Posted on 04/17/2003 1:06:39 PM PDT by RAT Patrol
Denver Post
al knight
Every silver lining has a cloud
By Al Knight
Denver Post Editorial Board
Wednesday, April 16, 2003 - It's been widely reported that the news departments at the three major television networks have been having a very tough time since the beginning of the Iraqi war.
CBS and ABC have fared worse than NBC, but all of them have suffered to some extent. Instead of bigger audiences for news programs about the war, the number of viewers has declined significantly.
Public opinion polls don't reveal the precise reasons for the response - or lack of it.
It's been assumed - especially by commentators on Fox News Channel - that the left-leaning bias of the major networks is the cause for the drop in ratings.
Under this theory, Americans are turning away from network news because they can't stomach the negative tone of the networks' news coverage.
Fox News has been consistently upbeat in its coverage and its audience has grown during the war, but does this necessarily mean political bias accounts for the continuing shift in viewing habits?
Maybe not. There is another explanation, but one that won't necessarily please broadcast network executives either: Broadcast network news has worn out its welcome, overdone all of the familiar packaging formulas and appears in need of a major blood transfusion.
All of the network anchors are getting up there in age, and the news shows have reached the point where cosmetic changes simply won't cure the underlying defects. Peter Jennings, Tom Brokaw and Dan Rather may continue to pretend that they can encapsulate the day's news to satisfy the "average" viewer, but a lot of viewers aren't "average."
Those who are truly interested in the day's events will find the broadcast offerings a thin intellectual soup. It doesn't matter if it is served up in the condescending manner of Jennings or in an aw-shucks style by Brokaw or in the dreamy monotone of Rather.
The ABC News broadcast Monday illustrates the basic problem. Although the U.S. announced that "major" military operations had ended and that two aircraft carriers would be brought home, Jennings treated the war in a ho-hum summary.
The report was unsatisfying - not because the balance was so clearly off, but because it was so lacking in texture and detail.
The anchorman seemed to be sleep-walking. The result was that the rest of the broadcast was equally drained of information and interest. A report was included on SARS, the by-now famous virus that poses a threat to the public's health in Asia and elsewhere. But that report also promised more than it delivered. So, too, did a report on American corporations that have moved their headquarters offshore to avoid taxes.
The differences between the broadcast networks and the news channels are becoming more obvious. The broadcast networks, because they rely on limited programming, actually seek to assure viewers that all that can be known is known. The news departments, in other words, seek to assure viewers by their tone and content that they can relax. The networks will let them know all they need to know.
Not so the news channels. Because they are 24-hour-a day, seven-day-a-week operations, they seek to deliver the opposite message. Viewers are urged not to wait until the evening news to become informed. They are regularly reminded that things are more urgent than that. Information is available now - and it needs to be put to use.
In one sense, the competition for the news audience doesn't have much to do either with political bias or the quality of available information, although those contrasts exist. It has to do with how information might be used.
The cable news networks are excited about this. Not so the broadcast networks.
If this is the case, there is reason to rejoice. Viewers are firmly rejecting the notion that three men should personify the delivery of news in a country as vast and varied as the United States.
There may have been a time when that kind of concentration was the inevitable byproduct of limited technology. Cable and the Internet ended that long ago. The wonder is not that the audience for Jennings, Brokaw and Rather is sharply shrinking now - but rather, that it has lasted this long.
Al Knight (alknight@mindspring.com) ) is a member of the Denver Post editorial board and a former television reporter. His column appears Wednesday and Sunday.
Or, maybe so! If one starts from the premise that most people are conservative, love their country, and we do know that over 3-fourths of people supported the war effort, they're going to respond negatively to the leftist spin of the major media outlets. Fox is killing CNN. Why? Most people are fed up with CNN's bias! It's as simple as that.
It simply means that these media types, in return for censoring something that might damage a leftie, will get something of value in the future. The bias in what news is read by these presstitutes is so obvious, that we take our business elsewhere.
And from the commercials they run, spend a lot of money on Polident, Depends, and Tylenol.
The network news audience isn't moving away --- they are dying off. ;~))
I'll say too that I have a friend who doesn't have cable, and whenever I'd email him something about the war over the past four weeks, he wouldn't understand most of it, because he didn't have access to news 24/7. In short, he wasn't that well informed about what was going on, simply because all he had were the three main networks.
It's that and demographics, too. As the Boomers approach
retirement, network television's propensity to program
for the 18-24 extended adolescent market slowly drives
the Boomers to cable, where occasional fare for the
over-forty shows up. Once the cable bridge is crossed,
there's little pulling the grownup back just to watch
a thin layer of under-reporting masquerade as everything
that happened in the world that day.
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