Media Whores relentlessly pound "GOP good," while DISPARAGING Democrats mantra....

Are Broadcast and Cable News Dying?
http://allspinzone.com/wp/2007/07/18/why-broadcast-and-cable-news-are-dying/

The day is coming that TV news is going to have to change dramatically to maintain an audience. Howard Rheingold, Ester Dyson, and other tech futurists foresaw this need several years ago. Still, until the advertisers and eyeballs actually start a shift (which may begin to happen soon), we’re stuck with what we’ve got. And it ain’t pretty news.

Commentary By: Richard Blair
When I woke up this morning, I turned on CNN while I was dressing and having a cup of coffee. My expectation was that two stories would be dominating the news: 1) The Brazilian airliner crash, and 2) the Senate “all-nighter”. Unfortunately, I was wrong on both accounts. This morning, all cable news channels (CNN, Headline News, MS-NBC, and Fox) were focused on the murder / suicide case of WWE wrestler Chris Benoit. Every single channel was leading with it.

CNN’s American Morning host John Roberts then had an interview with Sen. John Edwards. Was the focus on Edwards’ “Road to One America” campaign tour? No. Roberts focused on the haircut controversy and the purchase of Edwards’ expensive home. MS-NBC’s “Cup of Joe” (Joe Scarborough) was locked in like a laser beam on the latest NEI report, and stoking the al-Qaida and terror fires. Fox was spending most of its time on the Benoit autopsy report before I had to get to work.

Every story with a political angle had a decidedly - almost in your face - “GOP positive” slant. In almost every instance, where I caught a glimpse of a story about the Senate sleepover, the stories were disparaging of the Democrats, nearly implying that the GOP Senators were being held hostage. The primary talking point this morning was the very shallow, “Why? What’s the point? The Dems are going to lose the vote anyway.”

It’s been awhile since I watched the morning news shows, and I had no idea that there was such an extreme ideological slant in the morning to all three networks. I believe that, even with my own political leanings, I can make a fairly objective assessment of “slant”. This morning, all three channels were so far tilted to the right as to be objectionable to anyone but the most die hard 26%-er.

My assessment: broadcast news and cable are going the same direction as the dodo bird and rigid newspaper empires - irrelevancy and extinction. Maybe not today or tomorrow or even the next few years, but the news networks can see the handwriting on the wall. And in their quest to keep the advertisers coming in, they’re targeting (particularly) their morning news shows at the “stay-at-home” crowd.

Yeah, ok, the politically oriented shows later in the day will spend some time during the evening hours focusing on the battle royale in the Senate. But I’d wager that most of the people watching Hardball, Situation Room, Countdown, O’Reilly, Hannity, etc. are mostly political junkies. There aren’t a lot of “undecideds” watching these shows. From a purely political (and ideological) standpoint, it’s the morning shows that have a particular degree of importance in influencing general public opinion on political issues.

So where is this all going? Just by the fact that you’re reading this, I think you know. The world wide web is quickly changing the face of all broadcast news gathering organizations, and it’s happening so quickly that they’re evolving into “mediatainment” outfits rather than true journalistic endeavors. The cutting edge of broadcast (and text-based) journalism is right where you’re at - the internet.

There are several startups in the works. One is The Real News, and it looks very promising, even though their business model seems a bit pollyanna-ish. Perhaps that’s just the long time internet community cynic in me. The quality of the broadcasts and global reach of the startup appears solid, even if their on-air talent lineup seems a bit thin at the moment. At TPM Media, Josh Marshall is already playing with the broadcast technology a bit, as well - in fact, if I were an angel investor, TPM Media would be getting a very hard look from me right now, because Josh has positioned his company on the bleeding edge of a true revolution in news delivery. The partnerships that Marshall is forming are quite impressive.

The day is going to come, sooner than later, that broadcast and cable news are going to have to change dramatically to maintain an audience. Howard Rheingold, Ester Dyson, and other internet / web / guru’s and futurists foresaw this change several years ago.

To answer my original question: Are broadcast and cable news dying? Not yet - but both are like a chronically ill patient, trying to extend the inevitable as long as possible. Until the advertisers and eyeballs actually start a shift (which may begin to happen as soon as the 2008 election season gets in full swing), we’re left hurling rotten tomatoes at our TV screens.