[NOTE: Seriously re-written for... directness. 20210724]
It was professionally done, and even a certain of fun, but to my mind it doesn't rise to the level of Seinfeld or Larry Sanders.
It's really, really simple. Sometimes the back-room, organizational "magic" happens with a media product, and sometimes it doesn't.
Seinfeld is a great example of this: Larry David directed the writing room, and the producers did the right thing: They held their hands up, backed away slowly, let Larry work his magic, and... raked in the big bux.
I had to watch 3 or 4 episodes of NewsRadio to get the picture: The producers barged into the writers' room and dictated broad "sure-fire" scenario elements.
In Seinfeld's case, we knew who Elaine, Jerry, et.al. Were. The writers ensured that and stayed true to that.
In the case of NewsRadio... who knew who the characters really were? When producers pulled rank and forced scenarios on those characters--literally "breaking" them, in the script--they were just run roughshod over and got flattened.
That's what it comes down to.
I'm a little surprised to see folks hail this sitcom as some kind of "classic", especially when its Achilles's Heel (producer-cold-feet syndrome) is so in-your-face, resulting in something so tepid, compared against the genius of Seinfeld, or Sanders.
So it's a funny little show, but fails to deliver on a higher level... and other sitcoms have demonstrated that one should reasonably expect that payload.
It was professionally done, and even a certain of fun, but to my mind it doesn't rise to the level of Seinfeld or Larry Sanders.
It's really, really simple. Sometimes the back-room, organizational "magic" happens with a media product, and sometimes it doesn't.
Seinfeld is a great example of this: Larry David directed the writing room, and the producers did the right thing: They held their hands up, backed away slowly, let Larry work his magic, and... raked in the big bux.
I had to watch 3 or 4 episodes of NewsRadio to get the picture: The producers barged into the writers' room and dictated broad "sure-fire" scenario elements.
In Seinfeld's case, we knew who Elaine, Jerry, et.al. Were. The writers ensured that and stayed true to that.
In the case of NewsRadio... who knew who the characters really were? When producers pulled rank and forced scenarios on those characters--literally "breaking" them, in the script--they were just run roughshod over and got flattened.
That's what it comes down to.
I'm a little surprised to see folks hail this sitcom as some kind of "classic", especially when its Achilles's Heel (producer-cold-feet syndrome) is so in-your-face, resulting in something so tepid, compared against the genius of Seinfeld, or Sanders.
So it's a funny little show, but fails to deliver on a higher level... and other sitcoms have demonstrated that one should reasonably expect that payload.