57 - I’m as mad as hell, and I’m not gonna take it anymore!

I have to imagine, having not been born in 1976, that Network would have seemed entirely preposterous and absurd when first released. Howard Beale is a mild mannered news reader turned howling, preaching loon by his flagging ratings and termination. His absolute blind rage and anti-establishment yelling garners him instant press, board-meeting grumbles and even his own spin-off TV show. Today though, with the likes of Glenn Beck, Bill O’Reilly and other opinion-spouting, loud mouth buffoons on the (American) air, Peter Finch’s character seems pretty damn tame.

Network is extremely sharp and beautifully written, but its also crazily prophetic. You see, when one news medium loses steam and viewers, they quickly turn to unorthodox tactics to put bums on seats and bring back eyes. With the internet being the first point of call for a great many news-hounds, some newspapers and television news programmes offer different takes - opinionated columnists and animated television panic spreaders like Beck and O’Reilly. Now with millions of viewers listening to their personal viewpoints, it’s easy to see why these shouting, swearing, nauseatingly patriotic TV preachers (what do you even call these guys?) might go a little mad with power.

Funnily enough, Glenn Beck isn’t oblivious to the fact that he is a pudgy faced parody of Howard Beale, and told the New York Times that he can relate to the character - especially his “I’m as mad as hell, and I’m not gonna take it anymore!” attitude. Beck obviously ejected the disc after Beale sees fame with his own TV show, and missed the bit where the channel bosses laughed up his mad, rating-grabbing antics until Beale put the company at tremendous risk. And when his ratings eventually flagged, well… you can watch the movie for that.

Luckily, in the UK, we’re pretty safe from this. Do we even have raving lunatics and barking political partisans on the air? I don’t live in the US, so I don’t really know how much these shock-jocks permeate the actual news, but it’s nice to see that, for the most part, our news output is on a tight editorial leash. You’re not going to get a Howard Beale-esque rant on BBC News’ South Today.

The only sort of strongly opinionated form of news is that Live at Studio Five garbage on Five, but I can hardly see Kate Walsh preaching about the slow death of democracy, dehumanisation and announcing her own on-air suicide. That would be funny though.