Question: What are your thoughts on Oprah Winfrey joining “60 Minutes” as a special contributor this fall? — Ryan
Matt Roush: I see no reason to think she’d be anything but an asset to the program. “60 Minutes” is and has always been a class act, and so is Oprah Winfrey. She may not be a “traditional” journalist, but she comes from a news background, and there’s no questioning her abilities as a mass-appeal broadcaster and, perhaps even more important, storyteller. There’s been a feeling ever since she quit her daytime gig that TV needs more Oprah, and this seems as good a fit as any.
Question: Do networks really think they gain viewers with the frequent ads for pending shows? I’ve abandoned traditional TV in favor of streaming because I simply got too annoyed by all the intrusions. — Nelson
Matt Roush: You’re hardly alone on this one. The pop-ups that bother me the most are the animated ones, where characters move or things explode, distracting the eye from the action elsewhere on the screen. I understand why they’re there — in a DVR world where many of us speed through the ads, it’s one of the few ways of guaranteeing attention — but the annoyance tends to outweigh the utility. The fact that we now have more options to avoid them makes them even more problematic, you’d think.
To submit questions to TV Critic Matt Roush, go to: tvinsider.com
