Garrett said:
Amanpour, for all of her expertise, is completely the wrong person for This Week. Save for the current situation, she not a good fit. This Week is a political show about current political events. However, since she took over the show, she frequently focuses on topics that have international appeal, but that also have little to with domestic current events. It is NOT what people tune in to for the show. I've also noticed that each week, George Will has less and less face time (probably because the topics are out of his area).
Before Amanpour came on board, This Week was just another Washington insider program, in which the same predictable guests said the same predictable things, just like they did on the other predictable Sunday shows. And the pseudo-intellectual George Will is especially predictable. He is fond of decrying other people's "entitlements", but the biggest entitlement in his life is his permanent occupation of a seat at the round table while others have to come and go - and it shows. A re-jigged This Week could be the current equivalent of 60 Minutes when it came on the air - a program that nobody thought would work but built up a huge following.
I thought 9/11 had cured people of the idea that international affairs have nothing to do with domestic problems. I remember that months before the Shah of Iran was toppled, the ferment in that country and Ayatollah Khomeini waiting in the wings in France was completely overlooked by US media, while the CBC and BBC were far more astute. The happenings in Egypt have the potential to be every bit as significant to us - whether for good or ill nobody knows.
This Week won't change dramatically overnight, but I believe Amanpour is the right person to change it from being just another Sunday show. And don't tell me the only measure of success is ratings; it's time the networks became less inclined to fatten their bottom lines at the expense of a properly informed public.
