The Smoking Gun of TV vs. Countdown with Keith Olbermann

Transferring a work from one medium to another is fraught with peril — the book is always better than the movie, the movie is always better than the TV show. So what happens when you transfer a website to TV?

Three years ago Court TV acquired The Smoking Gun, so it's no shock the network has succumbed to the temptations of cross-promotion and converted the website into a TV show that premiered in August. The Smoking Gun, as many of you news junkies out there may already know, is a repository of odd and interesting legal documents, mug shots, concert riders, taped phone calls and other materials that can be acquired through public sources. In particular, if there's a skeleton in the closet of a reality show, um, star, the Smoking Gun will find it before the first contestant is voted off the island or yelled at by Simon Cowell.

TSG's success is predicated upon the droll, pedestrian and unintentionally hilarious prose of stone-faced documents. But having someone merely read those or shove them in front of the camera wouldn't make great TV. So Court TV has downloaded Mo Rocca to trade in the same dry wit that powers his pieces on Comedy Central's news satire "The Daily Show" and through three million apperances a day on VH1's "I Love the (fill in the decade here)." And he is funny, such as when he bursts out "Mama, I'm pretty!" after he's been made over to look like Nick Nolte's infamous, GHB-influenced mug shot.

Despite Rocca's efforts, reflexively, it seems, many critics have assailed "The Smoking Gun on TV" as not being as good as thesmokinggun.com. But the show isn't bad; it's just pointless. Rocca has to work way too hard to mine more humor out of something that is already funny and satire-proof. The whole show has the feel of an infomercial more than a news source, although, if the basic cable work dries up, I hope Rocca moves on to late-night TV to co-host the Time-Life Record Collection with Martha Quinn.

Maybe the secret to transferring the Internet to TV is not appropriating a known site, but copying a particular style. That's what MSNBC's "Countdown with Keith Olbermann" does. The weeknight newscast takes its inspiration from the world of blogs, in particular news blogs dedicated to linking to the most interesting news stories of the day. If you want an example, go to Fark and see how many stories linked from there show up on "Countdown."

Like a blog, "Countdown" features very little self-generated reporting, instead borrowing stories from NBC News, or local NBC affiliates, or unashamedly crediting whatever news source provided the show the story in question. "Countdown's" ostensible format is presenting the, as Olbermann puts it, "top five stories you'll be talking about tomorrow," ranging from the latest news in Iraq to a Connecticut bride who got busted for going on a rampage on her wedding day — a story also posted by The Smoking Gun! As for "Countdown," with all the soundbites, sidebars, celebrity goofs and other features, it's more like 25 stories in an hour. Apparently, there are 20 stories you won't be talking about, but will be told of anyway — just like in a blog.

Olbermann's delivery often has the snappy, smart-alecky tone of a blog, like when he introduced a story about a Massachusetts woman pimping out her daughter for prospective grooms and said, "Any resemblance between this and a television reality show is purely nauseating." Remember, of course, that Olbermann is the man who, on ESPN's SportsCenter in the '90s, used the same tone to revolutionize sportscasting, inspiring every sports reader to narrate highlights like it's Tuesday night Open Mic at the local Chuckle Hut.

What those imitators missed, and what hopefully no new imitators might miss, is that Olbermann knows when to be serious and when to joke, without making the obvious transition from hard news frowny face to happy news smiley face.

So let's go back to the question posed at the start — what happens if you convert a web site to a television show? If "The Smoking Gun on TV" and "Countdown with Keith Olbermann" are any indication, it's probably better to borrow from multiple sites than try to replicate a particular site. Unless it's porn or something.

— Bob Cook (bobc@flakmag.com)