Dateline

Lately, Dateline has become a poor copy of 20/20, Sixty Minutes, and 48 Hours with hours spent on covering crime such as murders and scams. Much like A&E's American Justice, Investigative Reports, and other series. Dateline covering the Suitcase Murders was kind of inferior to other shows that focused on the same crime. There is plenty of true crime out there but you should pick and choose one that will engage the audience and expand on understanding it. They aired the Suitcase Murders after the verdict and before sentencing Melanie McGuire to life in prison for murdering and dismembering her husband, William McGuire. Even though there was no evidence connecting her to the crime but circumstantial coincidences. THe fact that Court TV was airing the trial made it easier for NBC Dateline to obtain access to the proceedings.

I love a great podcast and Dateline is a great one! I don't have the time to sit and watch the broadcast but I'll listen to the podcast all day. Andrea Canning's singsong voice and absolutely stupid interview questions makes my ears bleed, though. How she's still interviewing people is beyond me. I skip all of the Andrea Canning episodes. But I love Keith Morrison and Josh Mankiewicz. They are great narrators and interviewers.

I understand the frustration with the subscription cost and I'll probably get rid of it, especially since the other podcasts I was promised are only a few episodes long.

There is no reason each of these cases requires a 2 hour show. Two hours for a special? Sure. Is every episode a special? Hell no. The same cases are thoroughly covered in other series/TV shows in 1 hour or less. Cut out the BS interviews with friends and relatives answering low-brow questions like, "Were you sad when you found out they were dead?", or, "Did you feel relieved when the perpetrator was caught?" These are duhhh questions and answers that offer no added perspective to the story, only a drawn out episode with fading attention from the viewer. I would rather watch the same crime case on another program and get the same information without my back hurting from sitting so long.

This used to be my favorite show. Now it has about twenty commercial and is unnecessarily too long. I guess to get the commercials in. I just watched an episode and after about and hour and 40 minutes all we know is there are two possible suspects and the family got the case moved to a different law enforcement agency. Could have done that in 10 minutes. It's obvious there is enough material to fill two hours. They repeat the same stuff over and over again and add all this fluff interviews to prolonged the show. It's boring and sad I no longer have the patience for what used to be a great show.

I just watched a two how episode of Dateline. I'm not kidding when I say there must have been about 50 minutes of commercials. Every 4 minutes of the actual show was interrupted by 3 or 4 minutes of commercials. It seems more important to make money from these shows than to actually tell a story about a crime. Thank goodness for DVRs and fast forwarding. Also I love the acting by the interviewers. Like when the cops says "Well we put out a BOLO on the guy". Then the interviews astoundedley asks.. "Bolo? What's that?". Come on, you've been on the show for 16 years, you know what a BOLO is. At least take some acting lessons.