The main problem with broadcast news is that it lacks analysis, and just offers a glib, sound-bite oriented overview of a few stories. Then again, the fact that the broadcast networks are staffed top-to-bottom with Democrats who actively censor stories unfavorable to the party in power means that they don’t even do this simple task honestly.

Excellent essay and it reminds me of why I was one of those who signed onto the Spud-to-replace-Brian bandwagon, oh so many years ago. (Sorry Steve, but back then, I didn’t know your work)

Otherwise, I’ll point out that most of those who preach about the death of the evening news are those who are glued to the internet or to cable for large swaths of the day. IOW: They aren’t exactly unbiased observers. They may not all have a dog in the hunt, but they do come at it from the perspective that they do x, so everybody else should be doing x too.

Of course, network news is going to have to adapt to the changing landscape and one of the things they’ve been getting better at is making their programming available on-demand. It seems that everybody has learned to get their featured clips to the top of their respective webpages, but often you have to look for a full episode or extended webcast and though I believe CBS used to make their nightly broadcast available through some cable systems, it, nor any of the others are on mine.

As bandwidth increases, these alternative methods of delivery could and should become more important.

Back in the old days, when Walter Cronkite and David Brinkley were considered kings, it was almost American culture that the majority of us had finished our evening meal and was ready for the news at 6:30, but those times have changed. After all, this evening, let’s see… I’ve got one kid doing something until 5; The wife has a meeting until 5:30 and then I’ve got a kid going to swim lessons and another going to swim team at 6. Dinner tonight will be around 7:30 and it’ll probably be after eight when we’re to our respective TVs.

Quote: “It’s no wonder CNN ended up dropping Crossfire and Capital Gang. That sort of back and forth, both sides of the spectrum format became redundant and obsolete…”

it was partly because CNN failed to maintain a balance on Crossfire and Capital Gang, and partly because the liberal bias leaked over into the regular news coverage, that I was calling my cable company over and over, asking for Fox News Channel, for nearly two years before they finally added it to the channel lineup in the late 1990s. I watched Capital Gang all the time, for as long as I could, until the 3-2 or even 4-1 liberal majority just got to be more than I could handle. As for Crossfire, with Lynn Cheney representing the conservative argument it was about as good as it could get. But the regular news programming got to be too much — CNN saw itself as the voice of opposition to the Republican Congress, then the voice of the climate change lobby. I’m a little fuzzy on what path CNN took after about 1999, because I rarely if ever watched it.

A statistic I saw 8-10 years ago relates to this excellent article in comparing the still huge numbers of viewers nightly broadcast news receives compared to cable news.

Apparently even the much larger audience of the “big three” was dwarfed by those who get most or all of their news from the local network affiliates, clocking in at 87% of respondents. A scary thought given the “if it bleeds it leads” programming of local news, and the even more fleeting coverage of politics or world events than alloted on the networks.

I would submit the overarching problem with news in the U.S. is over 80% of it is controlled by five corporations. My factory co-workers in 1970 were veritable current event and political scholars compared to today’s too busy to notice, overworked average middle class citizen – who if he or she has any time at all to catch a little news hardly stands a chance of discerning a story’s context.

Ergo collective insanity every time a Democrat gets in the White House or tries to actually pass legislation, see 1993 Budget Reconciliation Act or HCR.

The article misses a important point. The main reason that cable gives so much space to politics i´s because it´s *cheaper* to pay people to discuss about something than to pay reporters and to keep bureaus in Iraq, Germany, Japan and whatever. The BBC has to spend more infrastructure and money with a show like Newsnight or Reporters that MSNBC have to spend with Olbermann or Fox with Glenn Beck. In fact, the number of bureaus and correspondents that FNC has is anemic when compared to any other major international news channel.

Thats, obviously, also affects other subjects, because it means to have coverage of natural disasters that uses second hand sources, a very anemic coverage of international affairs and less reporting(Less news per se). But´s it also more natural to do that with politics than about other subjects. And it´s cheaper to put some reporters in Capitol Hill than in the Amazon Rainforest or in Cairo. In the newscasts, at least, we have lots of correspondents and reporters. To do commentary and reporting about politics is way cheaper.

(And note that Headline News increased their ratings when they became HLN and had people about politics most of the time. And to be sincere, I saw others cable news channels at others languages – LCI in France, several of them in Latin America, and they don´t put so much of their time to talk about politics, even with a very low budget).

And I think that the internet will be a major player here. I can watch most of the major newscasts of the United States at my Ipod Touch, and if we have in the future larger band with we can also expect to have higher resolution shows. That´s the future.

Finally, the major problem of cable is that it has to report things while it are happening. That´s why we see so much rumors and others things while watching it at daytime(And we have very few newscasts at night). No one knows whether that fire in Oklahoma is going to become serious or not. That explained the whole ballon boy fiasco. Yes, it´s true, it´s end of the day in Europe at afternoon in the East Coast,and that´s why there is plenty of relevant news at CNN International and the BBC at that time. But few people at the US would care about that.

——-Total Viewers——— NBC Nightly News (Brian Williams) – 9,500,000  
ABC World News – 7,968,000    CBS Evening News – 6,601,000   
Cable News doesn’t even come close…lol.