Discovery and Ted Koppel Present ‘Living with Cancer’
Latest Installment of Koppel on Discovery Takes Ambitious Dual Format
While most people recognize veteran journalist Ted Koppel as the face and voice of ABC’s Nightline, he is currently a senior correspondent at NPR and Discovery Channel following his departure from that seminal news program. At 8pm EST this Sunday night, May 6, cable’s Discovery Channel and Discovery Health will simultaneously premiere Koppel’s latest endeavor in the exclusive Koppel on Discovery documentary series. Entitled Koppel on Discovery: Living with Cancer, the three-hour hybrid program is both a documentary and a live town hall meeting, formatted thus to better engage viewers in an alternatively enlightening, uplifting, and sobering exploration of the broad and complex impact of cancer on individuals in modern times.
The first portion of the program features assorted discussions between Koppel and two men who know cancer intimately—Leroy Sievers, his friend and producer of fifteen years, and Lance Armstrong, Tour de France champion for a record-breaking seven consecutive times. Afterwards, Elizabeth Edwards, wife of presidential candidate John Edwards, will join all three men for a live town hall meeting broadcast from Discovery Communications Headquarters in Silver Spring, Maryland. There, the audience comprised solely of people who are living with cancer, their family members, and their caretakers will have the opportunity to participate in candid exchanges with the panel members.
Producer Siever also maintains an informative firsthand account of his experiences in the blog My Cancer, hosted by NPR since its inauguration in February 2006. The May 3 entry, titled “The Specter of Our Own Deaths,” offers the following stark yet haunting insights, which perfectly exemplify Siever’s talent for amiable commentary that encourages readers to see reality in a slightly different light through the lens of cancer:
There’s really only one thing that’s tougher to talk about than cancer, and that’s death. As we have talked about on this blog before, death is the elephant in the room. When we say we’re fighting cancer, coping with it or trying to live with it, really what we’re talking about is the specter of our own deaths.
…Predictions of our deaths are laid out not in decades, but in years and even months. Death is always in the room, sometimes sitting quietly in the corner, sometimes getting right in our faces. I think the biggest thing that separates us from the people who don’t live in cancer world is not the pain, not the treatments, not the fear or sadness. It’s that we have a pretty good idea of what’s going to kill us, and a pretty good idea of when that might happen. Some of the mystery is taken away.
In its recent review, entertainment publication Variety describes Koppel on Discovery: Living with Cancer as “another triumph of journalistic understatement for Koppel” that “dares to be intelligent and thoughtful as it goes about getting up close and personal.” There’s no doubt that those who decide to watch the presentation will come away with a deeper, clearer understanding of what a cancer diagnosis entails not only for the loss of life, but the celebration of life, as well.
Koppel on Discovery: Living with Cancer premieres Sunday, May 6, at 8pm EST on both Discovery Channel and Discovery Health
Koppel on Discovery logo courtesy of Discovery Channel
