I no longer recall exactly how we came to decide to proceed with this project. It was sometime after we completed "The Virtues of Maura." Before we began I had warned my colleagues that such an undertaking would be a sizeable one, but I don’t think any of us knew exactly how monolithic the project was going to be. As revisions and additions were made it grew in size from its already substantial starting point to over 100 pages (in pdf format). The actual roots of this document go back to my previous writings on Newsradio. Initially, I had twice written briefly (less than a page) to a friend in an attempt to explain why Newsradio was the greatest thing to ever appear on television. Unfortunately, I found both attempts to be wholly unsatisfactory. It was at this point that I realized that there was no way to effectively communicate what Newsradio was accomplishing without somehow dealing with the show’s astonishing breadth of expression. It was my resolve to convey this breadth that eventually converted the exercise into a book-length behemoth, as ten pages became twenty then thirty and so on.

The Art section is essentially a critique of Newsradio. Someone once described the difference between a critique and a review as the difference between assuming the reader has already seen the work in question versus assuming that he or she has not. Thus, the only reason the Art section exists is to help us appreciate the show more deeply. I guess what people may find as the strangest choice in my writing is the fact that I mainly compare Newsradio to cinematic masterpieces rather than its televised contemporaries. If you wonder whether I was being willfully radical with this sort of intellectualism then the answer is yes, and shamelessly so. If I could have included a reference to Bresson or Malraux I probably would have done so. I just think that Newsradio has bigger fish to fry than conventional TV fare, and it is impossible to see how stunning the show’s accomplishments are unless you look outside the box of conventional sitcom concepts.

A project of this breadth needed to be a collaboration. When I needed someone to help out with the writing I had only one choice in mind — Jennifer. I’m sure you’ll agree that amongst us Newsradio fans there is no one more qualified to write about the history of the show than Jennifer. We have left the graphic design and layout in the very capable hands of Sebastian Alvarez. Feel free to download his remarkable Newsradio graphics to your hard drive (I do it all the time). In addition, without Sebastian’s determination to get this project published on the web it probably would have remained a text-based document to be secretly circulated in dark backrooms or parsed out over secure Internet connections.

As you can tell, this project is still a work in progress. The Art section is the only completed section (but completed does not necessarily mean finalized and do not be surprised if it is revised in the future). Have we covered everything there is to say about Newsradio? Hardly. There’s quite a bit we didn’t get a chance to say in the main text that will appear in the episode commentaries. (The episode commentaries will be updated as they become available.) Presently, Jennifer is hard at work on the History section. From what I have seen so far of the text and the graphics we have selected, it is something to look forward to. I regard the History section to be the essential partner to the Art section. One provides the historical context for the show’s artistic accomplishments, and the other provides the artistic context for historical events. Finally, let me stress that this work in process is a collaboration. "Appendix 2: Season Six?" at least is open to contributions. E-mail us for details.

 

Adrian and Sebastian would like to thank Marcello Romero for his invaluable assistance in proofreading the text when our eyes were just too tired to do so.