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Pastimes : THE SLIGHTLY MODERATED BOXING RING -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Lane3 who wrote (7010)	4/5/2002 11:57:54 AM
From: Neocon	Respond to of 21057

I have a soft spot for the song.

To: Lane3 who wrote (7010)	4/5/2002 12:49:06 PM
From: Lane3	Respond to of 21057

Tucson, Arizona Friday, 5 April 2002 Networks abandoned news values for ratings By Rick Kushman SACRAMENTO BEE So ABC spared "Nightline" - for now. But its eventual death is inevitable, and sooner rather than later, not because ABC tried to woo David Letterman but because of seriously awful changes that have been taking place in television for years. Put simply, the people who own TV networks long ago quit on the notion of news as public service. When TV networks started a half-century ago, the feds required newscasts as a condition of doing business under the then-obvious concept that anyone using public property like the airwaves was obligated to do some public service in return. Today, media companies give that concept even less respect than they do the idea of a family hour. Here's the problem: TV news - this country's most compelling source for information, like it or not - has already all but abandoned serious journalism for crime, shouting and hype, and what quality is left will likely be gone soon. "Nightline" is the last daily in-depth, substantive network news show (outside of PBS' "NewsHour With Jim Lehrer"), and we've already seen how much ABC cares for Ted Koppel and company. The nightly network news shows, sad to say, are not likely to survive much past the retirements of anchormen Dan Rather, 70; Peter Jennings, 63; and Tom Brokaw, 62. The surface reasons are ratings, costs, competition, demographics and, naturally, money. But there are deeper, more complex forces at play that are part of long-moving, inescapable changes in America. For television news, it breaks into two connected parts: 1. TV networks no longer are independent entities, owned by someone for joy, cachet or even ego gratification. Now they're just small parts of some of the largest companies on the planet, and network news operations are just divisions of the networks. Any large company is directed and pushed by the market, meaning it needs to make profits and grow, and every piece of the company is subject to the same profit demands. For most stockholders, the quality of ABC news is as relevant as the color of the walls in Disney's boardroom. Their decisions are based entirely on stock prices and numbers. 2. Maybe even more frightening is what television executives, TV news people and the horde of pundits consider to be "journalism" in the 21st century: anything remotely connected to some current event, as long as it gets ratings. It all gets bundled together in the minds of people who once knew better. Softball interviews, call-in shows, round-table guesses by "experts" enlisted purely for their ability to be inflammatory. It's hard to decide what's less valuable, the puffy "Larry King Live" or the screaming arguments on shows like "Hardball With Chris Matthews." But that is the new face of TV news. And they're proud of it.