TV and News

The 2014-15 television season kicks off this week, and I know that Cristin Milioti stars in a new sitcom that has nothing to do with your parents meeting each other, "Black-ish" is the latest ABC sitcom to air in the slot after "Modern Family" (hence, it's likely to became ABC's latest failed sitcom), and "Parenthood" returns for a final, abbreviated season after having been an anchor for last season's NBC Thursday night lineup (which sank like the Titanic).    

I don't know much more than that.  Oh, I suppose I could refresh my memory by reading my own blog entries on the subject from back in May, which is pretty much the only way of seeing what's on TV short of turning on the set and checking the listings provided by the cable company.  Because our local newspaper in New Jersey has stopped including a TV-listings insert for free.  The Star-Ledger just introduced in its Sunday edition a syndicated TV-listings insert, adapted to accommodate local channels in different parts of the country, with far more detailed viewing information that the old Star-Ledger insert provided.  But you have to pay a separate subscription fee, an extra 67 cents a week, which adds up over time.  And so my mother and I are not ordering it.  We'll instead check the listings provided by the cable company on our TV screen or just go by memory.      

Why not check the listings in the daily paper?  Because we have only a partial subscription that skips Mondays, Tuesdays and Wednesdays, and besides, the Star-Ledger no longer prints daily TV listings, now that it's charging a fee for the weekly listings, which we used to get at no extra cost.  Meanwhile, the Star-Ledger itself is becoming more overpriced as the paper is becoming underdeveloped. In a recent revamping of the paper, the editors have made it shorter, merged the op-ed and statewide news section with the entertainment section, and introduced so much color that it looks more like USA Today.  The only thing missing is the use of cartoon pie charts.

It's sad to see a once-great paper become a shadow of its former self.  It's also sad to see what's happening to the Star-Ledger, which at its best was always a horn-tooting publication for New Jersey (practicing journalism talking about how great the state is, the kind of booster talk Omar Bradley would have called "hometownism") and somewhat dry in style.  But at least under its previous editors - including the long-serving Mort Pye - the Star-Ledger not only strove to be the best paper in New Jersey (which it is, albeit by default) but also one of the best papers in the country.  Now it's trying to be the best printed-out Web site in journalism . . . if indeed it's trying at anything at all.