On Mon, Mar 25, 2013 at 1:44 PM, Kevin M. <[email protected]> wrote:
> I'd like one of those economic news magazines like Forbes to crunch > some numbers, then write an in-depth piece on the actual cost of > operating a 24 hour cable news channel, compared to -- say -- a > network of 90% reruns like TBS. > > In Kevin's perfect world of television, there would exist a channel > that aired decent quality reruns most of the day, but provided maybe > three or four substantive hours of news coverage per day. One hour of > global news, one hour of national news, one hour of regional news > (divide the country into sections like midwest or northeast and each > section gets a special broadcast), and one hour of long-form, in-depth > documentaries or interviews. The weekends would allow the one hour > docs to be rerun, and the other newscasts can rerun during the > overnights if need be. Each of the newscasts could share production > staff and equipment, thereby lessening expenses. I guess the point of > my fantasy cable channel is that although I see a need for a 24 hour a > day news channel, it only seems viable during breaking events like > severe weather, severe tragedy, or some political or economic > conditions. So why not build a network where news is the primary focus > but not the only content, which allows the news to be sharper, less > repetitive, and more fact-based? In my head, if you eliminate the > needs involved in programing 24 hours a day, it would allow the > content to be of a more polished quality than the competition. I actually love this idea. What is most irritating about CNN is their attempt to turn news into entertainment in order to goose their ratings. It would be so much better if they would just put on entertainment programming to get ratings, and use that to subsidize a quality news division which would only have to fill a small fraction of the hours (but still a lot more than a broadcast network). And reruns obviously would allow them flexibility in deciding when to break in with news updates - or even perhaps during political campaigns, wars. etc to go to more scheduled news hours. The danger I see with this idea is that if the reruns made them enough profit to invest in quality news, what would stop them from cutting news hours over time to increase rerun hours in order to make more profit? I am tempted to say they would not do that because of their commitment to reporting the news - but then CNN has already sacrificed its commitment to reporting the news in pursuit of infotainment, so why wouldn't they do it in pursuit of entertainment? Broadcast networks have at least the pretense of needing to justify their license with news and public affairs programming, but I guess cable operations don't even have that. -- -- TV or Not TV .... The Smartest (TV) People! You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "TV or Not TV" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/tvornottv?hl=en --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "TVorNotTV" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
