Hints at how the forthcoming “Murphy Brown” revival is shaping up continue dripping into the press, and I can’t help but think the whole project is tone deaf.
Few people see journalists as the protagonists in today’s political theater, meaning there won’t be much of an appetite for a show that casts the press as the good guys, glossing over the industry’s glaring faults to give reporters a primetime pat on the back. Unlike the short-lived “Roseanne” revival, the characters on “Murphy Brown” are overrepresented in popular culture, where journalists are already afforded a degree of admiration that’s out of proportion with public opinion. (Elite Washington journalists aren’t exactly as sympathetic as the Conner family among people who are not elite Washington journalists.)
The sitcom debuted in 1988, chronicling the title character’s career as a news anchor and investigative journalist. When the show left airwaves back in 1998, public trust in media was much higher. Two decades ago, more than half of adults said they had a great deal or fair amount of trust in mass media, according to Gallup. That number plummeted into the low 30s after the 2016 election and sits in the low 40s now. It hasn’t jumped back to 50 percent since last hitting that mark in 2005.
But there’s one caveat. Democratic trust in mass media spiked last year, and that could be the audience CBS is gunning for. To succeed, then, “Murphy Brown” will need to capture a big part of that smaller demographic. Bear in mind, the Democratic demo typically skews younger, presenting a possible challenge for a show revamped in the spirit of 1990s nostalgia that went off air years before the proliferation of streaming services.
There’s another way for “Murphy Brown” to find favor in 2018, one that I’m not sure Hollywood is capable of recognizing, or successfully executing. A show that’s serious about exploring the shortcomings of today’s media could actually be compelling. Repurposing existing affection for a popular sitcom character to confront negative perceptions of their real life incarnations is what “Roseanne” did this year — and if “Murphy Brown” can be honest about bias and bubbles and elitism, it could work.
Or, more likely, they could just cater to the bubble.
