This one will be more sediment than sentiment.
For the entertainment of the public–and, oh yeah, science–the ocean-bottom wreck of the Titanic will again be disturbed, this time on an unprecedented, live, nearly worldwide telecast from one league (3 miles) beneath the sea.
Expect no tears, no dropped diamonds, no rumble-seat randiness, and no impromptu-yet-impeccable stepdancing in steerage.
Assuming no weather problems or satellite glitches, “Titanic Live” will present a bunch of cameras and submersibles poking about in the Titanic’s ghostly remains, a live drama (7-9 p.m. Sunday) whose villains aren’t upper-class snobs or an iceberg but some microorganisms that make hull-gobbling formations dubbed “rusticles.”
It is surely no coincidence that Discovery Channel is revisiting the storied one-cruise ship in the summer after director James Cameron’s movie earned the most money ever (without adjusting for inflation) and the adulation of uncounted enthusiasts, who respond to suggestions that the film had flaws the way a junkyard Doberman responds to a one-legged muffler thief.
But a 1996 special on a visit to the Titanic wreck, even pre-Cameron, was the highest-rated telecast in the history of Discovery, a cable channel that is sort of a cross, in a good way, between PBS and a science museum. That expedition disproved then-current theories that a series of small gashes, rather than one big one, caused the disaster.
The boatloads of extra viewers who tune in this time, thanks to the movie, should be prepared for visual disappointment: Deep-water photography does not jump off the screen.
Those of us, on the other hand, who have only seen “Titanic” projected on the wall of a Costa Rican seaside disco, in a pirated videotape version with Spanish subtitles and a color palette consisting of blue and green, will likely find it quite vivid.
The producers and scientists, some of whom spoke via conference call from New York and the North Atlantic earlier this week, hope to include at least an hour’s worth of live material in the telecast, and they are aiming for “deep penetrations” into the separated bow and stern sections.
Since their discovery in 1985, the remains of the Titanic already have been visited 130 times by four organizations, and there is considerable sentiment for leaving alone what is a sort of headstone for some 1,500 people.
As recently reaffirmed by a U.S. court, rights to the 1912 wreck belong to the RMS Titanic, a corporation whose plans to exhibit salvaged material and whose pulling up this week of a big chunk of hull has also caused controversy.
Still, as one of the scientists said in the teleconference, if that company yields its claim on the ship by failing to visit it at least every two or three years, then it will become an “open wreck,” where anybody with a snorkel could grab souvenirs.
The Discovery show will lean hard on science. Yet when you listen to the scientific reasons offered for this visit, they are not overwhelming. Among them: to test the metal and the rivets, to learn about ship construction circa 1912, to study the “rusticles.”
These things, though, seem mostly to add up to make some TV shows of wide interest. There were two segments this week aired by the “Dateline NBC” newsmagazine, a Discovery partner. And later, there will be a more-detailed Discovery special examining the latest findings.
But for now, Sunday, comes the story James Cameron might have been left to tell had the aged Rose never showed up on that salvage ship to regale the crew with her sad tale of the love she lost when young Jack didn’t have the good sense to get his own body up on a piece of floating debris.
– Coup de Talk: It is hard to imagine Comedy Central doing any better than it did this week, landing Jon Stewart as the replacement for Craig Kilborn, the decamping host of the channel’s nightly satiric news spin, “The Daily Show.”
Now that the music occasioned by the announcement of Kilborn taking a job with CBS has stopped and all the chairs are filled, here’s how the late-night room will look, come next January, when this stuff starts to take effect.
Tom Snyder, the crafty, quirky veteran whose calm-but-engaging CBS “Late Late Show” deserved more audience than it ever got, is leaving the air, retiring, another blow to televised conversation.
Kilborn, the sardonic ex-ESPN anchor, moves to a retooled “Late Late Show,” one presumably more in the Jay/Dave/Conan vein.
And Stewart, the hipster comic who has been the long-coveted prize in late night, ends up on a channel that is still trying to land on many cable systems but keeps making network stars out of its personalities (see also: Bill Maher).
Most recently known for shoving Larry Sanders aside in the fictional world, Stewart has proved his mettle in assorted hosting stints and standup specials. His wit is genuine, his craft assured, and he has a more appealing, woe-is-me tint to his persona than does the sometimes smug Kilborn.
But don’t count out Kilborn. A public spat with his show’s creator seems to have led to a growing press portrayal of Kilborn as a mere comic anchorman. But you don’t survive as host of a freewheeling show without having at least a bottle of wine to bring to the party. Kilborn has shown he can ad lib and is funny in interviews, and the usual M.O. on ESPN is for the anchors to write their own, quite clever stuff.
I’d certainly pay to see Stewart’s act first, but it all bodes for an interesting January.
