For Cosby Coverage, It’s Business as Usual

Call it anguished schmoozing.

Bill Cosby’s interview with Dan Rather is remarkable far less for its emotional content than for the fact that it occurred at all. Just 11 days after the murder of his son, Ennis, the grieving father summons CBS News anchor Rather and a camera crew to his New York studio to chat intimately and candidly about Ennis, the slaying and its impact on him and his wife, Camille? And he also resumes working on his CBS sitcom, “Cosby,” because he needs to work and America needs to laugh?

Amazing, inspiring.

If anyone doubted that Cosby was an unusual, even extraordinary man, his conduct during this dark period for him and his family provided evidence, from his televised talk with Rather to his generous calls to suffering Loretta Thomas-Davis, whose 17-year-old daughter, Corie Williams, was slain in Los Angeles the same day that Ennis Cosby died.

If anyone doubted that something as widely reported as the Ennis Cosby slaying would ultimately serve TV ratings strategies, however, there was evidence of that, too.

First came Sunday’s announcement on KCBS-TV Channel 2 that the interview had taken place and would be featured that evening on its “Action News.” Instead, viewers were tossed a couple of titillating sound bites and told that the interview would be aired on Monday’s “This Morning” program on CBS and that night’s edition of “The CBS Evening News.”

Then on Monday, tiny excerpts surfaced during “Action News” programs preceding the network’s evening newscast, which led with a larger slab of Cosby-Rather, then strategically held a smaller segment for the end of the half hour, followed by Rather announcing that more of the interview would air on Sunday’s “60 Minutes.”

Six days later!

Just in time for the crucial February ratings sweeps.

Unlike large newspapers and stations in huge markets with giant news chunks to fill, a 22-minute network newscast hasn’t space for anything lengthy. And perhaps it would seem exploitative to air Cosby-Rather in snippets throughout the week or to play it out during prime-time CBS news programs “Coast to Coast” tonight or “48 Hours” Thursday. But delaying much of it until “60 Minutes” definitely does give it a taint.

Meanwhile, there was more. Here was “Action News” anchor Michael Tuck at 6 p.m. Monday: “Dan Rather talks to us about his exclusive conversation with Bill Cosby.”

Yes, from a promotion perspective, the story had traveled beyond the message, Cosby, to the messenger, Rather, who had been interviewed by Channel 2 reporter Linda Alvarez about his interview with Cosby.

One important facet was initially missing, however. It remained to be seen whether someone else at “Action News” would interview Alvarez about her interview with Rather about his interview with Cosby.

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GOING TOO FAR. On Monday, Oprah Winfrey became the latest TV figure to label Bill Cosby “America’s father.” Isn’t that supposed to be George Washington?

Just as many were unaware that O.J. Simpson was an “American hero” until hearing TV reporters say so to justify their initial inflated coverage of the murders of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman, it also wasn’t widely known that Cosby was “America’s father” until he was anointed that by some in the media covering the slaying of his son, Ennis.

A paternal image has clung to Cosby since his success as a patriarch on his former NBC sitcom, “The Cosby Show,” and his subsequent campaigns to upgrade family viewing on TV.

That persona of beloved role model may take somewhat of a beating now that Cosby has admitted to Rather that he long ago had an extramarital “rendezvous” with the mother of a 22-year-old woman now charged by police with seeking to extort money from the TV star unless he acknowledged her as his daughter. Cosby has denied that he’s the young woman’s father.

Yet even all of that aside, if he were truly “America’s father”--as if any one person could wear that title in such a diverse nation--then surely his subsequent TV efforts would have been more successful in the ratings, and his moderately successful new sitcom, “Cosby,” would be a bigger hit on CBS than it is.

Although KNBC-TV Channel 4 had the judgment this week to more accurately define Cosby as “one of America’s favorite fathers,” the hyperbole of others has generally stuck, largely as a media rationale for the over-coverage granted his son’s slaying.

“I don’t think there’s anyone left in the United States who doesn’t know what happened to the son of this comedian,” Cosby told CBS’ Rather.

You can understand the Cosbys being proud of their son and wanting to see him memorialized in a way that celebrates him and gives meaning to both his life and death. What parent wouldn’t empathize? Yet the coverage has really been something, as if the celebrity father himself had died instead of his mostly unknown son, the weight of this attention elevating one murder above all others.

With one exception.

While focusing mainly on humorous and poignant memories of Ennis Cosby from his closest friends, Monday’s Oprah show also was host to Loretta Thomas-Davis. She spoke lovingly about her slain daughter, Corie Williams, who also has earned VIP status in the media, mostly because she died in Los Angeles returning from school on a bus the same day that Ennis was killed, and no one wanted to be accused of favoritism. Appearing to move especially swiftly because of that media focus, moreover, police have already made arrests in her case.

The irony looms large. If not for the slaying of Ennis Cosby, Corie Williams would be nearly as anonymous to most Americans as Bill Cosby’s son was before his death.

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SUPER BULL. As Sunday’s Super Bowl telecast affirmed, the Fox pro football announcing team of Pat Summerall and John Madden is greatly overrated.

Summerall gives new meaning to minimalist. And Madden, after so many seasons of bluster, has plenty of that remaining, but nothing left to say. He says it anyway, however. His sage advice to the New England Patriots when they were down, 35-21, to the Green Bay Packers late in the game: “They have to think two touchdowns.”

Of course, unlike one of the teams on the field, the Fox broadcast team received no divine assistance.

Viewers who stayed for the post-game show learned that the outcome was not in the hands of the players on the field. Asked by Fox for his comments after the game, Packers veteran Reggie White gave God credit for his team’s win. He wasn’t asked what he thought God saw in the Packers that made God favor them over the Patriots. Or with so many global crises to keep an eye on, what the Almighty was doing watching a football game.

God knows.

In any case, with the Dallas Cowboys already buckling under the heavy mantle of “America’s team” given them by many in the media, will the Packers be known now as God’s team?

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DIGIT-AL EFFECTS. “The X-Files” is nearly always something to behold, but the Fox series really outdid itself Sunday night after the Super Bowl, airing not only one of its darkest and ickiest episodes of the season--sporting lots of peeling, oozing flesh and an antagonist kept alive by cancer cells--but also its wittiest.

Although Scully (Gillian Anderson) was her usual stony self, Mulder (David Duchovny) poured on the black humor. Mulder to Scully after sighting a severed bloody thumb on the ground: “Siskel or Ebert?”

Thumbs up.