What could cable networks be without punditry?

[Funtatlaguy]

We are all used to their formula now.
Each new hour of “news” starts with a “breaking news” banner of a story that usually isn’t really new or breaking. The on set anchor talks about the story and sometimes throws to an on site live reporter. Then, it’s back to the studio to “discuss” and explain? what we’ve just seen.
There’s the panel of “experts” that’s usually comprised of washed up former politicians and political strategists. Generally, it leads to no new knowledge or insights. It often gives us bothsidisms or whataboutisms and that’s about it.

So, that got me to thinking 🤔
What if there was a new cable network that decided to do this.
Drop the punditry.
Only cover stories.
Hire more field reporters.
Hire more investigative reporters.
Go in depth into more topics.
Explain unintended consequences of different political decisions or policies.
Look at how problems in the U.S. have been handled successfully elsewhere.
Interview only primary subjects. Not surrogates.

Could such a network work now that infotainment has taken over our media.
Are there enough viewers out there that only want information and not entertainment? I sure do.
Some will say that that PBS and Aljazeera have come close to what I’m talking about.
But I’m thinking more along the lines of what CNN was when Ted Turner started it.

[3Hotdogs]

1. P.B.S. The closest it comes is Frontline. Then they shitcanned the story that criticized Kock Bros.

P.B.S. is now only good for concerts and pretty pictures.

[Recursion]

2. This has frustrated me for years

Right now the Botswana civil service is mulling a strike over the fact that the cost of living adjustments they negotiated 8 years ago still haven't gone into effect. How much would it cost to send one reporter and one camera crew there to interview the civil servants and somebody from the government on the other side, as well as do a profile of a government clerk's daily life in Gaborone? You could easily stretch that into an hour-long story and it would be 1000 times more informative than having two blowhards yak at each other for an hour.

And this is inexhaustible. Throw a couple of grand at some young nobody reporter and say "go find a story and make a segment on it". Lather, rinse, repeat, and add headlines on the hour and half hour. That would be a hell of a good news station.

And they say "nobody would watch", but this was 100% the theory behind Bourdain's show, which was CNN's most popular segment.

[Hortensis]

3. :) Nothing. Profits would be...what profits?

There's something else going on here. Just like Fox, CNN and MSNBC are in business to create viewerships as large as possible to sell to advertisers. But a second, very important function for all of them is to keep political power in the hands of wealth-serving economic conservatives by electing Republicans. Even switching an hour a day from punditry to the honest, informative news our nation desperately needs would defeat the goals of the big interests who own them all.

[Funtatlaguy]

4. I miss the days when a news division was seen as non profit.

[Hortensis]

6. Ownership a contribution to civic wellbeing by wealthy families?

Me too. Too much power then for our good, but still so much better. It's not entirely gone. Ted Turner tried to create something good in MSNBC. Bezos's WaPo is still a beacon compared to the massive betrayals of the NYT.

PBS news has changed noticeably since accepting giant funding from the Kochs. While changing channels I saw Joe and Mika eulogizing David Koch, talking about the hospitals he donated to, not the destruction of hundreds that's part of his true legacy. Good riddance, even if he was mostly just a rubber stamp for Charles.

No longer any news show on TV for me to watch, but when things get really bad it usually finally, "too late," forces changes. Like those major CEOs adopting a truly promising new definition of the purpose of a corporation. So maybe a return to civic duty will show up in some daily news media before too many years, before government has to require it.

It'd be really nice to have the old evening news back that was about news, not just a vehicle for enough commercials to sink a nation.

[frazzled]

5. What would they be without viewers?

I too recall the early days of CNN, with broad coverage and special in-depth documentaries. Long gone.

I used to watch all the cable yakety-yak during the early years of the 2000s (during the depredations of the Bush administration), but gave it up entirely pretty much by the end of the decade. Not only did it stop being informative, it also stopped being entertaining. I read two newspapers a day (the local one and the New York Times), so I keep up to date on local, national, and international news. And I turn into PBS NewsHour while making dinner, where I get national and international news and some in-depth reporting on issues and interesting foreign topics. That's enough news. The cable fare is pretty much just endless jibber-jabber. Even when there is an event such as a presidential debate or the SOTU, I avoid the cable networks. I go to C-Span. I don't want to listen to the pre- and post-spin.

If we all stopped watching this drivel, the problem would be solved. The cables would shrivel up and die. They're not going to change: we have to ... step away from the vast wasteland.

[UniteFightBack]

7. CNN does specials all the time. The next one is on Halston this Sunday. How about we watch what

we want to watch and knock off the I'm better than you attitude because I don't want cable news. It is tiring.