YMMV / Network

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• Alternate Character Interpretation:
  • Arthur Jensen’s speech: is it exaggerated deliberately to emulate Howard’s style in order to convince Howard to switch sides? Or is he truly so fanatical a believer in his own philosophy that Howard had indeed pressed his Berserk Button?
  • Leading from that, Howard’s resulting show. While it’s clear Howard had been scared shitless by Jensen’s speech, the show doesn’t necessarily see him endorsing Jensen’s talking points (as it lacks his usual firebrand delivery), but rather he speaks of them in a more lamenting, hopeless voice, leading to a Too Bleak, Stopped Caring tone for his viewers, which could also be taken as Howard not so much switching sides as giving up with a last gasp of his former conviction.
• Award Snub: A few critics considered it deserved Best Picture more than Rocky.
• Crazy Is Cool: Howard Beale, crazy old man and anti-establishment champion; they didn't call him "the mad prophet of the airwaves" for nothing.
  Jensen: Good morning, Mr. Beale. They tell me you're a madman.
• Ensemble Dark Horse:
  • Ned Beatty as Arthur Jensen. He appears in just two scenes, but for a lot of viewers he's the second-most memorable character after Howard Beale. He only worked on the film for one day, and got an Oscar nomination.
  • And of course Beatrice Straight as Louise Schumacher, who's only in three short scenes, still the smallest role to ever win an acting Oscar. If you're watching this for the first time and know she won Best Supporting Actress, you might wonder why, since she's hardly even in the film... until you get to that scene with Max.
• Evil Is Cool: While we're not meant to agree with his worldview, Arthur Jensen presents it in such a monumentally grand way that you can't help but be wowed by him. In just that one moment, he manages to change both Howard and the film's plot.
• Harsher in Hindsight:
  • Howard Beale's death happened on camera on national television. His actor, Peter Finch, himself almost died on camera, dying the morning after appearing on The Tonight Show.
  • A major part of UBS' Network Decay is that they give airtime to unstable loons like Howard Beale and extremists like the Ecumenical Liberation Army, allowing them to spout their propaganda virtually unchallenged simply because people think it's entertaining. This has become a major criticism of both the "traditional" media and newer social media in the 21st century, delegating responsibility and giving platforms to violent radicals in the name of ratings and clicks.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: The parent company of UBS, Communications Corporation of America, is depicted as a media conglomerate large enough to be able to operate a major television network (albeit one that played second fiddle to the real-life “Big Three” networks) that would be bought by a Saudi-backed investment corporation. Fast forward 13 years after the film’s release to the founding of a real-life broadcasting company of the same name that would go on to own several major network affiliates (primarily concentrated, with a few exceptions, in Texas and Louisiana), but never reached the size of the fictional UBS owner; the real-life CCA would be plagued by financial problems throughout much of the 2000s and early 2010s (filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 2006), ultimately selling its stations to the much larger Nexstar Media Group in 2014.
• Jerkass Woobie: Diana may be the most morally corrupt character in the movie and doesn’t really care for Max but considering her lack of vulnerability, being married to the job and only focused on her career, and openly admitting to Max that she doesn’t know how to love, it’s hard not to pity her when Max leaves her.
• Memetic Mutation: Beale's "mad as Hell" speech, both in-universe and in Real Life as well.
• Misaimed Fandom:
  • It bears repeating that while the character of Howard Beale may appear to be a fiery crusader for the common man, he is also an individual undergoing a severe and prolonged mental breakdown, and the film makes clear his behavior is not to be emulated. This, however, doesn't seem to stop people (both fictional and non-fictional) from claiming him as an inspiration.
  • This is also a source of Fridge Horror both in the film and in real life. Beale, in the midst of a mental breakdown, is being exploited by those around him for the sake of ratings, and he is ultimately murdered because his ratings slip. While he hasn’t explicitly stated this, Glenn Beck has obliquely hinted in recent years that he was suffering from psychological disorders during his tenure at HLN and Fox News Channel, which leads to the inevitable question of whether he was also being exploited at the time.
• My Real Daddy: Sidney Lumet was the director, and Paddy Chayefsky was the writer and co-producer, but Chayefsky also acted as a de facto co-director. Chayefsky mainly worked with the actors to get the delivery he wanted of his dialogue, but also, as producer, was allowed to overrule Lumet. The two men generally saw eye-to-eye on things, however.
• One-Scene Wonder: Arguably two of the greatest examples in cinematic history. Beatrice Straight is only in three scenes. Ned Beatty is in two. But both of them get a single moment where they get to let loose and steal the show from the leading characters. Beatty's work got him an Oscar nomination. Straight's got her an Oscar.
  • When his network in endangered by one of Howard Beale's rants, a seriously pissed off Arthur Jensen meets with him over this. Initially presenting himself in a calm, friendly manner, telling him of his status as a "man who can sell anything", and how he wants to sell something to his employee. Once the two of them are alone, Jensen explains his philosophy in a way that his audience can understand, by diving into a lengthy, rage filled speech that all but matches those of Howard's. After sufficiently terrifying Beale, Jensen takes it down a couple notches to bring his point home, successfully winning Howard over to his side, and changing the the course of the movie in only a few minutes.
  • After Max Schumacher explains the details of his affair to his wife Louise, in an affected but stoic manner, she questions and convinces him to reveal that he loves his mistress. After he does so, she lets loose on her husband, furiously crying while making it clear just how despicable his actions are, and how much he's hurt her in doing so. Once she's done verbally eviscerating Max, Louise regains her strength, encouraging him to move out, while emphasizing that she won't let her marriage be destroyed easily. In the end, after hearing about just how absurd and demented Max's lover is, Louise manages to both find empathy for her unfaithful husband, as well as humor in his situation, going through the wide range of emotions that come in being cuckolded in a single scene.
    • And we don't actually see Max confess. The scene opens with the two of them silently sitting at the table... but the instant we see the look on Louise's face, we know what he just told her.
• Retroactive Recognition:
  • Amusingly, you can spot a young Perry White among UBS's news staff.
  • Man, in that scene where Diane Christansen meets with Laureen Hobbs, that one executive with the blue denim suit looks pretty swanky—Wait, is that Lance Henriksen?
  • And the young executive Merrill Grant who introduces Hobbs' lawyer is none other than Cliff Barnes.
  • A young Conchata Ferrell plays Diana's assistant Barbara.
• Sampled Up: About half of Jensen's speech was sampled, with its sentences somewhat re-ordered, by Australian electro-industrial band Snog, in their best known song "Corporate Slave".
• Signature Line: "I'm as mad as Hell and I'm not going to take this anymore!"
• Signature Scene: Beale's "mad as Hell" rant.
• Unintentional Period Piece:
  • The film specifically dates itself to the 1975-76 television season by the reference to the assassination attempts against Gerald Ford, as well as, more broadly, by its depiction of the pre-cable television landscape (the fictional UBS network is portrayed as a second-string also-ran behind the "Big Three" of CBS, NBC, and ABC) and an old-style TV newsroom in the scenes before Howard Beale finally snaps. It also comes into play with the various outlandish TV shows that UBS creates afterwards, in a rare case of this trope causing Values Resonance rather than Values Dissonance. At the time, screenwriter Paddy Chayefsky (a veteran TV writer) intended the film as a satire of his experiences working in television, with Beale's fiery op-ed program and The Mao Tse-Tung Hour (following the escapades of a group of far-left Western Terrorists based on the Symbionese Liberation Army, complete with a parody of Patty Hearst) portrayed as the logical conclusion of the quest for Ratings that he had witnessed. Modern viewers have often described the film as prophetic in its anticipation of both Reality TV and assorted Pompous Political Pundit talk shows, and the effect that they had on the TV landscape.
  • Ironically, there is one facet of the future television landscape that is largely absent from the film’s prophetic depiction: religious programming and televangelists, which, while certainly present and somewhat popular at the time of the film’s release, would grow exponentially at the turn of the 1980s, with the widespread adoption of cable and satellite television, and the increasingly prominent Evangelical movement.
  • Max makes a joke early on about besting Disney if UBS ever aired Howard’s “Execution of the Week”. Such a notion today (or for much of the company’s existence) would be highly laughable, but at the time of the film’s release, Disney was smack dab in the middle of its decades-long Audience-Alienating Era (especially regarding its live-action output), so even a joking notion like Max’s would have been easier to imagine then.
• Values Resonance: This film's satirical take on news channels only grows more relevant with every passing year - still ringing every bit as true in the 21st century (if not moreso) as in 1976. With the rise of social media and the spread of sites and accounts using misinformation for engagement, the film's criticism of sensationalism and manipulation is still rather relevant even outside of the context of news channels.

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