Maybe the 24/7 News Cycle Isn't Such a Great Idea...

Erik Bates | July 5, 2012
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Scott Hardie | July 6, 2012
Excellent article. And I liked the "banality" link that he provided even more. Both had good ideas, though some of the ideas are clearly not feasible.

I've long thought that the quest for ratings (or subscriptions, or pageviews) is paradoxically what hurts the news most. Is competition for the tiniest shred of an advantage over the other providers not at the root of most of the problems, such as racing to report false information about the ACA ruling? The thing is, we want them to be this terrible, because we respond favorably to their efforts to trip over themselves to please us. How many people were glued to their sets waiting for the ACA announcement, ready to switch channels to the first to cover the ruling? Erik, you call their jumping to conclusions an "embarrassment" but I get the feeling they're not really embarrassed.

We love the free market in this country and believe that competition benefits us consumers. Is that true of the TV news business? Spend a couple of days really listening to BBC and NPR, and tell me that the quality is not vastly better than what the networks (cable and broadcast) churn out. VOA is lesser but still decent. PBS is the weakest of the lot, but has good elements. These outlets, to me, represent serious journalism with a mission to inform the public, not to entertain or race to the top of the ratings mountain.

Erik Bates | July 6, 2012
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Tony Peters | July 6, 2012
Not me I almost don't watch TV News anymore, If I'm up early I'll watch Morning Joe and I watch the Daily show/Colbert but I DVR those. Most of my news comes from a half dozen or so websites I have set to inform me of things that interest me. As for the ACA since I don't really have a horse in that race I wasn't particularly vested in the outcome except from a ideological standpoint. I did win a bet on it being a TAX though

Samir Mehta | July 6, 2012
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Erik Bates | July 6, 2012
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Samir Mehta | July 6, 2012
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Erik Bates | July 6, 2012
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Samir Mehta | July 6, 2012
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Erik Bates | July 9, 2012
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Samir Mehta | July 9, 2012
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Erik Bates | July 9, 2012
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Scott Hardie | July 10, 2012
I'm tempted to say that it was only Saturday morning, so who would expect hard news, but shouldn't that be what Headline News delivers around the clock? Some years ago I lived in an apartment with free cable, and I would sometimes tune into Headline News while cooking dinner or doing dishes, just to listen. Then they started airing shows in primetime (I think around the same time they rebranded as "HLN") and they became just as useless as every other "news" channel. Ugh. It's like when MTV stopped playing music videos and had to establish MTV2 for videos, and then regular shows took over MTV2 as well -- is there any intention of sticking to the original mission of the channel? Everything is a "brand" now and everything is the same.