minorities

I caught the premiere of Minoriteam last night, which, if you check Adult Swim's page for the show, is actually the fifth episode, "Tribe and Prejudice." If you're not up to speed, the show is about a group of super heroes who all happen to be minorities, and their powers are based on their specific stereotype. The show was co-created by Adam De La Pena of I'm with Busey, who also penned last night's episode.

Like most Adult Swim fare, the show clocks in at under fifteen minutes, which is all well and good since I don't think it could hold up much longer than that. While the episode did have some great moments, such as an Indian casino being closed down for being built on an ancient pilgrim burial ground, it feels as if it's mining a realm of comedy that's been drawn from time and time again. While I love the comic book aesthetic of the show, I feel like this kind of humor has been done before.

Nevertheless, I'm not passing judgment on it just yet, since I only saw one episode. Besides, it had enough yucks to make me want to check it out again next week. Whether I'll stick around beyond that remains to be seen. If you guys caught it, I'd like to know what you thought of it.

Men are becoming the minority in newsrooms across the country. According to the Radio-Television News Directors Association, 42% of anchors are men. That's down from 46% in 1996. One of the reasons? The ultimate goal for many male journalism students is in sports. But, sports is a dying genre at local news stations across the country. Another reason, stated in an article in the Boston Globe, is that anchoring isn't really as manly as it used to be back in the days of Walter Kronkite and Edward R. Murrow. They were a breed of anchor who came across as tough on government corruption, whereas anchors these days are pretty boys who are more even-tempered and less aggressive. News readers, really.

While it's nice to see that women are kickin' butt in television, it's also a sad commentary on the role of the anchorman in our society and in news in general. These days the anchors are hired as personalities, not news gatherers.