Question : Is Bill Gates so completely off his rocker, or
so completely now devoted
to becoming the next Mother Theresa, that he simply doesn't
care what happens
have let his TV network self-destruct by becoming a
Left-wing looney-bin channel ?
More people are getting their news about the upcoming
election from cable television than any other source, and
from Fox News more than any other cable channel, according
to a POLITICO/George Washington University
Battleground Poll released Monday.
The poll found that 81 percent of those polled get their
news about the midterm elections from cable channels, like
Fox News, CNN, MSNBC, or their websites, compared with 71
percent from national network news channels, such as ABC,
NBC or CBS, and their websites.
Among cable news channels, Fox was the clear winner, with
42 percent of respondents saying it is their main source,
compared with 30 percent who cited CNN and 12 percent who
rely on MSNBC.
How did it get to this state? After all, NBC had a long
history in television news, starting decades before CNN and
even longer than Fox. Its partnership with Microsoft should
have given the cable news network a distinct advantage in
the New Media world. Their roster of news anchors, present
and future, should have immediately challenged CNN for
primacy and marginalized Fox, who [ which ] may have had
cash but relatively fewer newsgathering resources in the US
when it launched.
Under the direction of GE’s Jeff Immelt, though, NBC’s
cable network went for the full-insane demographic. Fox
took CNN’s talking-head format and simply reversed the bias,
although Fox rightly argues that it presents more opposing
viewpoints than CNN did as part of their establishment
talent and not just occasional guests and party
spinmeisters. NBC decided to emulate Air America with its
cable lineup instead, perhaps seeing some opportunity in the
last Bush term to capitalize on his unpopularity and become
a center of opposition opinion.
Rather than accomplish that, the decision by NBC and its
parent GE has not just destroyed MSNBC’s credibility but
also NBC’s as well. With the exception of Joe Scarborough,
who is hard to pigeonhole but certainly isn’t a hard-Left
hysteric, the entire lineup is exactly what one would find
on the failed libtalker radio network. It’s no coincidence
that two of its featured hosts come straight out of Air
America, Rachel Maddow and Ed Schultz. Maddow has, at
least, produced a watchable show, albeit with a hard-Left
tilt that clearly is out of touch with the mainstream, but
Schultz is barely coherent. Top that off with a daily
“news” broadcast from Keith Olbermann that almost literally
consists of a Two Minute Hate (Olbermann’s WPIW lists), and
it’s a recipe for the kind of disaster that only political
hacks could love. The wonder is that GE and NBC apparently
seem content to alienate 88% of the viewing audience with
its trainwreck theater.
