06.17.05

Cable news

Posted in Politics at 6:00 am by Craig

Yikes. I’m travelling this week, and so seeing a lot of CNN in airports, hotel lobbies, etc. I haven’t really watched much cable news in the last while (I saw some election day coverage in November, which I thought was all pretty bad), but other than the occasional “outrageous” clip linked by Atrios or some such source, don’t really watch national TV news. I’m frankly astounded at how bad the programming is. Terrible coverage of stuff that’s barely newsworthy, by people who have no clue about the subject matter about which they’re pontificating. It strikes me that there surely is market demand for actual real news coverage, and that a cable news channel which provided such, would quite possibly make a lot of money. You could probably buy reporting footage from the BBC, have an anchor or two who know what they’re talking about, aren’t afraid to ask people questions which go beyond the inane, and can resist the temptation to try and insult their interviewees, a cameraman or two, and bingo. Maybe do something novel like stream the whole thing online, or have video segments embedded in an RSS feed or something, mix in some reuters/AP content, and voila. Sigh, so many startups, so little time.

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