I was *very* bugged by the bozo the SciFi Channel sent to cover Worldcon.
His report wasn't about the con, it was about *him* AT the con. Here's
the guy in the dealer's room, putting on funny hats. Here's the guy
telling jokes. Here's the guy acting cute with a prosthetic puppet. On
and on and on. (It's the same kind of annoyance you get with a restaurant
review that tells you all about the reviewer, and how they got to the
restaurant, and what their friend talked about, on and on, when all you
want to know is if the food's good.)

The stress was on oddly dressed fans, cuteness, bad jokes, clowning
around, all by the "host," and virtually nothing of value on the con
itself. You'd get ten seconds of something potentially interesting, then
he'd jump in again. Nearly all of the interviews were with media people,
with very few (and brief) exceptions like Connie Willis and James White.

And yeah, B5 got stiffed, but that's a lot less annoying than the feature
overall, and how it was approached, to be cynical or cute by turns, to
make fun of it all; it's the kind of approach I'd expect from the
mainstream, not a channel dedicated to SF...of all the famous authors
there they could've interviews, jeezus, maybe one of the last chances to
get van Vogt, they could've talked to Silverberg, others, c'mon....

(And no, that wasn't me in the shot, but someone who kinda looked like me.
And they misspelled my name on the hugo list.)



jms