network

Director: sidney lumet

Actor: faye dunaway,william holden,peter finch,robert duvall

Data Published: Sat Nov 27 1976

Genres: Drama

Key Words: media,television,television network,satire,ranting

IMDB: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0074958/

WIKI: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_(1976_film)

Description: Network is a movie starring Faye Dunaway, William Holden, and Peter Finch. A television network cynically exploits a deranged former anchor's ravings and revelations about the news media for its own profit.

Plot: Howard Beale, the longtime anchor of the Union Broadcasting System's UBS Evening News, learns from friend and news division president Max Schumacher that he has just two more weeks on the air because of declining ratings. The two get drunk and lament the state of their industry. The following night, Beale announces on live television that he will commit suicide on next Tuesday's broadcast. UBS fires him after this incident, but Schumacher intervenes so that Beale can have a dignified farewell. Beale promises he will apologize for his outburst, but once on the air, he launches back into a rant claiming that life is "bullshit." Beale's outburst causes the newscast's ratings to spike, and much to Schumacher's dismay, the upper echelons of UBS decide to exploit Beale's antics rather than pull him off the air. When Beale's ratings seem to have topped out, Diana Christensen, who heads the network's programming department, approaches Schumacher and offers to help him "develop" the news show. He says no to the professional offer, but she also makes a personal offer and the two begin an affair. Christensen, seeking just one hit show, cuts a deal with a band of radical terrorists for a new docudrama series called The Mao Tse-Tung Hour for the upcoming fall season. When Schumacher decides to end Beale's "angry man" format, Christensen convinces her boss, Frank Hackett, to slot the evening news show under the entertainment programming division so she can develop it. Hackett agrees, bullying the UBS executives to consent and fire Schumacher. In one impassioned diatribe, Beale galvanizes the nation, persuading his viewers to shout out of their windows "I'm as mad as hell, and I'm not going to take this anymore!" Soon afterward, Beale is hosting a new program called The Howard Beale Show, top-billed as "the mad prophet of the airwaves". Ultimately, the show becomes the most highly rated program on television, and Beale finds new celebrity preaching his angry message in front of a live studio audience that, on cue, chants Beale's signature catchphrase en masse: "We're as mad as hell, and we're not going to take this anymore." At first, Max and Diana's romance withers as the show flourishes, but in the flush of high ratings, the two ultimately find their way back together, and Schumacher leaves his wife of over 25 years for Christensen. When Beale discovers that Communications Corporation of America (CCA), the conglomerate that owns UBS, will be bought out by an even larger Saudi Arabian conglomerate, he launches an on-screen tirade against the deal, encouraging viewers to send telegrams to the White House telling them, "I want the CCA deal stopped now!" This throws the top network brass into a state of panic because the company's debt load has made the merger essential for its survival. Hackett takes Beale to meet with CCA chairman Arthur Jensen, who explicates his own "corporate cosmology" to Beale, describing the interrelatedness of the participants in the international economy and the illusory nature of nationality distinctions. Christensen's fanatical devotion to her job and emotional emptiness ultimately drive Max back to try returning to his wife, even though he doesn't think she'll agree, and he warns his former lover that she will self-destruct at the pace she is running with her career. "You are television incarnate, Diana," he tells her, "indifferent to suffering, insensitive to joy. All of life is reduced to the common rubble of banality." Jensen persuades Beale to abandon the populist messages and preach his new "evangel". However, television audiences find his new sermons on the dehumanization of society depressing, and ratings begin to slide, yet Jensen will not allow UBS executives to fire Beale. Seeing its two-for-the-price-of-one value—solving the Beale problem plus sparking a boost in season-opener ratings—Christensen, Hackett, and the other executives decide to hire the Ecumenical Liberation Army to assassinate Beale on the air. The assassination succeeds, putting an end to The Howard Beale Show and kicking off a second season of The Mao Tse-Tung Hour. A voiceover proclaims the film "the story of Howard Beale, the first known instance of a man who was killed because he had lousy ratings."