Free Republic

The trouble with ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN and that crowd -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Posted: March 14, 2006 1:00 a.m. Eastern © 2006 WorldNetDaily.com If you want to know what happened today, you don't have to turn on the tube. I will be happy to tell you right now, no extra charge. Ready? Here goes: What happened today is about what happened yesterday. And the day before. Namely: Four billion people went to work or took care of their kids. They cooked food, paid bills, washed clothes, handled problems, had a few laughs, did most of their chores, and got enough sleep to...

ROCHESTER, N.Y., Feb. 25 (UPI) -- Seventy-seven percent of U.S. adults watch local broadcast news, while 71 percent watch network news, compared to 18 percent who read a national newspaper. A Harris Interactive poll of 2,985 U.S. adults also found 64 percent get their news several times a week or daily by going online, while 63 percent read a local daily newspaper. Fifty-four percent listen to radio news broadcasts, 37 percent listen to talk radio and 19 percent listen to satellite news programming. Those age 59 and older are most likely to rely on local broadcast news, network broadcast or...

Ted Koppel Pens First Piece as 'NY Times' Columnist--Comes Out Swinging By E&P Staff Published: January 29, 2006 12:45 AM ET NEW YORK In his first contribution after being named a New York Times columnist, former ABC newsman Ted Koppel declares, "I cannot help but see that the industry in which I have spent my entire adult life is in decline and in distress." Koppel raps the new "calculated subjectivity" and forced empathy of cable news, and adds: "The accusation that television news has a political agenda misses the point. Right now, the main agenda is to give people what...

Mike Wallace has bemoaned the state of television news in general and of 60 Minutes in particular. In an interview with the Boston Globe, Wallace remarked, "The days of Walter Cronkite and Huntley and Brinkley are gone. People still do watch, but it doesn't have the clout that it used to have. I don't know what's going to happen or if there will be an evening news 10 years from now. It's a very expensive operation to keep up." Wallace also lamented the falling ratings of his own 60 Minutes, where he has had the title of co-editor since 1968....

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - CBS is trying to change the face of network news by luring Katie Couric, co-host of NBC's top-rated morning show "Today," to the evening news anchor seat vacated by Dan Rather, the Los Angeles Times said on Friday. Citing senior editorial staffers at both networks, the Times said newly installed CBS News President Sean McManus had determinedly wooed Couric in recent weeks to take over as permanent anchor of the CBS Evening News and that Couric was seriously considering such a move. CBS and NBC both declined comment on the story. Media reports began circulating in...

AudienceIn the 1990s, cable news networks replaced network television for many Americans as the primary source for breaking news, just as in the 1960s television supplanted newspapers. In the new millennium, a broadband-enabled, always-on Internet threatens to usurp those cable news networks. The recent tsunami disaster, The New York Times noted, marked the first time significant numbers of Americans turned to blogs for breaking news. Where does that leave network news? In 2004, the decline in evening news audience continued, as did declines in prime-time magazines. Morning news, in contrast, continued to see its audiences grow. And despite the decision...

The word went out on August 8th that Peter Jennings, an icon of American mainstream media, had died at the age of 67. In this day and age, 67 is well below the average life span in America, and it is unfortunate that the ABC News anchor died prematurely due to lung cancer. Often when someone dies, the initial commentary is rather flattering, as people with the smallest amount of good taste will not speak ill of the dead, especially before they’ve been put in the ground. There was plenty of news coverage of Jennings death, and there were a...

Last Week's Evening News Ratings The NBC Nightly News is the #1 evening newscast, but ABC's World News Tonight is #1 in the coveted 25-54 demographic. Last week's ratings mark "the fifth consecutive week World News Tonight was number one in the key demo," a press release says. "Nightly News displayed its lowest Adult 25-54 delivery since September 1987," ABC noted. Here are the ratings, in total viewers and the 25-54 demo: NBC: 7,900,000 / 2,460,000 ABC: 7,650,000 / 2,760,000 CBS: 6,590,000 / 2,110,000

No less an authority than Sam Donaldson, the television newsman notorious for bellowing hard questions at presidents, has concluded that it's time to blow taps over that most venerable of institutions, the network evening news. Beset by mounting competition, journalistic missteps, changing demographics and the departure of some long-term marquee personalities, the network evening news program is a shell of its former self - no longer attracting the devotion that made it, in the 1960s and '70s, America's dominant information source. "I think it's dead, sorry," Donaldson said during a panel discussion at the National Association of Broadcasters convention in...

Former ABC News reporter/anchor Sam Donaldson is ready to say the last rites for network news because it will soon lose its dominant position as Americans' primary source of news. "I think it's dead. Sorry," he said during a breakfast panel Tuesday at the National Association of Broadcasters' convention in Las Vegas. "The monster anchors are through." Even though 30 million viewers still turn to networks news each night and garner ratings well above CNN and Fox News, networks news operations long ago lost their role as the sources Americans rely on during time of major breaking news, said Donaldson...

America's three original network news shows face the same momentous choice at nearly the same time: Pass the torch to a new anchor who, each hopes, has the gravitas to hold viewers and win new ones, or break with a star-driven tradition developed back in television's Pleistocene era and try something different. This moment of transition - brought on by the departures of Dan Rather at CBS and Tom Brokaw at NBC, and now Peter Jennings's decision to curtail appearances on ABC's news broadcasts - brings into stark relief some of the ongoing challenges for the networks. Even with established...

A tsunami has recently hit TV network news and it may never be the same. A different breed of broadcasters is taking over the news mission. The real news now seems to be delivered in snippets at great speed to enable the anchor to get on with the lusty scandals and celebrity trials that the networks cherish. Television seems dominated these days by cable channels and loud talk shows, hogging a communications medium that was once dominated by the networks. This change in tone and emphasis comes amid the retirements of some of the giants of the business. I refer...

NEW YORK (AP) _ The funeral of Pope John Paul II was both a solemn ritual and a news event _ and television networks that brought it live into American homes hours before the sun rose struggled to reconcile the two. The main broadcast and news networks all had live coverage of the funeral from Rome, its end marking the transition for many Catholics from mourning the pope to the question of who will succeed him. ``This Mass is about to begin,'' CBS anchor Harry Smith said at the outset. ``We're going to try to stay as much out of...

IF you were watching TV news over the past few days, it would be hard to know which story carried more weight: The incomprehensible devastation caused by the tsunami which took (at press time) nearly 30,000 lives, or the equally tragic story of airport delays and lost baggage...< SNIP > In fact, TV news in general treated the disaster like one of those weather stories where the rookie reporter gets battered at the seawall in Canarsie. And every reporter seemed like a rookie this past holiday weekend. Apparently the tsunami would have had to hit Aspen to get the pros...

SO NOW CBS News anchor Dan Rather too is set to leave the evening news show. Rather was at CBS for more than two decades, and was known as “Rather Biased” to his conservative foes. I’m not going to speculate on whether Rather’s decision, or CBS’s decision, was prompted by the controversy when Rather reported a story that was based on forged documents and was damaging to President Bush. Of more importance is the demise of the mainstream news media. For decades, the only way to get television news was to listen to the evening news broadcasts of the three...

At a panel discussion sponored by the New Yorker Magazine on Saturday in New York, NBC news anchor Tom Brokaw lashed out at Internet bloggers in defense of CBS's Dan Rather according to reports from the Associated Press and Reuters.Brokaw compared the bloggers attacks on Dan Rathers '60 Minutes II' reportage about President Bush's National Guard service to a 'political jihad.''What I think is highly inappropriate is what's going on across the internet, a kind of political jihad,' Brokaw said during a panel discussion where he appeared with Dan Rather and Peter Jennings.'It is certainly an attempt to demonize CBS...

I listened to some of that panel discussion on C-Span with Rather, Jennings and Brokaw. While everyone's making a big deal about Brokaw's silly comments about the bloggers (Damn this Jihad by the automobile makers, everyone knows the horse-and-buggy's more reliable!), I think Rather's comments deserve some mocking too. It was hard to hear him from so deep inside his bunker, but he seemed to be saying over and over and over that his troubles are the result of the White House trying to destroy his reputation. Never mind that this thesis directly contradicts Brokaws Jihad-bloggerati thesis -- unless you...

Brokaw, Jennings Show Support for Rather Sat Oct 2, 4:31 PM ET By DEEPTI HAJELA, Associated Press Writer NEW YORK - While acknowledging mistakes in CBS anchor Dan Rather's "60 Minutes" report that questioned President Bush (news - web sites)'s service in the National Guard, competing news anchors Tom Brokaw and Peter Jennings offered support Saturday for the beleaguered newsman. Brokaw blasted what he called an attempt to "demonize" CBS and Rather on the Internet, where complaints about the report first surfaced. He said the criticism "goes well beyond any factual information." "What I think is highly inappropriate is what...

Brokaw, Jennings Show Support for Rather Sat Oct 2, 4:31 PM ET By DEEPTI HAJELA, Associated Press Writer NEW YORK - While acknowledging mistakes in CBS anchor Dan Rather's "60 Minutes" report that questioned President Bush (news - web sites)'s service in the National Guard, competing news anchors Tom Brokaw and Peter Jennings offered support Saturday for the beleaguered newsman. AP Photo Brokaw blasted what he called an attempt to "demonize" CBS and Rather on the Internet, where complaints about the report first surfaced. He said the criticism "goes well beyond any factual information." "What I think is highly inappropriate...

THE LATEST FROM CBS AND ABC [09/14 07:41 PM] My source familiar with the internal discussions at CBS describes the atmosphere at the network offices tonight as "madness" and "toxic". Apparently a real bunker mentality is setting in; there is reportedly a great deal of anger at ABC for running a scathing report about the memos. I didn't see the ABC report (the CBS report was so shockingly false I needed smelling salts) , but apparently it was a humdinger. Here's a summary of each network from ABC: ABC's Brian Ross interviewed the two experts who CBS hired to validate...