Tim Russert and Jim McKay true to themselves and viewers

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BALTIMORE (Map, News) - On the evening of Tim Russert’s demise, when the television airwaves were filled with wall-to-wall tributes to NBC’s chief political maven, the Baltimore Orioles preceded their ballgame with Pittsburgh with a tribute to Jim McKay.

Then, at the last minute, they tacked on a word for Russert.

The deaths were simply coming too fast to keep up.

McKay, who hopscotched the world for half a century but counted this area his home and the Orioles his home team, was the most humble and unassuming giant in a world of poseurs who consider themselves big shots.

He could lose himself in a crowd of two. That was his strength on the air — he never forgot that the game was the story, and not him — and it was his most endearing quality off the air.

Russert used to show up at Orioles games on occasional summer evenings between the opening of Oriole Park and the rebirth of major league baseball in Washington, D.C.

You’d find him down in the first-base box seats behind the O’s dugout.

He was big and beaming and beefy, and utterly approachable to anybody who wanted to talk about politics, or baseball, or anything else.

Around here, we know how to spot a phony.

But this guy had the common touch.

That’s what makes each of these men irreplaceable, and their deaths so personal for television viewers, and so haunting for the future of the television business.

More and more, we’re showing less and less loyalty to specific television stations.

When McKay was coming up, planting himself at Pimlico Race Course for that first live broadcast over WMAR-TV before ABC’s “Wide World of Sports” snatched him away and sent him all over the globe, more than 90 percent of us watched one of the big three networks.

When Russert was coming up, in the mid-1980s, cable television was just beginning to stretch itself across our consciousness.

Today, there are so many stations — and so many other diversions — that barely half the country watches one of the big three networks.

That’s why the passings of McKay and Russert seem to signal something even greater than the poignant deaths of two men.

It’s part of television’s own aging process and its mad scramble to hold on to the next generation of viewers.

Without viewers, you don’t have advertising.

Without advertising, you can’t afford news programs with texture.

Without those, you have the further dumbing-down of an electorate that gets its television news in 10-second sound bites, in nightly hollering sessions, in cable operations in which the premise of all objectivity has been tossed aside in the quest for firming up a ratings base.

McKay and Russert gave viewers the sense that they were coming from an honest place.

Sure, McKay’s world was sports.

But that’s always been a world of contentiousness, from the era of Howard Cosell’s bombast to today’s cable hot shots.

McKay let the participants tell the story. He was there only to help when needed.

Russert came up working for Mario Cuomo and Daniel Patrick Moynihan — but questioned Democrats with the same thoroughness as Republicans.

Compare that with, say, MSNBC’s Chris Matthews or Keith Olberman on the left.

Or with the Fox News ensemble on the right.

The problem is, you don’t know who’s standing by his principles, and who’s uttering pronouncements to juice the ratings.

That’s what made McKay and Russert so precious: They were who they were.

The story was the thing.

The simple truth mattered most.

In his great days as the towering figure of Baltimore television news, Jerry Turner used to give a little private lecture to all on-air newcomers at WJZ.

“When you’re sitting in front of that camera,” he’d say, “be yourself. If you try to fake it, the viewers can see right through it. And they’ll resent you for it.”

With McKay, and with Russert, you always knew they were themselves.

With them, you were getting the real thing.

But, as the demands of television grow more frantic, and the competition wider and the reach for money more desperate, how does television propose to offer us such people?

It’s the ones with the imposing personalities, hoisting them aloft like flares, who get our attention. We decry a lot of them, but we watch them, too.

McKay and Russert were civilized men representing their true selves and viewers who wanted an honest accounting of events.

They understood something basic: If they did their jobs honestly enough, the ratings and all the rest of it would take care of itself.

SEE THE LATEST ON THIS STORY

EMAIL STORY

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58 days ago: Family health center is lifesaver in Cherry Hill

59 days ago: Where have all the children gone?

60 days ago: All the news fit to print in the checkout line

65 days ago: A blow to the malls

67 days ago: Where do all the years go?

70 days ago: Long shadows longer after civil rights era

72 days ago: Will food prices follow slight decrease in gas?

73 days ago: Parched economic times? Not for bottled-water buyers

74 days ago: New arena a long, long way from the old Coliseum

77 days ago: Artist’s success becomes portrait of perseverance