TV & VIDEO - Jan. 6, 1988

Life imitating art? That’s exactly what happened Monday when NBC’s “Today” show and “CBS This Morning” aired a segment showing an “artistic” falling-domino demonstration. In the movie “Broadcast News,” Holly Hunter plays a television news producer who rants that there’s too much fluff and not enough real stuff on the news. And to prove her point, she shows a falling-domino clip that was featured on the movie’s simulation of network news. “Believe me,” said “CBS This Morning” producer John Goodman, “there’s plenty of bad and hard in news in the world that you (can) take 45 seconds to show some dominoes falling to lighten it a bit. No one is going to be outraged. It was just a nice video and a nice upbeat story (that ran in the weather segment). There’s stuff in ‘Broadcast News’ that occurs every day. I bet you those dominoes appeared in thousands of papers across the country too.” “Today’s” executive producer, Marty Ryan, was unavailable for comment Tuesday.