I’ve watched the first two shows of new PBS globalization newsmagazine Foreign Exchange with Fareed Zakaria and can only say that the idea is great but the execution is less so. Zakaria, who’s come across as a pretty intelligent guy on The Daily Show and elsewhere, isn’t (yet) a graceful presence and since his background is writing that’s not too surprising. But it does take focus away from the content, the way a nail on blackboard does.
The second and possibly more significant problem is that the producers are trying to shove too much into their 23 minutes. PBS may not have commercials but that doesn’t mean shows get the whole time slot. Instead of covering three or four topics splitting the time 2/3-1/3 on two should work much better, especially if the two pieces covered different aspects of one larger issue. The video report last week on the American woman living in the Russian wilderness, for instance, was kind of sweet and not the usual reporting but, seriously, who cares?
Like I said, Zakaria is an intelligent guy. That’s a big plus. He knows how to present complex stories and (in two episodes) has brought in other smart people to discuss and present the material. The story selection is also very topical. Probably the team needs to get a few shows under their belts and work through this stuff. Good start.
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