One More Lost Spoiler

In case you can't wait until tonight's episode, here's a look at the first island scene from tonight's new episode -- the first of the season four!

CBS' Bob Schieffer Sets Retirement Date; But He's Said That Before

  I had a bit of a chuckle when I read the New York Times article in which Face the Nation host and former CBS Evening News anchor Bob Schieffer announces he's "probably" going to retire after January's inauguration. I was laughing, because Schieffer told me two years ago that he'd probably retire in a year when he turned 70.

Now the fact that the 71-year-old anchor told the New York Times about his plans "probably" means he's a bit more serious. And the retirement target date he told me just happened to be the time of most turmoil at the Katie Couric-led CBS Evening News, when then-executive producer Rome Hartman was fired and Couric was absorbing a tremendous amount of flak for the show's tanking ratings. Schieffer leaving then would have been taken as a vote of no confidence, particularly since he's faced a mountain of speculation that he was the anonymous source of some anti-Katie press stories.

Still, Schieffer has been talking about retiring since before he took over the Evening News when Dan Rather was ousted. And at a news organization when guys like Mike Wallace (81) and Morley Safer (76) are still contributing, there may be pressure for Schieffer to hang around and keep the Katie Couric-led news department from floundering.

Here's what he told me in 2006:

Deggans: Is there a point where your patience is going to run out?

Schieffer: "I'm going to be 70 years old a year from now, and I've kind of set that as the place where I'm going to hang it up. I would guess long before then they're going to know who's going to have this job permanently. I had planned to retire last year, if the truth be known. I wasn't going to retire completely - I hope they can find a place for me on election night in 2008 - (but) I have reached the stage of my life where I want to spend more time doing other things."

Liveblogging Rather One Last Time: His Strength is In the Charts

Rather has just finished a 15-minute Q&A with a surprisingly sparse audience here at Eckerd College's Miller Auditorium -- facing a group which seems evenly divided between young hopeful students and older folks who may be teachers or activists.

It's in settings like this that Rather shines best, wearing his avuncular Texas formality like a comfy old overcoat, offering folksy phrases and straight-talking charm to hold the audience in his sway.

One person asks how pundits can make predictions for the general election when Florida has so many independent voters, and Rather notes "he who lives by the crystal ball, often winds up eating a lot of glass." When an earnest young woman asks about the importance of the youth vote, the 76-year-old anchor gently notes that old political hands often dismiss young voters as vocal enthusiasts who don't show up to the polls.

"I'm not one to give advice," he said to chuckles from the small crowd. "But if you're asking, I'd tell young people to circle election day on their calendars and make sure they get out and vote."

To my eyes, this was not the Rather we'd come to see during CBS election coverage -- a time which seems an eternity away. Back then, the famously tense anchor seemed wound tighter than a porcupine in a balloon factory, balancing the weight of CBS News' reputation on every prognostication and observation.

On the smaller stage offered by HD Net and Eckerd College, Rather could relax a little, throw out some interesting questions and let the conversation flow. It might not have felt as important as the big shot network or cable TV presentations, but for political wonks who want a bit of smart political strategy with their election returns, it was a pretty good broadcast.

To prove my wonkiness, I'll admit my favorite aspect of the show was the data Rather's team collected on the election. Here's a sample of the stats they gave viewers:

From Jan. 1 to 22, Giuliani ran 2,878 TV ads in Florida, compared to 1,392 for Romney and 470 for McCain -- the exact inverse of election results (if I were Gov, Crist, I'd keep those numbers in my back pocket to show the power of an endorsement from one popular politician, versus a blanket of expensive TV ads). Romney aired more ads over the entire election -- 4,475, compared to Giuliani's 3,067.

Rather also listed where candidates' money came from. Clinton and Obama got the most money from commercial banks; Giuliani and Clinton got the most money from Big Tobacco companies; McCain and Clinton got the most money from telephone companies and utilities; Clinton and Obama got the most money from big pharmacy companies; Giuliani and Romney got the most from oil and gas companies and Clinton and McCain got the most money from lobbyists. (Donnie Fowler noted Obama had 100,000 more individual donors than Clinton, suggesting more people writing smaller checks).

The former CBS anchor pledges to offer five hours of coverage during Super Tuesday next week from California. And my inner wonk might not be able to resist tuning in.

 

Live Blogging Rather: 2nd Ratherism of the Night

By 8:30 p.m., we had our second homespun Dan Rather quote, when the Texas native noted "you can't put a cigarette paper" between warring Republicans John McCain and Mitt Romney.

Local pols such as Herb Polson, Earnest Williams and Jamie Bennett sat in the audience at Eckerd College's Miller Auditorium. Demand prompted the college to open up its much larger Fox Hall for observers to watch a simulcast.

So far, the discussion has been informative, if low key and a bit wonky. George Lemieux, a former staffer for Gov. Charlie Christ, joined the two political consultants with Rather onstage, drawing chuckles when he noted that officials had a bit of trouble with touch screens in Palm Beach County -- deja vu all over again! -- but expected few glitches besides. (he also stressed the touch screens will be gone by November's presidential election)

Rather also offered an update on his voting machines story.

With 44 percent of precincts reporting, McCain still has 34 percent compared to Romney's 32 percent. Lemieux claimed 40 percent of people questioned in one poll said Crist's endorsement of McCain changed their vote (I know we have a popular governor, but really!) He also noted that McCain's ability to take Giuliani votes and Romney's ability to take Huckabee votes may decide the contest.

Each consultant also had at least one good line. Red stater Mike Murphy noted the high volume of robotic phone calls, saying "I always though the one tax a candidate could run on was a tax on automated phone calls (applause); people hate them, but they're really cheap." Democrat Donnie Fowler noted blue staters were 10 times more pessimistic about the economy "because Republicans watch Fox News, which tells them everything is great...maybe you believe what you want to hear."

Fowler also read off emails from both the Obama and Clinton campaigns spinning the election results (Obama's people called a tie with Clinton; both got zero delegates). He also found it surprising that Hillary Clinton hasn't yet earned more than 50 percent of the vote, despite status as the best know candidate in a field which didn't campaign here.

Fortunately, the commercial breaks are short, giving Rather lots of time to speak on the unfolding drama. Prepared pieces on the I-4 corridor and election machine controversies also helped keep the evening humming along.

Murphy's big prediction: both Romney and McCain are going to try and get Giuliani and Huckabee out of the race, to try and get voters friendly to those candidates to turn their way during Super Tuesday. No wonder these guys get six-figure consulting fees!

Live Blogging Dan Rather in St. Petersburg: Early Call for Clinton and McCain Looking Good

Former CBS anchor Dan Rather brought a stripped down show to Eckerd College tonight for reporting on the Florida primaries -- but he seems to like it just fine.

In a converted classroom staffers jokingly call their "war room," Rather whiled away the minutes before his broadcast joking about longtime pal and Texas Tech baskeball coach Bobby Knight, along with plans for his own Web site, as a way of helping out with HD Net's lagging, bare bones online platform.

Despite his hope of playing down polling in coverage, Rather opened his broadcast here at 8 p.m. noting that early projections give Clinton a big win in Florida and exit polls show Giuliani placing third with about 18 percent of the vote. McCain seems to be doing well with Hispanics, senior citizens and -- though not as much as you would expect -- military veterans.

Rather told me before the broadcast his figures showed more absentee ballots cast by Democrats than Republicans and more absentee votes cast now than for the 2006 election.

Democratic strategist Donnie Fowler just compared Clinton to Peanuts' Lucy Van Pelt, lifting the football from Charlie "Obama" Brown every time he tries to kick the nomination into the goal posts (would that have anything to do with his past as a Clinton strategist?)

Republican Mike Murphy points out Clintons presence in the state allows her to mount a victory party, despite the fact that no Democratic candidate has campaigned here. Obama will "have 100 press secretaries calling reporters and saying 'come on, it's just a beauty contest.'

Murphy says Romney seems to be losing Brevard County, Pasco County and Sarasota. He also gives romney credit for flying in big donors to Florida, so they can either "have a big party with champaign, or have a serious meeting."

The crowd here seems earnest. engaged and a little star struck. Every joke gets a healthy laugh, especially Fowler's comment that "Democratics are loking forward to running against any Republican."

And we can now note the first Rather-ism: He just said "this race is loser than hairs on a frog." Soon after he asked whether is was time "for their fingernails to start sweating." I can die happy now.

 

For Fans, Loving ABC's Lost Means Accepting Your Powerlessness

Here's what I know, after deliciously devouring the first two episodes of the highly-anticipated fourth season of ABC's castaway drama, Lost (which returns for a writers strike-shortened eight-episode season at 9 p.m. Thursday).

WARNING: this post is chock full o' spoilers.

Point # 1: Enjoying the show requires a Zen-like approach to television. in short, you must accept that there may be no real answer the the show's mysteries and if there is, you will not be able to predict it.

Point #2: Though producers have said they plan to resolve the show in 2010 -- and its hard to know how the production disruptions caused by the writers' strike will affect this timetable -- you wouldn't know it by the first few episodes of this newly truncated, eight-episode season. As I say in a full-blown Floridian review running Thursday, it's like peeling an onion, only to find a puzzle box inside.

Point # 3: The coolest trick in the first two new episodes involves scenes which flashback and flash-foward. As rabid fans remember, we learned at the close of last season that a clump of scenes which seemed to feature our beloved castaways in typical flashbacks at home before they landed on the island were actually depictions of their future – after at least some of them have been rescued.

The new episodes’ action alternates between flashbacks explaining the background of a curious team which comes to the island as a rescue squad, and scenes which take place after some characters leave the island, but before the off-island scenes we saw in last season’s final episode. If you're already confused, see point Number One.

Point #4:  SPOILERS GALORE -- At least one dead character makes an appearance, one of the new characters has a talent for communing with the dead and castaway John Locke (TV’s second-best character actor, Terry O’Quinn) sees his mysterious bond with the island growing deeper. One nugget which does drop for us hopeless followers: the notion that the island itself is an entity acting consciously gains more relevance here.

Point #5: Just as modern-day whodunit series such as Monk and Law & Order present mysteries too convoluted for any viewer to puzzle out, Lost’s brain trust offers a show which is impossible to big-picture. The trick here, is giving viewers enough clues to feed the idea that they know enough to solve the riddle -- when in reality, they don’t.

And the few hints available only shed a bit of light: we know the future-flashes in the first two episodes don’t go far as last episode’s finale, for instance, because stalwart hero Jack Shephard (Matthew Fox) is only just starting the full-blown alcoholism we saw last year, and his bushy beard is still a sexy stubble.

Point #6: Producers also learned from a previous mistake; fans won’t accept writers pulling new characters from the 30 or so castaways who are not regular stars and somehow never figure in the series action. So this season, new figures literally fall from the sky as the team trying to reach the Losties parachute out of a spiraling helicopter to join our hardy band.

Point #7: What I really like about the new season: the addition of Ken Leung (the spiky guy from the last X-Men movie) as an aggressively cynical medium and Wire castmember Lance Reddick as a mystery man behind the new rescue team. Beyond bringing some multicultural flavor, they’re also among the coolest actors now working on TV.

Point # 8: Also, the first two episodes feature three things I love most about Lost; the heroic tussle between Locke and Jack Shephard, lots of sarcastic mind games from Others leader Ben Linus (Michael Emerson, the best character actor on TV) and a heaping helping of overweight lottery winner Hugo “Hurley” Reyes (Jorge Garcia).

Gayle Guyardo's Gasparilla Moment Spreads Across the Media

The story has appeared everywhere from MSNBC.com to TV industry Web sites and the pages of the Tampa Tribune.

And WFLA-Ch. 8 morning anchor Gayle Guyardo remains upset by reports recounting how she was briefly removed from coverage of the Gasparilla parade Saturday after viewers complained about her slurred speech and seemingly disoriented comments.

Guyardo, 41, who has co-anchored parade coverage for 14 years, said she resented the implication of some critics: that she was drunk. Instead, the anchor said she had been sick with the flu since early last week and that her illness may have affected her performance.

  “The only feedback I’ve gotten is from e-mails by people who have been extremely supportive,” said Guyardo, who was in tears Saturday after the two-hour Gasparilla broadcast, when she realized what some people were saying. (This photo, taken shortly after Guyardo was informed of the calls from viewers, was shot by Times photgrapher Willie Allen)

The anchor insists that she did not even take medication before the show, forwarding to me e-mails from encouraging fans and a doctor. It was a close call for me on whether I should write a story, but after I saw how other media picked up on the issue, my editors and I decided to pull together a story for Tuesday's paper and this blog item.

“No one could say that they saw me consume any alcohol, because I didn’t,” Guyardo said. “Channel 8 would not let me go up there if I was showing signs of being drunk... I was burning up with fever, my throat was closing up and it was clear that I was sick.”

Guyardo’s co-anchor during the parade, Bill Ratliff, supported her. “I’m not covering for a friend … I never noticed anything,” said Ratliff, who has also co-anchored WFLA’s morning and midday newscast with Guyardo for years. “If she had come to the parade inebriated, I would have told her to get some coffee or you’re not going on.”

MSNBC.com on Monday linked to the Tribune story, which noted “some (callers) urged she be relieved of parade duties to avoid embarrassment.” The local TV-focused Web site Newsblues.com bluntly asked “Was Tampa anchor drunk during Gasparilla broadcast?”

WFLA news director Don North could not say how many complaints the station received about Guyardo, but he did remove the anchor from coverage long enough to speak with her by telephone and determine whether she could finish the broadcast. He allowed Guyardo to rejoin coverage for the show’s end around 4:30 p.m.

North also said he didn’t expect the incident would have any long-term impact for Guyardo at WFLA. Both the Tampa Tribune and WFLA are owned by Richmond, Va.-based Media General.

Guyardo said some viewers complained when she appeared on WFLA’s morning and midday newscasts while ill early last week, suggesting she stay home and recover. The anchor — who eventually took last Wednesday off to rest — wondered whether Gasparilla’s hard-partying image led viewers to assume the worst Saturday.

“I watched (a videotape of parade coverage)…and I was not on my ‘A’ game,” she said. “If I had it do over again, I would have called in sick 1,000 times over.”

Dan Rather Swears Off Polls for St. Petersburg Stop

It's hard to imagine how he's going to fill a two hour show without it.

But former CBS anchor Dan Rather swears he's going to avoid the kind of poll-based prognostication which got anchors in trouble earlier this month in New Hampshire, when he brings his reporting on the Florida primary to Eckerd College in St. Petersburg on Tuesday.

"Polling is a crude art...more art than science," he told me in an interview last week, which I featured in a Floridian story today. "Time after time, polling proves unreliable. Those who do the polling say 'look at how many times we’re right.' But I turn it around and say 'look at how many time it was wrong.' Campaign coverage is too poll driven, and I do not exempt myself from that criticism. The herd and flock goes in that direction and once it gets moving, its hard to stop."

Rather's pitch is that his coverage, which will be featured from 8 p.m. to 10 p.m. on the HD Net cable channel, will take viewers inside the campaigns, focusing more on what strategies the campaigns may be employing and taking a look at where the donations are coming from -- and what people might expect for their money.

After watching Rather's New Hampshire coverage -- his reports are archived on HD Net's Web page -- it seems he's mostly replacing poll-based speculation with speculation from his political experts on campaign tactics. That is, after all, the bread and butter of election coverage -- load of speculation based on opinion polling and exit polls until the returns actually arrive.

Folks who would like a chance to see the old lion in action, can email Eckerd College for the chance to get a seat in Fox Hall, where they will simulcast Rather's report, which will take place in the much smaller Miller Auditorium. The college will provide light refreshments and Rather is expected to show for a Q&A session after his coverage has concluded.

He'll be trying to spread the word about his reports on HD Net, which get a fraction of the attention he once received as the top anchor at CBS News. In particular, he's proud about his story questioning the accuracy of touch screen voting in Florida, though the impact of his work may have been blunted by the decision to discard the machines in favor of optical scan devices last year.

"My own personal opinion is somebody somewhere in some governmental body needs to do a real  investigation in what’s going on in these voting machines," said Rather, who probably would have sparked such an investigation, had his report aired where he used to work, CBS' 60 Minutes. "There are real problems with them and no amount of denial will excuse the fact there are problems with these machines."

And don't bother asking him about the candidates debates, which he calls "forums" because of their lack of substance: "All too often, they descend into this trivia, or near trivia. Parsing words about small things. Where is the talk about what we’re going to do? What are you going to do about the exploding situation in Pakistan?...What are the candidates' plans to deal with China's exploding economic strength? Every time they deal with what I consider to be marginal or trivial subjects, it takes away from the time for ore substance. Seldom have so many talked for so long about so little.”

He pins most of these problems on the way candidates prepare for elections -- focus group-ed and poll-driven to the point where they're not articulating their own views, but a strategy designed for victory.

"The candidates, they market research, they go to focus groups, and they try to find out what they think people want to hear as opposed to what they think people need to hear," Rather said. "This game has gotten ever more expensive...They mold their sound bites, they mold their attacks and defenses rather than taking the view, 'this is what people should be caring about, and let’s call their attention to it.' That’s when they get into these small, trivial (fights)...they’re looking for a gotcha moment, but they don’t illuminate, inform or educate."

Deggans Weekend Funnies: Barack Obama's Top 10 List on Letterman

Ever since I heard Barack Obama nail an appearance on NPR's Wait Wait Don't Tell Me, I've always felt that the increasingly competitive presidential race hasn't allowed him to show off his best quality: he's a funny guy.

This Top 10 list helps, allowing Obama to play along with Letterman's silliness like the good sport he was -- at least, before the presidential race turned into an 11-month=-long gaffe patrol:

PolitiFact Hits the National Stage; But Emphasis on Polling Remains Media Flaw

It's been great fun to see the hard-working folks from the Times' political fact-checking site, PolitiFact, expand the brand. At a time when presidential candidates are slinging all sorts of charges, CNN, MSNBC, the Dallas Morning News and a wide assortment of bloggers have regularly turned to Politifact to sort truth from fiction.

Wondering what the make of the charges and counter-charges thrown around during last night's GOP debate? Check Politifact's nearly live coverage of the event, featuring several assertions vetted with admirable speed (Times editor in chief Paul Tash even managed a good zinger, asking Giuliani why he spends so much time talking about how immigrants should learn to speak English, and then drafts campaign commercials for Florida in Spanish?)

But you can't have a compliment from a critic without a little qualification. And what's bugging me about recent coverage of Florida is our continued reliance on polling to forecast the results.

Pundits and anchors spent weeks apologizing for the mess that was New Hampshire coverage, admitting  that Obama's performance in Iowa's caucus, and polls suggesting he might find similar success in New Hampshire's primary, faked them into believing an Obama surge would overwhelm Hillary Clinton.

Now we have polling suggesting that Giuliani is about to lose big in Florida, dooming his campaign amid a risky strategy to focus on this state as his first real proving ground. Our own poll, conducted with the Miami Herald and Bay News 9, was widely quoted Thursday as proof, with folks saying he's fallen "faster than the Dow Jones average."

Giuliani, asked about the poll results Thursday, neatly compared himself to the New York Giants rather than use the most recent political example of resurrection and poll defying success which comes to mind -- namely, his nemesis Hillary Clinton.

I think the Huffington Post may have the best idea here, vowing to treat polling results with the same amusing superstition we reserve for astrology columns and fortune cookie predictions (I'm not, however, down with their advice that readers should hang up on pollsters and refuse to participate).

How many times do journalists need to get bitten by this issue before we put polls and horse race predictions in the proper perspective?