Customer Reviews

Almost Golden: Jessica Savitch and the Selling of Television News

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Though out of print, this bio can be found in used bookstores everywhere. Because once you read it, you'll want rid of it. Way depressing. Beautiful Jessica Savitch had everything: looks, verve, charm, talent, a personality...she even anchored the NBC evening news (she was actually the White House correspondent, but NBC exploited her in every way imaginable) at age 30! Co-workers considered her a prima donna, but the ratings gods loved her - even when she apologized to the viewership for being absent for a couple of days (it was already well known she'd had an abortion). Her cocaine and alcohol addiction not-with-standing, she was the charter representative of the Baby-Boom generation. After appearing on a "Newsbreak" during which she was so thick tongued one couldn't understand what she was saying, Jessica suffered a nervous breakdown, and retreated from public view.During her recovery, she died in an automobile accident. Her life's chronicle bears an eerie resemblance to another blonde heroine - Princess Di. Remarkable, and deeply troubling.

I inherited this book in a box of used books that someone brought over when they left Belize. As such, it sat on my shelf for a while before I reluctantly started it. It didn't take long to hook me.

First of all, it is a history of the selling of TV news; with all of the familiar and unfamiliar names in that business. Stories of now major star when they were first starting out. The sequences of presidents and vice-presidents in the Networks. This may be turget prose to soap-opera fans attracted to the book by the beauty on the cover, but it was interesting to me.

Secondly, it is the agonizing history of Jessica Savitch, obsessively driven to be the queen of Network News, privately anguished by memories of her father, who let her down by dying when she was 12 (he was 31), and more publically tortured by a long distructive co-dependent relationship with Ron Kershaw, another TV news luminary, and the scorn of her co-workers, who hated her self-centered focus on her success.

A young ambitious wannabee in showbiz can learn a lot from this book. I learned:
1. It takes incredible drive (even obsession) to be successful in a competitive business like Network News.
2. You will probably lose all your friends and your life (figuratively, if not literally)
3. Altho you may look happy and successful in public, you may actually be miserable in the midst of it all.
4. Whether you deserve it or not, success is probably more a matter of fortune. In the long run -- scum as well as cream rises to the top.

I already knew these things from a lifetime of living in the very competitive computer business (full of smart, ambitious, driven people) but it underlined an old cliche' -- "The bigger they are, the harder they fall."

I love hearing about Jessica Savitch, and what you didn't see when you saw her on TV. This book focuses more then half, on Networks, and broadcasting in general, following mostly NBC, but does include something about all the networks. I would rather have heard more about Jessica herself. If you have seen the movie with Ron Silver and Sela Ward, that pretty much sums up the portion of this book that is actually devoted to Savitch. Though she was admired for her aggressive role in the female aspect of tv journalism, you see first hand that she wasn't qualified to do half of what they asked her to do, and was simply a pretty face who read copy that was written by other people.
I find her emotional issues very relatable (anorexia, drug addiction, abusive relationships.) She lived a long hard life in her short 36 years.

I thought it was a good book until about 1/2 way through...then I actually let my own brain kick in and started asking questions like, "Says who?"

This book was a great score for Gwenda Blair. Writing such salacious things about someone AFTER they die sure makes it easy to avoid lawsuits. Blair mentions interviewing hundreds of people who know Savitch, yet offers no names for some of her most damaging claims against Savitch. She even admits that no one ever admitted to seeing Savitch take any drugs. Savitch was a woman whose accidental death happened close to a couple "blooper" moments on TV. The rest is imagination and water cooler gossip. Blair offers no evidence about her assertions, simply hearsay.