Here's what BMI's Dan Gainor posted Thursday about Lauer's Tuesday night foray into documentary-making (click here for the full article):
“We are the problem,” declared NBC’s “Today” co-anchor Matt Lauer doing a stint as host for the SciFi network. Lauer was referring to mankind’s alleged misuse of planet Earth, but his comment better suits the media and his apocalyptic documentary.
Lauer’s program, “Countdown to Doomsday,” merged nearly every science-fiction disaster flick ever made – “The Terminator,” “Deep Impact,” “I, Robot” and, of course, the SciFi Channel’s own “Battlestar Gallactica.” Lauer’s news background gave an air of respectability to the documentary and the show was filled with news footage from Hurricane Katrina, 9/11 and more to reinforce that impression.
In it, Lauer addressed what he called the 10 biggest threats to mankind from aliens to “evil robots” to, of course, global warming. It was up to viewers to decide whether they should include media hype as one of the prominent dangers.
Predictably, climate change crusader Al Gore brought his campaign to the program with video of him declaring: “I think what we’re facing is a planetary emergency. It’s by far the most dangerous crisis our civilization has ever confronted.”
Gore must have been very disappointed. Lauer and his own horsemen of the apocalypse didn’t think global warming rated higher than No. 4 on the list of top 10 threats. While Gore’s lecture was scary enough to beat out “evil robots,” volcanoes and terrorism, it fell two spots behind the current media frenzy for avian flu.
