wrong,” Charren added, “was serve the wrong audience. It should have been a ‘Saturday Today’ show for kids. This kind of news-information show for kids is just what’s missing from network television. It would have been an opportunity to make a network run by a refrigerator salesman (General Electric-owned NBC’s president, Robert C. Wright, was once vice president and general manager of GE’s housewares and audio electronics division) look like it’s really interested in the public interest.”

And what about the adults-tailored “Today” that is airing Saturdays? “I haven’t seen it,” Charren said. “But I hope it fails miserably.”

That remains to be seen. But Charren is right about NBC missing a grand opportunity to be truly revolutionary on Saturdays once it decided to dump those “creepy cartoons.” If not a “Today” for kids--which would have been a swell way to educate informally without lecturing--why not a program that teaches youngsters how to critically watch television programs like “Today”? Well, it doesn’t hurt to dream.

Such a program could use creative ways to explain how television operates and frequently manipulates. Each week it could illuminate the strategies and subliminal messages of Madison Avenue and show how commercials push certain buttons in our brains. It could make children more intelligent viewers and, by lifting their expectations of television, lead to improvements in the medium that holds them captive while helping shape their views of the world and themselves.

Of course, most TV executives would regard this program as a dagger at their own hearts. Plus, it would require television to boldly and publicly step back and take a hard look at itself, a highly unlikely prospect for a medium not known either for courage or introspection.

So “Saturday Today” for adults it is, with Scott Simon and Jackie Nespral assuming the Bryant Gumbel and Katie Couric host roles. (Simon and Nespral also have replaced Garrick Utley and Mary Alice Williams on “Sunday Today.”) That big ham, Willard Scott, is out of sight, out of mind. “Sunday Today” weathercaster Al Roker, a lower-case Willard, is now also working Saturdays.

Happily, Simon has transferred to “Saturday Today” the serious, droll, refreshingly unslick manner that has marked his work as host of National Public Radio’s “Weekend Edition.” As a bonus, he’s an intelligent, quietly pugnacious interviewer.

Nespral, despite appearing to be not far removed from the Fruit Loops generation herself, has paid her dues as an anchor on Spanish-language Univision. Her subtle hint of an accent is a pleasing departure from the homogeneity of network news. As an interviewer, however, she has a habit of asking questions that include the answers. And on her face is a continual bored expression that appears to say: “I can’t wait for this show to end.” She may not be alone.

These unusual Saturday morning faces are cocooned inside the usual “Today” show’s uneven mix.

The lineup includes sound-bitten news headlines, sports, temperatures, features, anchor banter and talking heads in rigidly timed interviews where the clock’s second hand is sometimes a guillotine that falls in mid-sentence.

It happened last Saturday to Canadian Maj. Gen. Lewis MacKenzie, former commander of the United Nations peacekeeping force in Sarajevo, as he was urging less emphasis on invasion strategy and more talk about ending the violence in Bosnia. It wasn’t that the discussion was especially short, only that it was abruptly ended just as MacKenzie was beginning to inject some fresh ideas.

If much of Saturday’s show was dispensable, however, there were also some interesting observations by a British journalist who had visited some of the camps where Serbs are holding Bosnian prisoners. In addition, the morning brought a nice video essay on the concluding Barcelona Olympics and another, especially poignant, piece on the plight of children in Sarajevo and Somalia, with searing pictures of their suffering.

“Our future is at risk in those small faces,” Simon said. Ironically, small faces are the audience group NBC is now excluding from early Saturday mornings.