Posted on 05/07/2010 7:22:34 AM PDT by blam
Michael Wolff: CNN + CBS = Less Than Zero
Michael Wolff
May. 7, 2010, 10:00 AM
Bill Carter, the New York Times’ hoary television reporter, in his story the other day about partnership talks between CNN and CBS, treated both networks as though they were august news organizations, instead of ruined artifacts of a former age.
Carter’s is yet another an example of the illusion the news media somehow successfully maintains about itself—about its importance and permanence and, even, the awe with which it is regarded—in the face of all evidence to the contrary.
As it happens, CBS—“once the home of Walter Cronkite,” as Carter intones—is desperate to get out of the news business (desperate to get out of what’s left of its news business), or anyway CBS Inc, of which CBS News is an irrelevant part, is desperate to get out of it. CNN—with its “extensive news-gathering resources,” in Carter’s version of basso profundo—is desperate to do something that will keep supporting its ever-diminishing business prospects. The former doesn’t want to be in the modern news business, the latter doesn’t know how to be, so combining them produces what exactly?
[snip]
(Excerpt) Read more at businessinsider.com ...
This is just an effort to see if they can drop add revenue faster than Newsweek.
The media are poster children for the Wishful Thinking Foundation. Or models of the Emperor’s Clothes. Or tour guides on Denial.
They are to news what the Yugo was to automobiles. But they’re convinced they’re all Ferarris.
Concise, and perfectly expressed.
There is a LOT MORE that can be said about the death throes of Conventional MSM, and it’s Last Hurrahs, and pathetic rationalizations for itself, but those are in process, and are still available for all to see.
If FOX doesn’t watch out, with people like O’Reilly and Geraldo, (who pretend to argue,but instead come off as Punchito and Judy), and even the celebrity-struck Hannity still holding onto their chairs there, FOX too will lose its standing as being in any way different from CNN, MSNBC,or CBS. They are still way behind the growing autonomy of a newly awakened constituency which has yet to find its venues “beyond the Internet”.
yup... 0 + 0 can equal < 0 when it comes the those L$M losers...
They can’t afford Katie I guess.
They’ll give up their news division in return for some special news broadcast from CNN? Except for 60 minutes of course.
Its a sign that CBS is not doing well, this is desperation.
FNC is only marginably better as a news channel, but it is enough with that competition.
The news divisions have been money losers from the get go. But they were “needed” to could show the regulators in DC that the networks did “public service” to offset the trash they otherwise put over the air.
Now that the wheels are coming off the money machine, the networks must cut wherever they can.
Doesn’t CNN get a lot of its resources from local network affiliates? What happens if local TV news starts going dark?
Does a city really need 4 or 5 local news programs?
I’ve always heard that CNN gets a higher ad rate than others even though their ratings may be lower than the competition. Somehow, they’ve managed to convince ad buyers their product is of superior quality.
Don’t ask me how they do it.
Why has someone not created a channel just for shows like Beck and Hannity? All day long. Laura Ingraham, Hugh Hewitt and others could be hosts. Maybe even take calls or have audiences.
Call it NewsTalk-TV or something.
Then FNC could be news, news all day.
Obama, that is.
ML/NJ
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