When ZDTV came onto the air, I shrugged.  Didn't get it.  Something was missing, from the start.

     It took me some time to figure out what the appeal was -- because it certainly had some -- and what it was that was missing from the format, or style or whatever it was.

     Then they began the Netcam-giveaway blitz, and I finally got it.

     There was no Father.  For decades, since the beginning of TV, I had been used to what you've become used to, as well; the image of the older, wiser man, who gave out the News as he saw and interpreted it, and in a form that made it seem the Received Wisdom of the day.

     He didn't exactly talk down to me; no good newsman does that (and most of the people I'm thinking of were real newsmen).  But he did speak from a metaphorical pulpit, where he read from the Lesson for the Day.  And told me what he thought I ought to be thinking about.

     Not necessarily what he wanted me to think.  What he thought I ought to think about.  That was his job; to let me know what he, an Expert, thought I should direct my attention to.

     And that was what was missing from ZDTV.  Nowhere in sight was there any kind of Father, benevolent or otherwise.  There was Leo, and there was Kate.  There was John Dvorak, conducting ZDTV's closest approach to a conventional convention of Talking Heads, and he was a sort of mini-father.  But even he didn't do it with much force, and his noisy round-table didn't seem to be what the core of the network was about, anyway.

     Here's what I think is really the core of ZDTV, and the reason for its success -- and the reason other networks should watch out.  ZDTV has killed off Father Knows Best.

     The experiment has been tried before.  Remember The Monkees?  They tried the series with a pilot that contained a Father Knows Best character, and the pilot failed miserably.  The world was changing, and kids no longer felt safer if they had a sage around to hold their impulses and instincts in check.  When they tried it again, dropping the interfering manager, The Monkees took off and became one of the top television shows of that terrified era.

     But the News didn't change.  The Father on the News became friendlier and closer to his listeners, but he never dropped the suit and tie, and he never relinquished the authority that gave him the final say in what the people would be interested in, that week.

     Now things are changing.  Who's the most popular man on TV?  If it isn't already Leo Laporte, it will be, tomorrow.  And Kate Botello is going to be the most popular woman on TV, no matter what the groomed and perfumed Mothers on the other channels do.  Unless, they, too, put on mismatched skirts and tops and, in between spurts of relevant and insightful advice, dance around the set or make hats or binoculars out of their fingers.  Unless they learn to make silly faces behind the Leading Man when it's his turn to be Relevent.  Unless, that is, they begin to act as if decorum didn't matter, very much, relative to the intelligence and depth of the ad libitum utterance of the Personality.

     For this is what matters on many of the new ZDTV shows; they star people who are not stars, and who know their stuff well enough to dare live appearance in the medium where tape is usually the first resort of the dumbfounded.

     They act, in a single word, like geeks.  They are geeks.  I know that because they tell me so.  Every chance they get.

Geeks rule!

     Here's the scanario:  Somebody asks Leo a question, and he doesn't know the answer.  Pause here to reflect on how unusual this is; TV hosts never don't know the answer.  Except for Leo, who is cool enough not to mind.

     Leo:  "Oh, heck, I don't know.  Maybe somebody with the brains to figure it out will call us and tell me where I went wrong."

     Caller:  "Leo?  It's in the Registry, all right, but it's hidden inside the FWUMPTYLEVEN.DLL, under `Satan.'"

     Leo:  (with a calm smile)  "Oh, yeah; why didn't I know that?  Thanks, fellow-geek."

     Caller is on a netcam, he's fat, his hair is wild, he has acne and a hare-lip and nobody on regular TV would ever consider using him as anything but filler or a sympathy-grabber.  Here, he's the Expert, and the Expert, Leo, is smart enough, and secure enough, to stand back and let him be what he is.

     So is Kate.  So, for that matter, on another show, is John Dvorak.  So, it seems, is everybody on this silly channel -- geeks rule, here.

     And that's it.  That's all it took, apparently, to make a new network win viewers from the conventional ones, in masses large enough to give the Big Three nightmares.  Somebody has finally tapped the Geek-pool!

And Now, the News

     Now what?  We have a network that uses the approach that all men are created equal, so now what?  Well, how about Ahmed Geek calling in from Baghdad?

     Picture this:  Instead of canned reports (or as well as canned reports, probably) we see a fat, young Iraqi, with wild hair and acne, who tells us that the streets outside are quiet, because people are terrified of the missiles that will be falling here within ten or fifteen minutes.  He points his wobbling, wavering Netcam out the window, and we see an old lady with a donkey, scurrying for cover that doesn't exist, and an infant, forgotten, for the moment, sitting in the middle of the dirt road of this suburb, looking about helplessly for someone to remember him.  And we wonder if this is the only way.

     Then cut to another Netcam, this one inside the palace where Saddam is lurking.  We see Saddam hurry by, and snap off a quick shot, killing the impudent geek servant who dared to use Baghdad's restricted cable-system to send a live picture over the Web.  The wobbly, wavery netcam falls to the floor, and we see feet retreating up a corridor.  The camera goes dead.  And then we see a Leo-type, feeding the signal back into the Iraqi Underground's Public Net, saying, "Well, let's see if this works..."

     This may be impossible.  I may have made a mistake.  Let me know, okay?  

     Geeks rule.

Copyright 1998; Malcolm Beckett