Final Report -- National Geographic Channel - Premieres Thursday, January 26, 2006 - 9:00 p.m. (EST)

One of the ironies of the modern television age is that, while we have far more channels and time devoted to news than ever before, less of that time is devoted to real analysis. This new series Final Report on the National Geographic Channel is most definitely NOT trying to be first; in fact, the back-to-back first episodes of this series each deal with dated material -- the D.C. Sniper investigation at 9:00, followed by the Waco confrontation/conflagration at 10:00. This is the kind of thoughtful chronology you get only after the news has digested for awhile, something that might be nice to see for a change.
This will most certainly not solve the problem of "more news yet less analysis." We're still not seeing groundbreaking documentaries with the impact of "Harvest of Shame" or "The Silent Spring of Rachel Carson." But at least here we can get a good view of what's already happened.