Network (1976)

Lee Richardson: Narrator

Quotes 

• [last lines] 

  Narrator : This was the story of Howard Beale: The first known instance of a man who was killed because he had lousy ratings.

• [first lines] 

  Narrator : This story is about Howard Beale, who was the news anchorman on UBS TV. In his time, Howard Beale had been a mandarin of television, the grand old man of news, with a HUT rating of 16 and a 28 audience share. In 1969, however, his fortunes began to decline. He fell to a 22 share. The following year, his wife died, and he was left a childless widower with an 8 rating and a 12 share. He became morose and isolated, began to drink heavily, and on September 22, 1975, he was fired, effective in two weeks. The news was broken to him by Max Schumacher, who was the president of the news division at UBS. The two old friends got properly pissed.

  Howard Beale : [on the street]  I was at CBS with Ed Murrow in 1951.

  Max Schumacher : Must've been 1950 then.

  [Beale nods] 

  Max Schumacher : I was at NBC, uh, associate producer. Morning News. I was just a kid. 26 years old.

  [Not interested, Beale wanders off, until Schumacher stops him] 

  Max Schumacher : Anyway... anyway... they're building the lower level of the George Washington Bridge.

  [Interested, Beale listens] 

  Max Schumacher : We were doing a remote from there.

  Howard Beale , Max Schumacher : [start to laugh and snicker in unison] 

  Max Schumacher : And nobody told me!

  [Beale keeps laughing, very interested] 

  Max Schumacher : Ten after seven in the morning, I get a call, "Where the hell are YOU? You're supposed to be on the George Washington Bridge!"

  [Beale and Schumacher exchange laughs] 

  Max Schumacher : I jump out of bed, throw my raincoat over my pajamas. I run downstairs and out into the street...

  [Schumacher runs into the street] 

  Max Schumacher : ...hail a cab, and I say to the cabbie, "TAKE ME TO THE MIDDLE OF THE GEORGE WASHINGTON BRIDGE!"

  [Beale laughs] 

  Max Schumacher : And the cabbie turns around and he says...

  [giggles] 

  Max Schumacher : ...he says "Don't do it, buddy! You're a young man! You got your whole life ahead of you!"

  Howard Beale , Max Schumacher : [shriek in hysterics, as Beale gives Schumacher a hug] 

  Max Schumacher : Didn't I ever tell you that one before?

• Narrator : It was a perfectly admissible argument that Howard Beale advanced in the days that followed. It was, however, also a very depressing one. Nobody particularly cared to hear his life was utterly valueless. By the end of the first week in June, "The Howard Beale Show" had dropped one point in the rating and its trend of shares dipped under 48 for the first time since last November.

• Narrator : The initial response to the new Howard Beale show was not auspicatory. The press was, without exception, hostile and industry reaction, negative. The ratings for the Thursday and Friday shows were both 14, but Monday's rating dropped a point, clearly suggesting the novelty was wearing off.

• Narrator : By mid-October, "The Howard Beale Show" had settled in at a 42 share, more than equaling all the other network news shows combined. In the Nielsen ratings, "The Howard Beale Show" was listed as the fourth highest rated show of the month, surpassed only by "The Six Million Dollar Man", "All in the Family" and "Phyllis" - a phenomenal state of affairs for a news show - and on October the 15th, Diana Christensen flew to Los Angeles for what the trade calls powwows and confabs with our west coast programming execs and to get production rolling on the shows for the coming season.

• Narrator : "The Mao Tse-Tung Hour" went on the air March 14th. It received a 47 share. The network promptly committed to 15 shows with an option for 10 more. There were the usual contractual difficulties.

• Narrator : That evening, Howard Beale went on the air to preach the corporate cosmology of Arthur Jensen.