It is a channel flipper's delight. On CBS, Mike Wallace kicks off 60 Minutes with a profile of Texas Zillionaire H. L. Hunt. On NBC, Sander Vanocur introduces First Tuesday's study of guns and violence in the Philippine Islands. Back to CBS, where Harry Reasoner is watching the New York City police track down dope pushers; then switch to the peacock as Vanocur presents the life of a typical New York City policeman. Now Reasoner is reading humorous letters to the editor; Vanocur is winding up a light look at wigmakers for tots . . .
As the battered 1968-69 season limps toward summer reruns and oblivion, two of the liveliest shows left on the air are the network newsmagazines. Since they compete head to head, the problem is figuring out a way to watch them both. One solution is to watch First Tuesday the first Tuesday of the month and 60 Minutes the third, when its rival does not appear. However they're watched, the shows prove that network news, thinly sliced, can be as entertaining—and sometimes as superficial—as most variety shows.
Easy Answers. After introducing the TV magazine format last fall, 60 Minutes found a pleasing combination in its team of Harry Reasoner (wry essays, light sociology, neighborly wit) and Mike Wallace (aggressive interviews, hard-hitting reporting, biting wit). Yet aside from two informative stories on inequities in the U.S. welfare system and homosexuality in a state prison, 60 Minutes has drawn most of its items from the world of pop sociology. Lighthearted bits have been aired on the ski boom, shoplifting and the esthetics of ugliness. One piece on Rock Singer Janis Joplin might better have been on the Ed Sullivan Show. Seemingly for lack of imagination, the CBS magazine has built many of its more serious stories around interviewing celebrities. Too often, television inquisitors seem content with the most flatulent answers, though in one feisty exchange with Student Leader Daniel Cohn-Bendit, Mike Wallace seemed more intent on discrediting Cohn-Bendit's radical ideas than on hearing out his position.
NBC's First Tuesday has problems of a different order. At two hours, it is far too long, no matter how good the stories. Last week a sensitive—and not always flattering—portrait of a New York City policeman was buried deep in the program. Sander Vanocur's evocative interview with Clay Shaw, portraying Shaw as Kafka's loseph K. in the Mardi Gras world of New Orleans, was the night's ninth story. First Tuesday's 50-minute investigation of the Army's chemical-biological warfare program, by far the best single story produced by either video magazine, came on after some overlong exotica on Turkey's whirling dervishes. The show's sluggish pace is not always quickened by Vanocur, who seems faintly uncomfortable in the studio's surrealistic, futuristic setting.