Mike's Pockets: The Crawl


December 15, 2001



BROOKE GLADSTONE: And now we're joined by OTM's Producer at Large Mike Pesca who comes on the show every once in a while to talk about something in the media that's bothering him; something that he stuck in his pockets. So it's a feature we call "Mike's Pockets." Hello, Mike.

MIKE PESCA: Hello, Brooke.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: Okay, I know what you've got in your pockets this week. It's "The Crawl," that is what was once a rarely seen device but now is omnipresent on all the 24 hour news channels. It's the practice of scrolling headlines and bits of news from right to left across the bottom of the screen while the anchors and the reporters do their thing on top.

MIKE PESCA: Well sometimes it's bits of news and sometimes it's messages like "go to MSNBC.com and sign up for the MSNBC e-mail alert." But the crawl reminds me of nothing so much as Times Square which is crawling with crawls, or when they're outside they're called zippers. So I went there and I talked to some people about crawls and zippers. I even met a professional electronic signmaker who offered something of a zipper critique.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: Hm! Let's hear that.

MAN:See there's one down there; I was just looking at it and it's just kind of zipping across, and there's that 20/20 -- see that 20/20 --that's real slow.

MAN: Too slow.

MAN: And the other one over there is too slow too. The way those letters are formed, they're too hard to read anyways. Cause it's done in blocks. But this has to do with lamp configuration here, and that's why that's like that.

BROOKE GLADSTONE:Let's save the lamp configuration technology for the next Science Friday shall we? Were you just wandering Times Square bothering people with crawls and zipper questions?

MIKE PESCA: Well, you, you told me to do that! [LAUGHS] We in the business, the media business or specifically the "on the media" business -- we tend to look at developments like the crawl and we see fancy gimmicks, and we tend to dismiss them out of hand. But I read this quote in Entertainment Weekly where David Rhodes [sp?] who is a news executive at Fox News said that the only people who criticize the crawl are media critics. He said I have not seen evidence that viewers are turned off by it.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: And I gather you have evidence to the contrary.

MIKE PESCA: Well Mr. Rhodes, I offer you Exhibit A.

MAN:It's good-- in the beginning, but then it gets annoying. You know, it gives you a little update, but then it's just constantly over and over.

MIKE PESCA: Okay so it's a quick way to catch up in a hurry, but if you're going to watch -- what's your threshold if you're going to watch for more than how many minutes does it become annoying?

MAN: Half hour.

WOMAN: It distracts me.

MIKE PESCA: Do you find yourself reading and not paying attention to what they're saying or do you find yourself paying attention to what they're saying and not reading?

WOMAN: I find myself reading what is underneath, yes.

MAN: Sometimes it's the same thing over and over again, you know, so if you're watching it for a couple of hours it gets annoying but I guess it has to be that way for the new people that are watching and just kind of flicking through.

MIKE PESCA: Now -- you're kind of assuming that people aren't going to stay for more than, I don't know, how many minutes?

MAN: Ten minutes - 10, 15 minutes.

MIKE PESCA: All right, so by doing the crawl you're basically saying that we're here to be watched at 10, 15 minute chunks.

MAN: Yeah.

MAN: When it gets to be too repetitive, it gets annoying.

MIKE PESCA: All right, and what's your threshold? How many minutes until you say ohp--! That's it for the crawl.

MAN: Ten minutes, tops.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: Well that tape started off interesting but was quickly getting annoyingly repetitive.

MIKE PESCA: Well that's because there was unanimity in opinion. The crawl helps people get caught up in a hurry but then it wears out its welcome. Almost everyone I talked to said that, and a word that kept popping up was multi-tasking, which meant that people watch the news, they read the words, and then I assume they enjoy a pop tart.

BROOKE GLADSTONE:[LAUGHS] Now did people recall the old days when the crawl really meant something? You didn't used to see words scrolling along the bottom of the screen undermining what the anchor was saying unless it was really important -- a hurricane, a war.

MIKE PESCA: Right. And that's exactly what I talked about with one man I met. His name is Doug Shading.

DOUG SHADING: Well I called NBC one night because they would give off their little "tone" that means that Channel 4 is just alerting you to something.

MIKE PESCA: Now Doug Shading we should know here is blind, and the "tones" he's talking about -- I have him doing them right here--

DOUG SHADING: dun DUN dun [NBC MUSICAL SIGNATURE].

MIKE PESCA: Those tones used to mean, like you say, something earth-shattering. But Doug, because he couldn't see the words, was desperate to know what they were saying.

DOUG SHADING: But then they would do the -- you know, they'd pitch for 11 o'clock, and it'd be like something stupid! So I'm thinking well what is this?! So I called up, and they told me some garbage news that was going on that they thought people needed to know, and I said well-- you know - geez, if it's important we're going to break into the show and we'll alert people that it's important. And I said oh, all right.

MIKE PESCA: So the networks are in danger of becoming The Boys Who Crawled Wolf, [LAUGHTER] and that speaks to my last point -- whenever you'd criticize the news judgment of the 24 hour channels -- why are they doing this story - why are they obsessing with Jon Benet Ramsey? - it would always come back to the fact that they had 24 hours to fill this huge gaping news hole, and what does the crawl do except expand the hole? On the other hand, you know, maybe it's just that we in radio are jealous.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: [LAUGHS] Well, Mike, thank you very much. [BOTH SPEAK AT ONCE]

MIKE PESCA: Wait-- instead of you saying thank you, I want to try something. Could you try that again?

BROOKE GLADSTONE: Okay. On the Media's Mike Pesca, who is the producer at large of-- [BOTH SPEAK AT ONCE]

MIKE PESCA: Fact: Fox crawls at 115 words per minute; CNN and MSNBC both at 105. [BOTH SPEAK AT ONCE]

BROOKE GLADSTONE: -- [...?...] but we here at On the Media aren't quite so hierarchical to get hung up on things like that-- Thank you very much!

MIKE PESCA: You're welcome.