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Published on 01/18/1999 All articles from this issue

'Live' TV coverage - limited, fleeting and replayed

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By David L. Grey

Media Watch

Instant history, recreated replay. That is much of what television news, especially as recently dramatized, is. What it is not is especially localized.

Of course there are some local (really Bay Area) news moments and trends along with weather, business, sports or travel. This type of coverage is typically of more psychological proximity than immediately geographical.

Occasionally there will be a backyard story-the 15 or maybe even 30 seconds of attention to something literally in our neighborhoods. There is nothing especially wrong with mostly not-near-our-home coverage; it is just the nature of the television medium: limited, as is each mass audience channel of information and entertainment.

We have to pick and choose or, more pointedly with the technology, rotate and rechoose. What we are consuming is a combination of history recreated and instantly replayed and sometimes endlessly recycled.

Not much is very live or live for long in on-site TV coverage. When we get first-hand moments they almost immediately become "live videotape" and then are soon edited into visual sound bites and sometimes played over and over for different audiences at different times in different contexts.

From ballpark, stadium or arena to White House and nation's or state's capital we get to relive history, however fleeting.

As examples, many of us were absorbed in the 49ers' final playoff seconds Jan. 3 but how many of us really felt we had grasped "the Catch II" until there were chances to restudy fully that live TV blur?

Or how many of us actually witnessed live on TV last January President Clinton waving his finger in denial? Do we even care now how that moment was transmitted?

State of the Union? Maybe we follow for long minutes into a few C-Span, movie-like hours, but television has become so much of our mind's recorded eyes and ears.

It is no wonder then that famous-event crowd counts may double or triple over time because our experiences, indeed, have become like being there. After all, perhaps we were in a crowded room and we saw-speech highlights replayed and re-reinterpreted.

And personal? Over time, maybe as much so. Initially, when someone asks, "Did you see ... ? " we tend to respond without pausing to add "yes, on TV." If we happened to be have been there in living, real-world colors then we could embellish so. But that would be another kind of story - first person to be mixed with all other accounts, including later TV reviewing.

So we have allowed our world and perceptions to be edited both for us and by us-and to add some psycho-jargon: to be filtered by selective attention, perception and retention.

It is here where media history has to be carefully monitored because in early stages it is at best impressionistic. And as so-called videotaped realities blend into cable and high-definition TV and ever-interactive Internet exposures and searches, we realize our selected information and entertainment sources are rapidly - for good and otherwise - coming of age.

David L. Grey, Ph.D, is professor emeritus of journalism at San Jose State University where for 24 years he taught and did research on media law and ethics. He is a Mountain View resident.