These programs do need to do a better job at fact checking and calling out public officials. This won’t be helped by adding bells and whistles that don’t alleviate the perceived decline in quality. As someone who has fully embraced social media, I recognize that social media and blogging is a young phenomenon that still has limitations. There’s no guarantee that the inclusion of social media will improve the overall quality and balance of content in these shows. For example, the three bloggers that you mention all fall in the left side of the political spectrum (yes, I consider Andrew Sullivan a liberal; I agree with him most of the time). So will social media, which trends young (and perhaps ageist) and progressive, actually make the content quality of Sunday morning talk worse? I don’t know, but I fear that as a possibility.

Maybe the news networks can look at NPR, which despite it’s use of social networking, is still fundamentally a a radio network. NPR, in particular Morning Edition and All Things Considered, is widely respected as a source of unbiased and quality news and has been enjoying record ratings. But unlike the networks, NPR can take risks because of it’s unique business model.

Which leads to the business case for “modernizing” Sunday morning talk. As we all know, these programs are not a public service and are advertisement driven. Maybe the reason why the networks are slow to change is because they don’t feel a need to change because they’re are satisfied with the ad revenue they take in from these shows. After all, the current target demographic that you cited (middle aged, white males) is a high income demographic which attracts a certain kind of advertiser. The cost of 30 seconds ad time is probably reasonable due to the time of the week and the relative inexpense of producing This Week or State of the Union. So unless the networks are hemorrhaging ad revenue, they don’t have a lot of incentive to change. And frankly, there’s nothing wrong with the concept of these shows being a niche product if that’s what the networks want them as. Change for the sake of change is a rarely a persuasive argument.

The people who run these shows want to control the debate. They’re not open to persuasion or real democracy.

In terms of content, I enjoy the talking heads more than the guests because it’s unscripted opinion. Perhaps they should invite bloggers/tweeters onto the shows and ask their opinions.

As for Gregory, I was always impressed with him as a reporter, but as a moderator, he is out of his element. I honestly believe MTP is at its low point now. I never have the sense he is up to speed on the issues. He seems to merely rehash cold media talking points.

As Glenn Greenwald has pointed out on more than one occasion, the “journalists” that run these shows are unwilling to challenge the party line of their guests, because they are in the same party:

David Gregory: I think there are a lot of critics who think that . . . . if we did not stand up and say this is bogus, and you’re a liar, and why are you doing this, that we didn’t do our job.  I respectfully disagree.  It’s not our role. http://bit.ly/8HurKB

George Stephanopolis was not up to the task of pointing out that Rudy Giuliani was, at best, spectacularly mistaken when he claimed there were no terrorist attacks under W.

Don’t you think that the questions/comments chosen by these fools will continue to feed that establishment line?