Last night's episode of NBC's
Mediumcontained an on-screen error that wasn't major, but, to a journalist and teacher, was more than a little annoying.
It concerned a TV news report being viewed by a character on the show. In other words, it was a fake local TV newscast, faked by a real national TV show -- but the national show, the Medium crew, couldn't get it right. And no one who edited, approved or saw the show in advance caught the error.
The error was this: Under a tagline saying "Top Story," ran an image with the following headline: "FUNERAL FOR RENOWN AUTHOR NATHAN CAFFERTY." This sentence was on Medium long enough, both filling the screen and in a smaller shot, to be read easily and completely.
And it was easy, therefore, to notice that the word RENOWN was used, when the right word would have been RENOWNED. Leaving the -ED off is no more acceptable, or correct, than calling Jennifer Hudson a TALENT SINGER or John Updike an ACCLAIM AUTHOR.
Everybody makes mistakes. But on major networks, you expect someone, up or down the chain, to catch something as basic and obvious as this. Yet at NBC, those may be too-great expectations.