While I was on vacation I noticed something about the morning news programs. Everybody calls everybody else by name constantly. “Back to you, Rita.” “Thank you, Fred: I’m here with Ethel and Lucy to talk about back scratchers for under ten bucks. . . .back to you in the studio, Bart.”
The last time I saw names used so much was when I was reading comic books, and then it was just to enforce in young readers the fact that everybody knew who everybody else was. Do we really need that in our news programming? Are viewers so dense that they can’t remember the names of the same half dozen people they see each morning?
The only time I pay attention to the name game is when somebody new is filling in, such as when Anderson Cooper sat in for Regis Philbin on the “Live” show: the announcer then moved co-host Kelly Ripa to the front of the roster because she was the one half of the pair actually onstage that morning. It was jarring to hear that deviation from the norm.
On “60 Minutes,” only Andy Rooney doesn’t appear onscreen to introduce himself to the viewer: usually the last person onscreen gets the distinction of saying “Those stories, and Andy Rooney,” as if the poor fellow doesn’t get a headshot privilege. Why not?
Human beings often have a love/hate relationship with names. We only want to hear our own names when something good is coming such as a promotion or something. Mispronounce a name and watch people’s faces screw up in disgust. Speak the names of some famous or infamous folks and get tons of reactions all around.
I read recently that a family named their child Adolf Hitler (I don’t recall the last name), and apparently a store refused to place the moniker on a birthday cake. I like seeing my name on a cake, preferably chocolate. Since nobody normally prepares a birthday cake for the real Adolf Hitler, maybe the store was just trying to avoid a trend.
Back to you, Katie.
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