Frank Magid, creator of "Action News," has died

"We do recognize that we're going to incur the wrath of the traditionalists. New ideas are always in danger of being beaten to death by those whose apple carts they upset."—Frank Magid, the television executive credited for inventing "Action News" and making local TV news insipid and formulaic. He died last Friday of lymphoma at age 78. (via telstarlogistic)

• [Rob Beschizza]

  I’d comment, but I’m busy watching what Angelina Jolie is doing in Haiti on CNN.

• [cymk]

  I didn’t know I could “thank” one person in-particular for the shitty state of news television today. God forbid you actually tell someone the news, you have to feed it to them as “entertainment” for them to give a damn.

  Thanks Frank Magid. Thanks for everything.

• [Roy Trumbull]

  It was a rat-a-tat-tat sequence of very short stories with no detail or substance but there were a lot of them. I worked for a station that was advised by his company.
  One night we had a story about a plane forced to land in Denver because of a bomb scare. End of story.
  Another station’s more leisurely news explained the detonator was wired to detonate at below 1000 feet. Denver being at 5000 feet was safe. But by gawd we crammed that and 5 other stories into the time it would take to do one story right.

  • [Xenu]

    Thank god Keanu Reeves was on that plane.

• [omnivore]

  film at 11

• [Joe]

  All he did was to replace one formula with another. When he started, the standard TV news formula was to have a middle-aged white guy read news reports (often lifted straight from newspapers or wire services) off sheets of paper.

• [Anonymous]

  /b/…er…the news was never good.