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What Happened To MSNBC and CNN?

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    What Happened To MSNBC and CNN?

    To spin-off from the Trump thread, where Rachel Maddow's future was raised, were these channels ever worth watching or have they always been the cable equivalent of Guardian clickbait? How is Maddow still employable and, if not, with what would you replace her?

    On CNN, WTF is Anderson Cooper still doing there? Awesome journalist ten years ago but now spends his time baiting or being baited by Trump trolls for no good purpose. They have some interesting pundits, e.g. I think Jeffrey Toobin is good (but Ursus may be qualified to judge him), but they use them awfully, giving them far less airtime than the trolls, and then usually to answer agenda-driven questions on a fatuous premise. In addition, as an obvious ethical decision, it was impossible to continue watching the channel after it started paying Lewandowski, which to me was the CNN equivalent of Newsnight interviewing a neo-Nazi on the night of the Christchurch atrocity, except that CNN were paying him a salary to be on every fucking day spewing racist lies.
    Last edited by Satchmo Distel; 29-03-2019, 17:26.

    #2
    CNN in the US was always dreadful though. CNN International is better (though practically unwatchable because of their policy of having 5 minutes of ads for every 2 minutes of content

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      #3
      There is a lot to be said for Bruno's point of view.

      The CNN model served a function at the very beginning, when it was essentially news radio with pictures (and also provided an entry point for non-native US presenters), but was quite quickly surpassed by the internet. CNN International continues to be somewhat better than the domestic version (rather like the BBC World Service), but they wouldn't be missed by anyone with an internet connection.

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        #4
        There should be a version of CNN International that is only shown in business hotels catering to Anglophone travelers.

        Trying to target the whole service at that demographic is ill-conceived.

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          #5
          TV with adverts is unwatchable.

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            #6
            Sometimes I wonder just which aspect of contemporary US life would tip you over into homicidal rage first where you somehow forced to live here for an extended period.

            It is a difficult race to handicap given the number of viable runners.

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              #7
              Originally posted by Bruno
              In my view they were never worth watching. At best, you can get up to date info quickly on whatever the crisis of the day is, but you can get that on the internet just as well or better. 24-hour news was a death knell for public discourse about politics and a healthy perspective on how news events unfold. Politically biased 24-hour news accelerated a race to the bottom that was already in progress by 1990 or so. I think we can blame them for ending up with a president like Trump (or Bush) as much as anything else.

              Most of the attention (it seems to me) on CNN and MSNBC lately is on their political bias. Most of the attention should instead be on the fact that 24-hour TV news is a shit idea regardless, the enemy of democracy and reason.
              This

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                #8
                Haha.

                The TV thing is avoidable now though, I reckon. I have suffered ordinary US TV though and yeah, I'd have killed someone within a week, I reckon.

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                  #9
                  My favourite one, on the rare occasions I put CNN International on, is Richard Quest. The British financial reporter who no one in Britain has ever heard of AND WHO SPENDS ALL HIS TIME BELLOWING AT THE CAMERA LIKE SOMEONE WHO'S UNAWARE OF HOW MICROPHONES WORK!

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                    #10
                    I watch three shows on msnbc every night: All In With Chris Hayes, Rachel Maddow and Last Word with Lawrence O'Donnell. It has almost become an OCD-level obsession in that I feel that if I don't watch them every night, I might not know about something very bad that trump has done.

                    But I never watch CNN.

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                      #11
                      Originally posted by Sam View Post
                      My favourite one, on the rare occasions I put CNN International on, is Richard Quest. The British financial reporter who no one in Britain has ever heard of AND WHO SPENDS ALL HIS TIME BELLOWING AT THE CAMERA LIKE SOMEONE WHO'S UNAWARE OF HOW MICROPHONES WORK!

                      I've heard of him Sam (well, just about) and a few years ago suggested on here that he bore a striking visual similarity to Sergio Busquets:




                      Last edited by Nocturnal Submission; 01-04-2019, 09:06.

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                        #12
                        What Ad Hoc said. Bear in mind that for a decade before the Trump campaign commentator idiocy, they had Nancy Grace doing her hideous missing white girl schtick

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                          #13
                          Originally posted by Sam View Post
                          My favourite one, on the rare occasions I put CNN International on, is Richard Quest. The British financial reporter who no one in Britain has ever heard of AND WHO SPENDS ALL HIS TIME BELLOWING AT THE CAMERA LIKE SOMEONE WHO'S UNAWARE OF HOW MICROPHONES WORK!
                          JUST A PENNY!?!?!

                          He's an absolute tool. I saw some footage of him from years ago in which he was speaking quite conventionally, suggesting that, like Robert Peston, he has put some effort over the years into creating his monster. Peston has toned his delivery down a bit nowadays but Quest rampages onwards.

                          Another odd thing on CNN is when they play three trailers in a row and the presenters all basically say the same thing about how they peel away the layers to get to the heart of the story. It comes across more as if they are trying to cannibalise each other's audience share rather than offer any complementary but distinct content. The thought that anyone makes a specific date with CNN rather than just turning it on when they flop back into their hotel room seems a bit optimistic anyway.

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                            #14
                            I think I've mentioned before that I find shaving an unutterable bore. My TV provider allows me to watch TV on my phone, and obviously you can't watch a full episode of anything while shaving, so - unless there's worthwhile sport on - I often try to distract my shave-boredom by watching news, either MSNBC or CNN. The amazing thing for me is that I can almost never get through a full shave, which takes something like 4 minutes, without adverts coming on, at which point I'll change channel to the other of the two channels and they'll almost inevitably have adverts on, too. Unlike a news segment which never lasts long enough to shave, I've often found myself without any content other than adverts on both channels, where they never break to actual talking heads reiterating the same stuff.

                            Basically, whenever I watch either channel, I find myself mostly overwhelmed by the number of adverts before I have time to get really irritated by the lack of news.

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                              #15
                              Have you considered podcasts instead?

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                                #16
                                There's always the awful BBC news channel...

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                                  #17
                                  Originally posted by Nocturnal Submission View Post


                                  I've heard of him Sam (well, just about) and a few years ago suggested on here that he bore a striking visual similarity to Sergio Busquets:



                                  No, he is a spitting image of Purves Grundy previously of OTF (or is he still here). When I first met him back in 2000 (or was it 2001) i initially thought he was the fella off the BBC financial program.
                                  Last edited by Tactical Genius; 02-04-2019, 21:35.

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                                    #18
                                    What's protocol in here on using real names? He was Purves Grundy, wasn't he?

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                                      #19
                                      Yeah, I was just about to mention that.

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                                        #20
                                        Originally posted by Vicarious Thrillseeker View Post
                                        What's protocol in here on using real names? He was Purves Grundy, wasn't he?
                                        Changed, He used his real name when he first joined OTF and used it for a long time. I had forgotten what other names he went by.

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                                          #21
                                          PG always reminded me of a short-haired Justin Hawkins but that's not much of a compliment so I didn't share my view with him.

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                                            #22
                                            Richard Quest looks like a south american business friendly cabinet minister. I don't know why the fuck he shouts like that. the most off-putting thing about CNN is that three quarters of the ad breaks are made up of ads for other CNN programmes, and none of them ever look good.

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                                              #23
                                              CNN International is a good place to catch up on the latest trends in authoritarian regimes' adventures in advertising.

                                              This may help those looking for the roots of Quest's "style"
                                              Last edited by ursus arctos; 03-04-2019, 12:12.

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                                                #24
                                                Come to Singapore, we've even got a very well organized highly regulated graffiti sector.

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