In Case You Missed It

Here's a recap of the second half of Monday's Nightly News, in case you missed it:

>We saw a story about a bridge across the Mississippi River (from Illinois to Iowa) being renamed for a Medal of Honor winner. No surprise--Nightly News runs several stories a week about MOH winners. Every time a MOH winner coughs, Brian Williams reports it. He obviously has some sort of obsessive hero-worship complex for MOH winners (he even serves on their board of directors). This story is not news and it's of no interest to anyone other than Brian. But it's his broadcast, so he reports what he wants.

>We were treated to a 3:10 story about Afghan orphans in the U.S. for medical treatment. Again, this is not news, but Brian has been reporting on these Afghan orphans since last Oct. 30 (although he tells us he first met them "just about a year ago", Oct. 30 was actually only nine months ago). Again--his broadcast, his stories.

>We then got a combined 90 seconds about the sale of Newsweek, how the Miami Heat have sold out the coming season because of LeBron James, and Chelsea Clinton's wedding. This was the eighth story Nightly News has done on Chelsea's wedding in the past month. Of course, they would have done more, but NBC did not air any Nightly News broadcasts on the weekend of Chelsea's wedding because obviously golf was more important.

>Nightly News ended with a two-and-a-half minute story about the death of Mitch Miller. We were reminded several times that Miller's sing-along show had aired on NBC from 1961-1966. We saw interview clips with Miller's son, who was sitting in front of a vintage NBC camera. We saw lots of photos and clips from the era--Rosemary Clooney, Tony Bennett, Buddy Holly, Elvis, Bob Dylan, the Beatles and Johnny Carson. This story was just an excuse to promote NBC and to feature celebrity footage. Every week, Nightly News does multiple stories featuring clips of celebrities. Viewers like to see celebrities on the news. It keeps people tuning in. It helps blur the lines between Nightly News and the shows that follow it--"Access Hollywood" and "Extra". In the past few weeks, Nightly News has featured clips or photos of Daniel Craig, Alec Baldwin on "30 Rock", Mick Jagger, the "Inception" movie, Marlon Brando, "Celebrity Apprentice", "M*A*S*H", "Seinfeld", Jay Leno, Jimmy Fallon and The Blues Brothers, to name just a few. Of course, many of these clips are from NBC Universal TV shows or movies. Why bother to have a Nightly News broadcast if you can't use it to promote your other properties? When "Law & Order" was cancelled, Nightly News did four stories on it.

So that's what aired during the second half of Monday's Nightly News. I sure hope you didn't miss these exciting news stories!