Posted on 07/05/2003 6:43:21 PM PDT by kcordell
I dunno, here at FR we've been telling them for years. To sum it all up though, I think we've seen smarter bricks...
"It is only awkward in that we are a Porsche going 40 miles an hour." Yeah, and a year from now they'll be going 50 if they're lucky. It could as easily turn out to be 30. This kind of churn in prime time is evidence of desperation. Connie Chung drew an audience. Most people here probably didn't like her, but as my father used to say, "There's an @ss for every seat." Roll her out and bring in Aaron Brown, and a fair number of the Connie Chung viewers will leave. They liked Connie Chung, and Aaron Brown is a totally different kind of "viewing experience." Whatever Aaron Brown's faults, there were bound to be some people who thought he was just The Greatest Thing. Now some of them leave, too. Every time they churn this show, they lose some fraction of the people who liked it the way it was. How many people does CNN think are out there whose idea of a good time is to watch a cable news show? Where do they think these Paula Zahn watchers are going to come from? Fox? It is to laugh. If they haven't figured it out yet, here's a vowel: the people watching Fox do not like CNN's politics. They could put J Lo on there in a negligee... once the novelty wore off, it'd be back to O'Reilly. Whether CNN likes it or not, their world has been forever segmented by Fox News. The conservatives are gone and they won't be back. Audiences will never again be what they were when CNN had a virtual monopoly on cable news. AOL Time-Warner is in a world of hurt, financially. There is nothing in CNN's future but haircuts and layoffs. This producer will be driving a Yugo before Paula Zahn gets to third gear. |
No doubt. The Democrats get their 40% even when their candidate has horns and a tail. Sometimes even when he's dead. My question is whether CNN can generate anything like the revenues it once did now that the audience for cable news is split along ideological lines. I don't see how they can. To hear this guy tell it, people who normally watch 'Friends' will stop their channel-flipper on a cable news show when they see the lovely and talented Paula Zahn interviewing some domehead from the Center For Peace. What planet did he just come from? That's why the Mindless Re-run Channel was started... to catch just those people.
I think CNN is trapped. MSNBC, in their desperation, already tried the idea of going whole-hog liberal. The mighty Phil Donahue went splat. Now they're coming the other way, trying to out-right Fox. CNN is caught between a rock and a place where there isn't actually a place. All they can really do is sit where they are, somewhat left of center, and accept whatever audience they get doing that. But it's never going to be what it was, back when they had the whole genre to themselves. It's going to be one cutback after another for those guys, until they get down to what they can really afford appealing to left-of-center news junkies.
As a footnote, I can only hope the broader entertainment market becomes as segmented as the cable news market. If entertainment content providers wake up en masse and say, "Hey, we can make a lot of money off of TV shows and movies that aren't anti-father, anti-family, anti-American, pro-liberal propaganda", it'll be a major victory in the culture war.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.