See article below --
More about the precipitous decline of CNN and also of other MSM
news services.
Wish there was more in the article about the incredible
shrinking "Big 3" TV networks,
but the picture is clear. The MSM is the Lemming Media. It
simply cannot
help itself from committing suicide.
There is no more evening news to watch on the networks,
especially not CBS and ABC,
but NBC isn't much better. Katie Couric, who is certainly
likable, is also a news lightweight
and I don't see how she ever will become anything else. As for
Diane Sawyer, is her
elevation to the anchor's chair supposed to be some kind of joke
? Its her manner
of presentation, goddamned every story is hearts and flowers
stuff, as she reports it,
as if the only proper response to hard news is to cry about it.
Don't remember her name ( lucky for her ) but the sob-sister
woman anchor at NBC
on weekends is even worse. This kind of nonsense isn't news, it
is a women's romance novel
presented in news format, essentially worthless drivel, in other
words.
There actually are talented news women. The best, by far, is
Cokie Roberts,
smart as hell, and yet just enough charm that you know, for
sure, she is a
well adjusted actual woman. Tough as nails but able to express
emotion
when she should. Where is her TV news show ?
As for CNN in particular, the article spells out the details, or
some of them.
Basically. thinking about today's news market, almost everything
is a horrible
mismatch. John King, for example, has real strength as a news
analyst, but as
a pundit, he is out of his depth and seems to think that being
poetic
is the secret of success ( hint, it is not ). As for Ms Croley,
someone who does try hard and is competent, regardless, if
you simply MUST have a woman anchor with zero or negative sex
appeal,
well, she's your lady. Maybe she'd make a really good office
manager,
but as an on-screen TV personality, uhhhh, do ratings matter or
not ?
Also no raving beauty is Greta, but she has one thing going for
her,
a winning personality.
Why Rachel Maddow now outperforms Larry King is no surprise.
As bad as Maddow is, which is horrible, shrill, bigoted,
mean-spirited,
at least she offers a little substance by way of thinking
ability. Stress is on
the word "little," since I regard her as an inferior thinker,
but at least
it is something. LK, meanwhile, offers vapors, mere whiffs of
thought,
banalities and superficialities galore. And the numbers tell
this story
much better than these written remarks . He is in the tank and
yet CNN keeps him on.
Not that Fox does everything right. It also is guilty of some
major screw ups.
Why doesn't Monica Crowley have her own show ? Why does Hannity
have
his own show ? I mean, as good as he is at identifying news that
others overlook,
at which he has real talent, is how bad ( miserable, really ) he
is at doing something
with these stories. On that subject the man has almost no talent
at all. And why
Fox hangs on the Mr Colmes, a rather insipid party hack,
mystifies me entirely.
But, adding it all up, the results speak for themselves. In a
cable TV world
where the other news services never merit more than a grade of
D+
over at Fox the grade is about B-
My humble opinion, anyway
Billy
=====================================================
American Thinker blog
March 30, 2010
Liberal media death spiral intensifies
Thomas Lifson
CNN, the liberal cable news
network which reported "at least
dozens" of people attended the Tea Party Express![]()
rally in Searchlight, NV last week, may soon be measuring its audience
in similar quantities. Bill Carter of the New York Times reports:
CNN continued what has become a
precipitous decline in ratings for its prime-time programs in the first
quarter of 2010, with its main hosts losing almost half their viewers
in a year.
The problems in prime time, the
most lucrative part of the broadcast day, are catastrophic in scope:
Mr. [Larry] King's audience
dropped 43 percent for the quarter and 52 percent in March. He dropped
to 771,000 viewers for the quarter from 1.34 million in 2009. More
alarming perhaps, Mr. King, whose show has been regularly eclipsed by Rachel Maddow's on MSNBC (and
is almost quadrupled by Sean Hannity's show on Fox),
is now threatened by a new host, Joy Behar on HLN (formerly Headline
News.) [....]
Mr. [Anderson] Cooper has long
been regarded as the strongest host at CNN, but his show has suffered
badly as well. For the quarter, Mr. Cooper dropped 42 percent in
viewers and 46 percent among the 25-to-54-year-old audience that the
news channels use for their sales to advertisers.
Larry King's brand of pablum (he
never bothers to read an author's book, and specializes in softball
questions) is out of step with the times, as an aroused citizenry
confronts a president downsizing America's standing in the world and
their own economic prospects.
Anderson Cooper, the openly
homosexual Vanderbilt heir, is now damaged goods, having applied the
label "teabaggers" (homosexual slang for a graphic sexual act) to the
Tea Partiers. He should have lost his job for that exercise in smutty
sarcasm, but instead continues to destroy both his own and his
employer's standing.
Meanwhile, Fox News Channel![]()
,
the only major news source willing to ask tough questions to President
Obama and the Democrats, continues to soar in the ratings:
At the same time, Fox News![]()
,
which had its biggest year in 2009, continues to add viewers. Greta Van
Susteren's show was up 25 percent from a year earlier. Bill O'Reilly, whose show
commands the biggest audience in prime time with 3.65 million viewers,
was up 28 percent, and Glenn Beck was up 50
percent from a year earlier.
There are ironies aplenty in
this report appearing in the New York Times, which remains even more
stubbornly wedded to pushing the liberal party line on a nation now
more suspicious of both the media and the liberal political
establishment. Not only does Fox News Channel's stunning success offer
a clue to the clueless publisher Pinch Sulzberger about how to preserve
his patrimony by changing its political orientation, but FNC's lush
profits (reportedly well into the hundreds of millions of dollars a
year) are helping finance the expansion of the
Wall Street Journal into serious competition with the NYT as a general
interest national daily. Rupert Murdoch has openly spoken of his
intent to go after the luxury goods advertisers which provide a large
share to the Times' advertising revenue, while attracting subscribers
with enhanced general interest content and special price offers to both
advertisers and readers.
The New York Times![]()
and CNN are both circling the drain, looking at each other across the
vortex swirling both of them toward unprofitability and ultimate
insolvency.
