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Forty-two years after ‘Network’ premiered, issues raised in the fi lm are as relevant as ever as it shifts to Broadway

TV’s Timeless ‘Mad’ Man

Bryan Cranston as Howard Beale in the Broadway stage adaptation of Network.

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NETWORK, THE 1976 FILM about a rat-ings-challenged news anchor who vows to kill himself on the air, and sees his Nielsen numbers skyrocket as he delivers loose-cannon jeremiads about politics and media and corporate America to viewers, is set to premiere on Broadway. Bryan Cranston plays anchor Howard Beale.

While the story is set four decades ago, the play — and the not-so-dated movie before it — raises some pressing and familiar issues about the media’s role in our lives today.

Beale is wrestling with the public’s dedication

to the almighty box sitting in their family rooms. “ is tube is gospel, this tube is the ultimate rev-elation,” he shouted on the stream-of-conscious-ness-driven Howard Beale Show, which took the place of his staid newscast. “ is tube can make or break presidents, popes and prime ministers. is tube is the most awesome goddamn force in the whole godless world!”

� e Howard Beale Show is something of a precursor to the personality-driven, soliloquy-rich content one nds on cable news today. e lm, said � e New Yorker, “was uncannily prescient

about our outrage-fueled news-as-entertainment culture, foreseeing the likes of Sean Hannity, Jerry Springer and Laura Ingraham by decades.” 

Every night, some 27 million to 29 million people tuned in to see Walter Cronkite deliver the CBS Evening News, according to Forbes magazine. Beale did a little better than the Most Trusted Man in America as his new program took o . As the anchor starts to become unglued, he’s visited by a ghost. He asks the apparition why he’s been approached. Because you have 40 million Ameri-cans watching, he is told. Jan

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Bryan Cranston on stage as Howard Beale in the Broadway theatrical version of Network.

At right, Peter Finch as Beale in the 1976 Hollywood fi lm.

Howard Beale Is Still Mad as Hell Forty-two years after ‘Network’ came out, story of unhinged news anchor takes the stage on Broadway

BY MICHAEL MALONE@BCMikeMalone

ANALYSIS

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People loved watching Beale’s “angry prophet” routine, but as happens with viewers, they lost interest over time. His boss, Diana Christensen — she’s played by Orphan Black star Tatiana Maslany — tells Beale he’s “dropping like a stone” when his audience share falls below a 40.

Network chiefs today can dream about that 40 share. e average audience for the evening newscasts on ABC, CBS and NBC stands at 5.2 million viewers apiece, said comScore TV Essen-tials, a 7% drop from the year before.

But that’s not to say people aren’t consuming awesome amounts of media. Last year, Fox News Channel generated some $2.67 billion in revenue,

CNN tallied $1.59 billion and MSNBC took in $798 million, according to SNL Kagan. Seeking to reach its consumers on the go, Fox News launched its OTT product Fox Nation last week. For six bucks a month, users get on-demand programming starring the likes of star-polished personalities Tomi Lahren, Britt McHenry and Sean Hannity.

Fox News senior vice president of development and production John Finley likened the new chan-nel to a combination of Net¤ ix and Facebook Live. “It’s kind of a hybrid mix between the two,” Finley said, “in terms of format and o erings.”

It’s safe to say Beale would be blown away by Net¤ ix, even though he would probably be disap-pointed by the platform’s lack of news. Net¤ ix is spending close to $13 billion on original content this year, according to � e Economist, way up from $8 billion a year ago. If one can’t swing the eleven bucks a month, one can simply stand in Times Square, a quick hop from where Network shows at the Belasco eatre, and watch the massive digital billboard showing Net¤ ix clips all day long.

Standard Deviation Beale also lamented the breakdown in the lofty

standards the news business once held itself to. “Television is not the truth,” thundered Beale. “Television is a goddamn amusement park. Tele-vision is a carnival, a circus, a traveling troupe of acrobats and storytellers, dancers and jugglers and sideshow freaks, lion tamers and football players.”

Speaking with � e New York Times, Cranston — who, of course, played methamphetamine-making Walter White on Breaking Bad — shared his own thoughts on the state of news media. “We’re seeing it now, very clearly: agendas of di erent outlets, to promulgate their ideology,” he said. “Whether

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Bryan Cranston as Howard Beale and Tony Goldwyn as Max Schumacher on set (top) and on

the town (center). At bottom, Tatiana Maslany as Diana Christensen, Julian Elijah Martinez and

Network cast members in the UBS control room.

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it’s liberal or conservative. It doesn’t matter, it’s out there. And you listen to the people who agree with you for a§rmation, and you listen to the other side so you can get angry and shout at them.”

TV news today, Cranston added, is a “news-en-tertainment program.”

Fittingly, oversight of Beale’s program gets shift-ed from the news division to programming, with all the entertainment series. As programming chief Diana Christensen discusses the show with news president Max Schumacher, played by Tony Gold-wyn, who portrayed the U.S. president on Scandal, she doesn’t think much of the network’s news standards. Its newscasts are “straight tabloid,” she says, mentioning a recent 1½-minute story about a naked lady riding a bike through Central Park. “I don’t think I’ll listen to any protestations of high standards of journalism,” Christensen scos. “If you’re gonna hustle, at least do it right.”

Speaking of U.S. presidents, Beale might be prepared to leap — rather than scream — out the window over a president who derides stories that criticize him as “fake news,” and famously denied a press pass to a CNN reporter he often clashed with. ( Jim Acosta’s credentials were restored days later.) Just last week, President Donald Trump took to Twitter to express his desire for a federal news network, because, he said, CNN does not do a good job of portraying the U.S. A “worldwide” network would “show the World the way we really are, GREAT!” he said on Twitter.

e general public’s opinion of TV news isn’t a whole lot higher than the president’s. Some 50% of U.S. adults get news regularly from television, according to a study earlier this year from Pew Research. at’s down from 57% a year before that.

Around 46% of Americans turn to local TV for news, ahead of the 31% who use cable news and 30% who turn to broadcast network stu.

And 43% of Americans often get their news online, while Pew said a whopping 93% of U.S.

adults get at least some news online. Plenty of online sources are legit, with veteran reporters covering the basics of journalism. In the coming weeks, CBSN Local premieres, marrying CBS

News’s four-year-old streaming channel with its local news outlets. WCBS New York is rst.

But countless other online news sources t the president’s fake news description.

Remote Vote Christensen, Network’s network programming

chief, says TV networks have little responsibility

to deliver responsible, virtuous content. “We’re not in the business of morality,” she tells news chief Schumacher. “We’re in the business of business.”

Its TV network was just one aspect of the port-

folio belonging to Communications Corporation of America, the ctional behemoth in Network. CCA presaged the corporate monoliths con-trolling the media today.

Can we hold our news sources to higher stan-dards than Christensen does? After all, the viewers are ultimately the ones who decide if a news net-work thrives or dives. Might we take a more active role, with remote or mouse or phone in hand, in clicking o the outlets oering news that does not hit our standards?

Howard Beale implores his viewers to take a stand against the untruths he felt were streaming out of the tube back in the ’70s. “Turn o your television sets!” he howls. “Put an end to this mad-ness. Strike a blow for sanity. Right in the middle of this show. Turn o your TVs and set yourself free, goddamnit!”

His bosses weren’t wild about that message from their ornery host, but it didn’t end there. “Get up out of your chairs right now, stick your heads out the window, and yell,” Beale memorably exhorts, “I’m mad as hell and I’m not gonna take it anymore!” n

“We’re not in the business of morality. We’re in the business of business.”

— Diana Christensen (Tatiana Maslany) in ‘Network’

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The stage adaptation of Network is running at New York’s Belasco Theater after a successful London engagement.

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