On Sat, Jul 25, 2015 at 11:26 AM, K.M. Richards <[email protected]> wrote:
> I wouldn't be surprised in the least to find you were right about that, > Kevin. > > Yet NBCCastiversal (or whatever their corporate name is now) can't get > their minds around the idea that a loose cannon can attract eyeballs if it > goes off as expected. I phrase it that way because both in MSNBC's and > Current's case, they overreacted to Keith being Keith. It's not like they > didn't know this is the way he is, because this is the way he's always been. > Kevin said a real news channel could make a profit - I also would not be surprised if that were true. For years (in my view, up till Roone Arlidge got his grubby little hands on it) network news was not expected to make a profit (William Paley told his news reporters in the early 1960’s that they shouldn’t be worried about costs: “I have Jack Benny to make money” ( http://niemanreports.org/articles/the-transformation-of-network-news/). With the arrival of flash and then big corporate takeover of broadcast networks and cable, news was transformed into a profit center. I should think there is a reasonable mid point, where news could make a small and sustainable profit without whoring itself out much more than a traditional paper's entertainment section and brief horoscope. But capitalism is not about making a profit, it is about continually increasing profits. A real news cable channel could make a small, stable profit, but not the kinds of margins the mega-corps demand for their shareholders. So I would be extremely surprised if a real news channel could exist in the current environment, unless we somehow had the balls to fund an all news PBS channel substantially underwritten, but not controlled, by taxpayer money. -- -- 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/d/optout.
