3 Comments

1. 

   MRhé August 28, 2008

   I’ve actu­ally really enjoyed the CNN cov­er­age of the elec­tion. That was an admit­tedly silly series of clips, but they are a media out­let about to announce a major news break.

2. 

   Marc September 3, 2008

   Scott, what tele­vi­sion news ser­vice do you watch? I try to restrict my tele­vi­sion news to ESPN and the Col­bert Report. And don’t say “I watch BBC America”.

3. 

   Scott September 4, 2008

   Heh. Actu­ally I don’t watch TV news. The for­mat of the cable news net­works (includ­ing the Cable News Net­work) is repet­i­tive, shal­low, prone to spec­u­la­tion, and overly  focused on stim­u­lat­ing graph­ics. The only thing they excel at is being first to report a story—which is not nec­es­sar­ily a bad thing, but bar­ring some kind of national emer­gency I’d rather wait for the facts to come in.

   Back when I worked for WKRC-TV, I found myself watch­ing the CBS Evening News and 60 Min­utes.  If you don’t mind the for­mat, the broad­cast net­works do a very nice job with their nightly news programs.

   I enjoy the Daily Show and the Col­bert Report too. Their lack of pre­ten­sious­ness and their will­ing­ness to exper­i­ment with dif­fer­ent for­mats is refresh­ing. Despite their focus on news items, though, I think they count more as entertainment.