The Case For Nightly Broadcast News – And What’s Wrong With Cable News

2) Politics, politics, politics – Many would argue that FNC is the reason why politics now disproportionately dominates cable news. I don’t think you can blame FNC for this, for even FNC at its outset was far less political than it is now. But you can blame cable news for going for the low hanging fruit of the cable news ratings world: the ideological partisans and political junkies.

Like talk radio, cable news now looks to feed the political beast out there. In 1996, when FNC and MSNBC came on the scene, politics had a more equal share of the news cycle with everything else. But once the Lewinsky scandal happened and dragged on for years with the impeachment proceedings, the cable news landscape changed. For so long viewers were inundated with Lewinsky and Clinton that cable news lost its bearings and its perspective and what was once considered a news cycle aberration became the de facto operating pattern for cable news’ coverage of politics.

“You don’t need dedicated shows hashing out talking points when the networks’ dayside news operations now parrot those very talking points via press statements, video sound bites, and other media formats like Twitter.”

Things were taken a step further with the2000 Florida recount. Like the Lewinsky scandal and the impeachment trial a couple of years earlier, the nonstop coverage of Florida became a reflection of the political climate. The latest news on the recount and all the arguing over it, no matter how trivial or absurd, would get hashed out ad nauseam by people talking past each other. What the Lewinsky scandal and the impeachment hearings established in the eyes of the viewer in terms of what cable news was “expected” to do and how it was “expected” to do it, the 2000 recount cemented permanently. Lewinsky/impeachment set the standard for Florida 2000 and that in turn set the standard for everything that came after. By the time the run up to the Iraq War in 2003 occurred, the programming patterns had long been ingrained in the cable news programmers’ minds based on the expectation that if it’s political and you cover it to death, you are almost guaranteed to get some sort of baseline viewership level. Look at how the recent health care reform bill was covered on cable and you can trace most of the coverage patterns and decisions back to what was established during Florida 2000 and Lewinsky/Clinton.

This situation was aided and abetted by a relatively new entrant into the cable news world: the ideological political junkie (the type of person that tunes in to hear the latest goings on in the political world). These people have a vested interest in what goes on because they tend to be politically active. And they tune in for politics en masse more so than your average news viewer who only gets sucked in when it’s election season or something big or unusual is going on like a major political scandal. They soak it all in and are now a desired target audience for cable news because they are more dependable than straight news junkies who tend to be more fickle with their viewing habits and channel loyalties. Remember, it’s all about the eyeballs, not necessarily the quality or variety of what goes out over the air. Cable news has fundamentally altered its programming to cater to this demographic. Fourteen years ago politics used to be the domain of shows like Crossfire, Capital Gang, and Hannity and Colmes. But now politics is dominating everything cable news.

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 in a cable news landscape where this sort of discussion now occurs whenever cable news wants it to occur. You don’t need dedicated shows hashing out talking points when the networks’ dayside news operations now parrot those very talking points via press statements, video sound bites, and other media formats like Twitter. The news outlets themselves now promote their political teams heavily. CNN has “the best political team in television”. MSNBC is “the place for politics”. FNC is so dominant in the ratings it really doesn’t need to craft a slogan and none of the ones it has used were used for very long (although “America’s Election HQ” keeps popping up). How pervasive is politics in cable news? Look at the cable channels’ respective programming.

FNC has a morning show which they state is an entertainment program but spends a lot of time talking politics. It has a 4pmET show that used to be predominantly business oriented but now is more of a political/business half-breed. It has a guy aping a political Chicken Little at 5pmET. At 6pmET it has a dedicated politics show. At 8pmET, 9pmET particularly, and 10pmET it has programs which devote quite a bit of time to politics or political themes. Late in the night it has a comedy show that frequently has a political bent to it. Throughout the “straight news” dayside it constantly talks politics.

CNN has a morning program which spends a lot of time on politics. Throughout the dayside politics is brought up constantly. From 4-6pm it spends considerable time dealing with political subjects. And this continues on in some form or another throughout primetime. Even Larry King gets into the act from time to time.

MSNBC has a morning show which is tailor-made to hash politics. This is followed by a dedicated political show at 9amET. Its dayside news operation waxes and wanes on the political beat throughout the day. At 1pmET it has another dedicated politics show. At 4pmET it has a business/politics half breed program. From 5-10pmET MSNBC is all politics. The catering to politics is so severe at MSNBC that the network is now regularly putting on its biggest political ratings draws – its primetime political talking heads – in the anchor chair for major news stories, even during dayside news hours when viewers expect to see a journalist in that chair. One wonders how the journalists at NBC and MSNBC feel about being marginalized like this by management on stories they were trained to cover in favor of people who weren’t. One also wonders just how little MSNBC, and by extrapolation NBC News, thinks of its dayside news operation that it would even entertain the notion of putting political talking heads in the anchor chair; people who have no business being there in the first place.

Some of you are no doubt saying to yourselves at this point, “Wait a minute, MSNBC and FNC may be disproportionately politics heavy in their coverage but CNN isn’t.” This is partially true but only to a point. CNN is still dominated a lot more by politics than it was 12 years ago. The easiest way to see this change is to watch CNN International to see just how far down the political stream CNN domestic really has traveled. CNNI has a more even handed approach to news and it’s a worldwide one. It also offers up programming you’ll never find on CNN like that hidden gem CNN Backstory. CNNI looks more like what CNN domestic looked like more than 15 years ago than CNN domestic does today. This wouldn’t be such a problem if CNNI was widely distributed in the U.S.

Contrast the big three cable news channel’s programming with what airs on the nightly broadcast newscasts. Maybe 1/4-1/3 of a given show, less sometimes, is dedicated to politics depending on the news cycle. The rest of the half hour is spent elsewhere. The political ratio between broadcast and cable is no contest. And yet the broadcast news shows routinely beat the best of what cable news can do in the ratings. This is one of the reasons why I believe broadcast nightly news is still alive, because it hasn’t succumbed to cable news’ political obsession. Or, put another way, if cable news hadn’t become obsessed with politics and instead maintained a more balanced news approach, we may very well have seen one of the big three nightly newscasts die off by now. But by disproportionately focusing on politics the cable nets have given the nightly broadcast shows an identity; the place where politics doesn’t dominate the news cycle all the time. Call it a refuge of sorts for the millions of people who want more news and less political back and forth.

>>>NEXT PAGE: The third problem with cable news – the crawl.

This is an opinion piece. The views expressed in this article are those of just the author.