Well here I sit, exactly one week after the end of 2007 Press Tour, and if I close my eyes, I can still smell the chill, filtered air of the International Ballroom at the Beverly Hilton. Over to the left! The silver tureens of coffee...Over to the right! The claque of network executives, awaiting innocent passerby’s (critics) to ensnare... And straight ahead: A forest of laptops opened and ready, reflecting in their many screens the blear-eyed stone-cold gaze of a critic who is about to hear (yet again) why a star just had to come out of retirement for a fabulous new show, or why a producer decided to insert a particular scene in a particular drama that everyone (him included) pretty much knows will be canceled by October.
It's terribly easy to lampoon the institution of the "Press Tour" and pretty much everyone has - it's been grand sport for years, by other critics, attendees, the networks, and loftier scribes who wouldn't be caught dead at this "long, brutal, mind-deadening schnorr..." But I was caught dead there - for two straight weeks, a strangling member of this death march with cocktails, in Tim Goodman's (of the San Francisco Chronicle) memorable phrase. But after eight long years away, I also came away with some other impressions. And here they are:
Observation No. 1: Deeper respect.- Yes, I have a deeper respect for my fellow scribes, who work this confab with urgency and professionalism that is both admirable and often quixotic. They tilt valiantly, and honestly, at the windmills erected by the networks, and do so well knowing that most of what they are hearing is utter, inarguable, inescapable BS. They prod and they poke. They seek an entrance, a ray of light, a scrap of genuine information that can justify why they are here and why this is meaningful. And they do it knowing full well the futility of the effort most of the time.
So why are they here anyway? The value of the press tour, I've determined, is an “atmospheric” one as opposed to an informational one: By osmosis, the attendee absorbs so much stuff - crap and all - that he or she gets a richer, more nuanced picture of exactly what is going on in television, along with all the various forces that that are shaping it. It's useless to gauge the press tour as a pure information-generating exercise - although there is, in fact, a vast amount of information piled on. Reason is, much of the information is as ephemeral as a fish carcass - rotting almost from the minute it's tossed on the beach. Cast/script/schedule
changes happen constantly, and what a star or producer says one minute is often obsolescent a minute or an hour later. Moreover, everyone's coached, so their words lack - as it were - both spontaneity and authenticity. (Which is really a very nice way of saying that large swathes of most sessions are a crock.)
Observation No. 2: Paranoia: This press tour dripped with it - a sense of fear, obsolescence, irrelevance, and anxiety seemed to creep into every conversation. There was a pervasive sense that the critical beast - the newspaper legman or woman who conveys information and opinion about comes over the nation's airwaves or cable wires - is doomed, much as the institution of network TV may be doomed (not to mention the very print papers they work for).
That's an overstatement, but you get the idea: Change is everywhere and the critics here are scrambling to adapt to it. The best I could tell, many are adapting remarkably well - almost all were blogging, and all (best I could tell) seemed to embrace the idea that change and adaptation were as much a part of their job description as reviewing.
But here's the fundamental problem, and the press tour perfectly captures their inescapable plight: There is so much stuff everywhere, from viral videos to bad sitcoms, that it's beyond the grasp of even the most competent critic or TV writer to absorb it all. We're now mere bystanders, wondering what readers - if they still exist - want, while fully suspecting that most have already set their media table, and we don't even have a seat at it. Readers - that mythic creature again - rely on RSS feeds for their news, a dozen websites for entertainment news, and a myriad others for streaming video.
And there we sit, listening to Lucy Liu talk about what dress she'll wear in "Cashmere Mafia" or whether Jeff Foxworthy talks to the kid contestants before they get on the air. We stare into our laptops and Sancho Panza stares back.
Anyway, the critics - 150 or them by my count - worked with passion and diligence. Most clearly love TV and clearly believe that they'll figure a way out of their current crisis. It's my hope - and maybe even my belief - that we will.
Lucy in the sky with press critics. And what WILL she wear this fall?