Trustworthy Faces: The Image Deficit of WGME-TV
By Kenneth White
In May 2007, the WGME-TV 13 News Team premiered a two-minute recording for presentation before feature motion pictures in the new Thomson Technicolor Digital Cinema projection systems of Zyacorp’s Cinemagic stadium theaters in Westbrook. It is styled as a public service announcement regarding theater etiquette. News anchor Kim Block asserts the audience is “about to see a great movie at the region’s premier family entertainment cinema.” Says news anchor/reporter Jeff Peterson, “Yeah, you know, it’s digital. That means no film. This viewing experience is going to be like nothing you’ve ever seen before.” Sports director David Eid follows: “You’re not kidding. I’ve heard the hundredth show will look just as good as the first!” “That’s cool,” gushes news anchor Gregg Lagerquist.
WGME-TV’s endorsement of Cinemagic theaters displays a clear ethical blunder. Christine Tatum, national president of the Society of Professional Journalists, called the recording “one of the biggest assaults on journalistic integrity ever to hit the silver screen.”
What is of further interest in this celebration of digital projection and financial gain is the lack of image control exhibited by WGME-TV.
As Kim Block greets viewers, the electrical current of her microphone is clearly audible. The tone returns throughout the entire audio track, between each line of inane script voiced by the News Team members. The crushed blacks of Jeff Peterson’s sport coat went unnoticed by the commercial’s producers.
The News Team members present themselves as being off-duty from objective reportage, but still capable of delivering genuine information. Their gazes scan us back and forth, back and forth, as each reads the teleprompter. They reveal themselves as only verisimilitude. These self-described “trustworthy faces” are not fake enough.
These are not honest newscasters forced into the position of stilted actors. Rather, they are bad actors selling a performance that does not fit. Flush with euphoria for new technology and captive audiences, their one-dimensionality gives way to the dynamism of video. They wilt under the x-ray of digital. Their limited charisma and technical prowess disintegrates under the power of their new mode of production. The quintessential lighthouse behind them breaks up in purple-fringe projection, as do their names, shown below each of them as they speak. Their information is no match for the medium of delivery. The WGME-TV News Team does not survive the 16-meter screen.
This recording must not be dismissed as a lapse in judgment by an ill-equipped, small-town CBS affiliate. The commercial is a calculated profit-sharing enterprise to maximize access to viewing subjects.
Portland is the 74th–largest television market in the United States. Each week, more than half a million viewers receive their news from WGME-TV. By Zyacorp’s estimate, 30,000 viewers see the commercial each weekend.
WGME-TV general manager Terry Cole told media critic Al Diamon, “any time you get your anchors in front of a fixed audience, you do it.” Cole’s entrepreneurial spirit is, in the term of media theorist Jonathan Beller, the “cinematic mode of production”: an operation in the service of monetary value extracted from viewer attention.
The production faults — the image deficit — of WGME-TV’s Cinemagic commercial are breaks in its attempted media hegemony. For WGME-TV and Cinemagic, digital video is a readymade vehicle for their feigned-folksy capital schema. They saw a new stream by which to sell their one-way image communication. In their attempt to exploit new markets, WGME-TV in fact revealed the failure of their premise. Their monetary pursuit is exposed by their technological ineptitude. WGME-TV and Cinemagic do not control their media.
This commercial is not a case of lo-fidelity, Down East rustic aesthetics celebrated within a high-end framework. Rather, it displays the presumption that the mode of delivery provides de facto credibility. The New Team’s stiff attempts at humor belie their inability to comprehend contemporary image vocabulary. Which is more ridiculous: news as spectacular exploitation, or the incompetent image traffickers who attempt to sell it?
“Is that everything?” asks Lagerquist, after his colleagues remind viewers to use the proper trash receptacles and to keep silent during the movie. “Actually,” answers anchor Kiley Bennett, “we have to tell everybody about our show!” Lopresti calls out, “That’s right. Turn to Portland’s most watched five o’clock newscast: News 13 Live at Five.”
A more aggressive WGME-TV recording now plays at Cinemagic theaters. It follows the form of their network commercials. Pixilated Cinemagic and WGME-TV logos buttress each newscaster’s name. Lopresti: “We’re here to give you the information you need.” Rather than mentioning the five o’clock newscast with feigned casualness at the conclusion of the recording, Bennett declares it at the outset. We are told to join the News Team every night for “the facts,” just as we are joining them now at Cinemagic.
Of course, WGME-TV and Cinemagic write their “facts” together. What partnership writes “the facts” of WGME-TV’s nightly broadcasts? “Believe Your Eyes,” states the Dolby Digital advertisement that follows the News Team’s video. Such encouragement is chilling.
Kenneth White is an interdisciplinary artist, writer, and programmer. A founding member of the Portland Film + Video Artists Collective, White is currently conducting doctoral studies in art history at Stanford University.
