News

Would someone please get Peter Mansbridge a chair? CBC news has been changing things on The National this week and someone's taken away Peter Mansbridge's chair and now Peter just stands there telling everyone the news.

He's making me nervous. How can I relax with Peter Mansbridge standing there?

I keep expecting Peter to say, "Hello, I'm Peter Mansbridge and, oh no, no, no, I'm not staying."

"Oh, come on, Peter," I want to say. "Come in, let me pour you a drink."

Basically the concept behind the new National is that Peter Mansbridge is standing at a long glass table - in deep space.

On Monday night retired general Rick Hillier came in for an interview and they both stood together at the long table - an arrangement that provided both men with all the dignity and presence of two guys standing purposefully at a bar, whilst being steadfastly ignored by a younger, deep-space bartender.

Of course, one of the problems with having a news anchor stand while delivering the news and thus, theoretically, appear more ready, more immediate, more prepared to dash off and collect new news - or perhaps, the frenetic pace of the show suggests, more ready to shoot a few hoops during the commercial break - is that everyone else has to stand as well, which seems rude.

Either that or you buy a couch, and move over to it later in the show, thus transforming your news anchor into a talk-show host. But wait, I don't want to give away Monday's episode.

Could not the news be authoritative rather than urgent? After all, if a man appears on television, fully aflame, screaming, "I've lit myself on fire with a crème brûlée torch and fairy dust!" he'll likely get the viewers' attention, but he will not have authority.

The anchor you want is the person who can calmly say, "A man has just lit himself on fire with a crème brûlée torch and fairy dust" - and be believed.

Legend has it that Walter Cronkite only had to look at his viewers in a certain way and they'd run straight out and get buckets.

Why are we this averse to gravitas? The new National is loaded with Daily Show-esque stories, banter and street interviews. Sure, it's bouncy. But why, in the world of 24-hour news, does every show have to be a morning show?

The news is currently marketed to us extremely aggressively (it's the "information" needed to "empower" us so that we succeed over others) yet with an almost saccharin presumption of intimacy about our supposed personal needs and desires. It's as if the news were a brand of magic yogurt.

CBC news assures us that with "customizable" news we'll be told "only what matters" to us.

To me? Really? Yes. Ideally one day I'll be able turn on the TV and have Peter tell me, "Nonie and Sandy have your electric sander. Goodnight and thanks for watching." Or perhaps I'll have this information shouted at me by a bike courier as he hurls past.

Honestly, by the time Wendy Mesley arrived on the set on Monday night, I knew that the whole standing-at-a-glass-bar thing was a failure.

I thought that we should all just get a table and try and flag a waitress. That way, if there was still no chair for Peter, I could pop on over to the next table and say, "Hey, guys, is anyone sitting here?" I'd indicate a spare chair. "Do you mind if we take it?"

Usually people are good about those things. I don't imagine that David Suzuki or anyone would say, "No, I need that for my feet." I think most people want Peter Mansbridge to have a chair.

On Tuesday night they had Peter move around less - some sensible tweaking. Maybe next week he'll read the news from a bubble bath.

They'll be playing with the format until they find the right solution - which might turn out to be a chair, but I knew by Thursday that they weren't going to go straight to "chair."

I'm going along for the ride with the CBC on this one. Why, seating Peter Mansbridge could be like finding the right Maria for The Sound of Music - only this time I'm interested.

And in the meanwhile, while their news anchor stands, talking, shifting, I'll only be able to concentrate on one thing: I'll be at home thinking, "Okay, Peter, so a bomb in a Pakistani market killed 90 people, but be careful not to let the dog out."

tsouthey@globeandmail.com