Cable news
Martin Gurri, author of The Revolt of the Public, considers the cable news industry and describes the dilemma. Observing CNN as it tries to find a new purpose after years of daily binges on all things Trump, he recounts the situation:
The Trump era felt like a meth high to the news business, very much including the cable news networks—CNN, Fox News and MSNBC. All you had to do was aim the camera at the orange man and watch the dollars roll in. Trump’s defeat in 2020 and his subsequent silencing by the social media platforms, conversely, has been a disaster—the public has tuned out of the news in general, and cable news ratings have crashed almost as dramatically as the stock market.
Hardest hit has been CNN, the original and eponymous “cable news network.” After 2016, CNN took an overtly anti-Trump stance in its news and analysis, delighting in reporting Trumpian “lies,” for example, and in turn was accused by Trump of peddling “fake news.” The tiff made for good theater, and audience numbers rose with the rising tide. But CNN was never going to outdo MSNBC in progressive-friendly content or deliver as pure a Trump-loathing voice as Rachel Maddow’s, and the network had written off conservative viewers. It lacked a niche and an identity.
And so on. Read it all here, also for a succinct history of CNN from its founding—and shed a tear if you’re a CNN employee, at least.
The TV cable news business is in a pinch beyond just CNN’s flailing to discover an audience to please. Ever since AT&T folded the company into the Discovery cluster of cable channels, CNN has struggled to shrink staffing in order to reducing costs. They have also failed to build an emotionally attached new fan base of the sort enjoyed by MSNBC and Fox News.
The main recipe of the other cable news networks involves primetime programming that costs no more to produce than paying someone to blather emotionally charged hyperbole from behind a desk. Says Gurri: “The trick is to strip production of overhead—actors, star anchors, fancy graphics, batteries of writers, foreign bureaus. Drawn by the law of economic necessity, all of cable, including news, aspires to a specific kind of format: reality TV.” The guests can be piped in via livestream and permitted to yell and be yelled at. There’s no need to pay camera crews and reporters in the field who run up expenses at hotels and restaurants.
Gurri is convinced that the age of TV cable news itself is essentially over, done in by the internet and its ability to serve audiences the news stories they want when they want them—without having to wait through a series of TV news segments (and ads) of less interest. Cable subscriptions are declining anyway, and a new dedicated, loyal viewership is unlikely to grow.
CNN once revolutionized journalism, and now the revolution is eating its own children. It seems almost fitting in an age where the truth value of news depends on the user’s political tribal identity. And anyway, TV itself will soon become obsolete in its familiar form, as Gurri reckons:
Television, I said, will remain a dominant medium into the middle distance, but the system for feeding its content is up for grabs. Network and cable TV are suffering steep declines in popularity. Young people, in particular, are defecting from both. Beyond such signs and portents, we know that the future will be digital, and this probably means streaming of some sort. Fear of the [TV remote control] will then be compounded by the horror of digital limbo—of sleeping inert and unheard, like the genie in the bottle, until summoned by an audience.
(Hat-tip: Arnold Kling’s newsletter)
More than 6 decades ago, a reporter and journalist gave a speech about the possible (and likely) future of a relatively new communication medium called television. At the time, he had no idea that he'd be describing the possible (and likely?) future of this contraption in my lap, and of the smaller contraption in a stand on the kitchen counter. His name was Edward R. Murrow. I suspect more than a few here know of him. And that goes for CNN, MSNBC, FOX etc. The gist of his thoughts can be found in the last few paragraphs, some of which I've cherry-picked to make his point in a shorter space, but I'll provide a link if anyone's interested in the entirety of what he had to say. Because I think this guy pretty much got it right. Apparently, the folks at cable (and other) news companies disagree...
It may be that this present system, with no modifications and no experiments, can survive. Perhaps the money-making machine has some kind of built-in perpetual motion, but I do not think so. To a very considerable extent, the media of mass communications in a given country reflects the political, economic and social climate in which it grows and flourishes. That is the reason our system differs from the British and the French, and also from the Russian and the Chinese. We are currently wealthy, fat, comfortable and complacent. We have currently a built-in allergy to unpleasant or disturbing information. And our mass media reflect this. But unless we get up off our fat surpluses and recognize that television in the main is being used to distract, delude, amuse and insulate us, then television and those who finance it, those who look at it and those who work at it, may see a totally different picture too late.
I do not advocate that we turn television into a 27-inch wailing wall, where longhairs constantly moan about the state of our culture and our defense. But I would just like to see it reflect occasionally the hard, unyielding realities of the world in which we live. I would like to see it done inside the existing framework, and I would like to see the doing of it redound to the credit of those who finance and program it. Measure the results by Nielsen, Trendex or Silex-it doesn't matter. The main thing is to try. The responsibility can be easily placed, in spite of all the mouthings about giving the public what it wants. It rests on big business, and on big television, and it rests on the top. Responsibility is not something that can be assigned or delegated. And it promises its own reward: both good business and good television.
I began by saying that our history will be what we make it. If we go on as we are, then history will take its revenge, and retribution will not limp in catching up with us.
We are to a large extent an imitative society. If one or two or three corporations would undertake to devote just a small fraction of their advertising appropriation along the lines that I have suggested, the procedure might well grow by contagion; the economic burden would be bearable, and there might ensue a most exciting adventure--exposure to ideas and the bringing of reality into the homes of the nation.
To those who say people wouldn't look; they wouldn't be interested; they're too complacent, indifferent and insulated, I can only reply: There is, in one reporter's opinion, considerable evidence against that contention. But even if they are right, what have they got to lose? Because if they are right, and this instrument is good for nothing but to entertain, amuse and insulate, then the tube is flickering now and we will soon see that the whole struggle is lost.
This instrument can teach, it can illuminate; yes, and even it can inspire. But it can do so only to the extent that humans are determined to use it to those ends. Otherwise, it's nothing but wires and lights in a box. There is a great and perhaps decisive battle to be fought against ignorance, intolerance and indifference. This weapon of television could be useful.
Stonewall Jackson, who is generally believed to have known something about weapons, is reported to have said, "When war comes, you must draw the sword and throw away the scabbard." The trouble with television is that it is rusting in the scabbard during a battle for survival.
https://www.rtdna.org/murrows-famous-wires-and-lights-in-a-box
Broadcast or broadband, analog or streaming. Whatever we do with our communication mediums, if we insist on nothing more than what the corporate owners and managers and advertisers "think we want", all we're gonna' get in the end are wires and lights in a box and a sword rusting in its scabbard.
And the shadows of history and retribution will be waiting, as always.
Good night, and good luck.
I’m late this morning, and almost missed this because I was catching up on some of the other newsy stuff I didn’t have time for during the week. Great post, Marque! What is your writing background?
My husband and I have internet TV, using one of those Apple TV hookups. We subscribe to Amazon Prime, we resubscribed to Netflix because we got a year for half price, and we also got a year of free AppleTV Plus. Once those expire, then we’ll have to think about it (AppleTV programming is definitely not a keeper).
I’m a HUGE fan of YouTube! I think they have just about everything you can think of, including solutions to all those things my husband and I can’t figure out!
We got rid of cable a number of years ago because we didn’t watch the majority of it, and the cost was ridiculous. Also, because of our location, we had to go with satellite, which could be somewhat unreliable during bad weather. I’d rather get my news online, and read it when I have time.