DATELINE NBC–

“I cried,” said Periquito Perez, waxing rhapsodic on Sunday night’s closing ceremonies, “I knew the honeymoon was over…I could see the flame inside my own television fading…dead.”

The wedding was short and crowded but the guys with the video cameras made sure it all looked quite lively. The techno music, the scrolling titles, the dive-cam, the Command Center, the Coca-Cola commercials, the biographical vignettes, John Tesh…a seamless web of previously recorded fact and digitally composited fiction – all the world a stage, every single event an instance of History. Who can forget such brilliant programming, who can forgive such brazen romanticism? Who can you turn to now?

The irruption of such relentlessly driven television might very well leave a greater cavity in the hearts of screen-agers than even the gradual implosion of Mr. Clinton (who went to Washington). Americans who “journeyed” to Georgia virtually re-discovered the power of television, it’s allure and fishhook-like lure. Day after day, event after event, NBC’s coverage of the Centennial Olympics reassured because it persisted; not unlike a glam CNN or an Oakie Mtv.

In consistency there is security, in security there is trust, in trust there is room for asserting that clearly dramatized performances are, in spirit, “PLAUSIBLY LIVE” – which, in a manner of speaking, is only a few frames away from being “PLAUSIBLY TRUE” or “PLAUSIBLY RIGHTEOUS.”

The lesson for media producers: synthesize, lyricize and, above all, rephrase and repeat. Employ the same tools, apply the same filters (human and digital), rework the same lingo on and off the televisual stage – only then will your programming approximate the timely timelessness of television, this Fountain of X,Y and Z in the midst of an increasingly frightening suburban jungle. Lions and tigers and legal aliens…oh my!

We can only wonder what “lessons” from Atlanta will be applied to NBC’s coverage of the upcoming Republican National Convention in San Diego, California….

A demagogue-cam that plunges into the audience to document a splash-less soundbyte? Flashback sequences shot lovingly with Vaseline on the lens – John Tesh sentimentally quips, “How this young spirit learned the value of perseverance, sacrifice and hard work as a middle class white man growing up in the 50’s…” Computer generated images “scientifically” diagram the impact of the Brown Tide on traditional family values like the third-generation immigrant’s xenophobia and a modest resurgence of Cold War paranoia.

Let us embrace this vision of digitally distorted reality. Bring on the Webification of the Mass Media – bring on the trite techno titillation, the sacharrine sentimentality, the assumed air of intimacy and false sense of familiarity.

No matter that the Olympics have ended. The mass wedding between corporate America and American information culture must resume! This show of bumbling, multi-million dollar persistence must go on.