Word Soup: In flipping around the cable news channels last night, the best coverage I saw was by an NBC cameraman who didn’t say a god damn thing. He simply filmed human beings in the Convention Center (also see this). Why can’t cable news do more of this? Less preening, over-dressed pontificating anchormen and reporters, and more information, direct from the event.
I’ve disagreed with his opinions from time to time, but this time? Karl’s dead on accurate. If someone in the Media World is paying attention to this, do it, please? If anchorpeople are worried about their jobs, keep CNN as is and launch a new network… I’m so sick to death of you all shoving opinions down our throats while calling yourselves impartial. It’s so very insulting.
Better yet, make CNN2 a silent eyeball on the world and call it good…
The thing is.. Pure video won’t sell commercials.
Wild speculation and opinions will.
It all comes down to the all mighty $$
It would sell commercials… everything on TV sells commercials. Hell, the B-List cable channels – i.e. TNN, TBS, TGN, etc – switch formats to all Paid Programming during the overnight. Companies are still paying money to get commercials on there, so they must have some sort of success rate, no matter how “I’d never watch that” people are. Hell, the Dukes of Hazzards was #1 for whole seasons and no one would admit to watching that at the time.
And then look at JACK FM. Their new format is “We’re going to play what we want – we aren’t taking requests – piss off” and people are into it. Again, commercials sell.
Networks would make money, hand over fist. Especially if they leave the ticker tape running. Those headlines are sometimes skewed, but not often – those can still be running for “commentary”…
I don’t think they’d ever do it either, but it’s a nice dream to speculate about.