Whatever happens to President Obama’s attempt to reform health care in America, it won’t be said that television played a positive role in the debate.

Television news coverage has, as always, given us heat when we needed light. When the nation craved information, television gave us sensation and confrontation. A reasonable, measured debate on the merits of the issue won’t boost TV ratings. Nor will serious, detailed analysis.

What the network heads want are screaming matches and waving picket signs, the more inflammatory the better. They and the screamers share a symbiotic relationship. One group wants plenty of noise and dramatic pictures, the other is only too happy to provide.

If there’s one temper-tantrum outburst on a given day, one quick clip of some voter somewhere screaming in the face of a congressmen among hours of video of reasoned debates in meetings scattered around the country, you know which 10 seconds will be repeated on an endless loop for the next 24 hours.

Or as Time’s Joe Klein said on CNN today (Aug. 17), if there’s a crowd of 20,000 cheering for Obama, and a half-dozen “crazies” making noise, TV would focus its attention on the “crazies.”

Lest there be doubt, the lesson was driven home the other day by a CNN anchor. A member of Congress from New Jersey was conducting a town hall meeting in Secaucus. We saw a shot of the hall from outside. But no more.

“If it gets hot and heavy, we’ll be there live,” promised the anchor.

Her words struck me. What she was also saying was this: “If it DOESN’T get hot and heavy, we WON’T be there live. We’ll cover it if, and ONLY if, it gets hot and heavy. If the folks in Secaucus are talking over the issues calmly and not getting in each other’s faces, we’re not interested. We’ll look for something more exciting.”

Oh no, you might be thinking. You’re thinking that I’m reading too much into a chance remark, that she didn’t really mean it that way.

Oh? Keep reading.

I kept watching. I kept watching CNN for another half-hour or so, just to see what might develop. At that point, we saw another shot of the hall. And the anchor (sorry, didn’t get her name) made the same pledge: “If we see fireworks, you will, too.”

Yes, she said it again. Different words, same message: “If we DON’T see fireworks, we won’t bother.” To the disappointment of CNN and myself, there were apparently no fireworks, at least not during the time I was watching. We never did get back to the meeting. We can only surmise that the folks in Secaucus had a peaceful chat without the benefit of fireworks.

CNN hasn’t been alone, of course. MSNBC and Fox have made the same decisions when if comes to health care coverage. They cover the subject the way local television covers education: the cameras show up when outraged parents do. Fox compounds the offense with commentators who pour the gasoline of incendiary words on the fire, but the others happily reap the ratings benefits.

The noisemakers believe that the way to get their point across, to lead the public to believe that they are in the ascendancy, if not the majority, is to get their faces on television. And the way to get on television is to paint signs and yell and holler.

Alas, they’re right.

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“Glenn Martin, DDS” is of interest to the TV industry because it’s the first show produced by former Disney honcho Michael Eisner’s Tornante Animation. Otherwise, it’s utterly forgettable.

A stop-action animation comedy, “Glenn Martin” debuts at 8 p.m. Monday (Aug. 17) on Nick at Nite and runs every night through Thursday. It airs on Mondays only starting Aug. 24.

Even though some big names voice the characters – Kevin Nealon as Glenn, Catherine O’Hara as wife Jackie, others by Chrissie Hynde, Betty White, Gene Simmons, Wendie Malick – and despite the best efforts of a yeomanlike laugh track, the end result is an unfunny, unoriginal, cliche-stuffed, what-were-they-thinking, misbegotten mess.

A large part of the pilot is devoted to the family’s vacation visit to an Amish farm. I detect a plan to capture that all-important Amish demographic. But the Amish don’t have electricity and they don’t watch television.

Even if they did watch television, they wouldn’t watch this.