To CNN, NBC, ABC, CBC and MSNBC - your financials are suffering you're laying people off

[samsingh]

Try to connect some dots. People no longer watch programs that are right-wing, present single points of view, leave out progressives, and are insults to our collective intelligence.

All your numbers are showing this. Stop trying to be faux. You will only lose more audience, more money, and hurt the country in the process.

In the meantime, the best wealthy connected progressives can do is start a non-profit news organization that will be a valid go-to source for all of us. Huffington Post is my go-to site several times a day. An organization not owned by AOL could quickly became a destination for millions of people wanting unbiased reporting.

[Fred Sanders]

1. HP IS owned by AOL and licks the boots of Facebook...there is that.

The rest of your opinion, I get it.

[bemildred]

3. Bootlickers of the wealthy and powerful, all of them. nt

[samsingh]

5. huffington post started out independed and showed us how to

create a profitable news organization that was progressive. Then they sold out to aol and I suspect it is only a matter of time that they will become closer to fox.

[daredtowork]

20. Well

Huffington Post - started by millionaire and wife of the Republican Michael Huffington. Got big by crowd-sourcing, but made a fortune for Ariana when she sold out to AOL. Idealistic independent media? I think not. A lot of the bloggers are 1% self-promoters. Very hard to get accepted as one if you don't know someone who knows someone. (And you will still be working for free while you make money for AOL).

I'm still holding out hope for some of the Omidyar stuff, though.

[ChairmanAgnostic]

2. some better, bitter advise.

STOP SELLING PERSONALITIES.

Sell the fucking news!

Do the research, get out of the office, interview people without cameras, do real journalism. Every damn cable station tries to sell someone as talent. Stop it already. Sell what people want - NEWS.

[samsingh]

4. we only want news - unbiased and valid - not made up crap

[Fred Sanders]

6. CNN bought and re-sold the steaming pile of propaganda crap expunged by "The Gateway Pundit".

Jeff Zucker is out of control, the talking bobble heads he hires to deliver his personal message are as bobble-headed and enslaved to cash as the Fox Bible-heads.

[samsingh]

7. zucker is a major disappointment

[betterdemsonly]

8. I think the corporatists are more motivated by feudalism

than profit!

Oh and Rawstory is much better than Huffpost. No sideboobs!

[samsingh]

9. your are right and that is the irony

I think the media is a loss leader for the ruling class. it is intended to brainwash the public - the simplistic thinking of the repug masses and many of the independents - to keep them uninformed. Whether the news programs make money is not important because ignorance allows the ruling class to make more money and continue to rule.

[Arugula Latte]

10. You expressed that well. That was my gut feeling when NBC replaced David GOPregory

with Chuck Todd. Some on this board were saying: "NBC doesn't get it!" Well, of course they do. Their agenda is to catapult the rightwing corporate propaganda, not to create a balanced, informative program that gives "both sides" a forum.

[samsingh]

13. yes, sadly i believe that is the agenda

[Fawke Em]

16. But he'll be just as boring and one-sided as Gregory.

And, in doing so, he won't help their ratings.

So, while they may get the same propaganda they want, it's not going to result in any more people to slop the propaganda on.

I guess I don't see their reasoning, but I wouldn't.

[Arugula Latte]

19. I don't think they care much about ratings for those shows ...

They are probably loss leaders -- basically just ads for the corporatist mindset.

[Fawke Em]

22. Then why even bother to get rid of Gregory?

[BKH70041]

11. This is something I find to be interesting.

If liberals aren't watching ABC, NBC, CBS, etc... because they're too right wing, and conservatives aren't watching ABC, NBC, CBS, etc... because they're too left wing, and moderates aren't watching because they don't like both sides arguing, then who's watching ABC, NBC, CBS, etc...?

[samsingh]

14. it's an increasingly smaller number

and I think its still some of us who out of habit or hope are watching nonfaux news.

I used to watch sunday morning news programs like a junkie, I stopped under bush and now even if I have nothing else to do, I have no desire to watch. I think an increasing number are feeling that way

[Atman]

15. I used my TV only for news and movies.

I'm not a sports fan, I'm a political junkie. But they ALL suck now, to the point that finally just disconnected cable earlier this year. I don't miss it at all. As Paul Simon once sang, "I can gather all the news I need from the weather report."

That, and some internet streaming of various radio stations around the country. TV "news" has become pointless, unless you're one of the people they're pointing at.

[KurtNYC]

12. the profitability of any MSM entities depends on how valuable their audience is to advertisers

That value is primarily two things 1) size of the audience, and 2) the demographics, mostly how young that audience is. You can tell who the audience for a show is by what products are being advertised -- so for example if they are advertising X-Box 360 then the core audience is presumed to be males 14 to 24, if they are advertising Ensure the core audience is thought to be adults 54+. Advertisers generally want young audiences and cable news generally has the oldest audiences in television.

The audience size for TV news continues to decline and the average age of a TV news viewer continues to climb. The value of newspapers,as a business, declined dramatically over the last 30 years, same for radio and that has allowed a view large entities to buy them up. For example Sinclair, Nexstar, Tribune and Gannett:

http://billmoyers.com/content/what-does-media-consolidation-look-like/

People seek out news sources that they agree with. They seek to affirm their belief rather than inform them. Historically cable news was a RW audience because the early satellite TV users were heavily skewed toward rural whites and the upper middle class.

Yet another issue is that LW audiences will watch, link to, obsess about, discuss, and make other TV shows about RW news but the reverse is not true. In other words the Daily Show and Colbert both use Fox as the source for most of their news segments. RW sources don't do that. RW audiences are more strict about what they watch.

Gallup tracks the amount of trust Americans have in their news media -- Democrats have the most trust in media, Republicans have the least, 58% to 26% respectively. Sad details here:

http://www.gallup.com/poll/157589/distrust-media-hits-new-high.aspx

[toddwv]

17. Let their ratings plummet...

then their corporate owners will sell them off and Jon Stewart can pick up CNN in a firesale.

[samsingh]

18. maybe Ted Turner could buy CNN back for a song?

[bigwillq]

21. Haven't watched cable news in quite a while

I am not missing much. I occasionally watch the network nightly news if I am home, but not missing much with them either.

If everyone stops watching, maybe they will go the way of the dinosaurs.