Liberal News Monopoly has a Clear Track Ahead

TV News, the former model:
My very first job in "the business" was way back when the network presidents and owners of local outlets actually visited the "shop floors." My job was cutting news film late nights in the days when the unions imposed "standards" of quality on the news film (no 16mm, no 8mm, no processing at "scab" film labs). Full union crews had to be sent out to cover fires, and no scabs. News cost money. The resulting overall news product was one in which there was almost no visual confirmation of late night local stories. Actual news (real news only happened in the daytime) film was of very high quality because not only were union cameramen and crews doing the grunt work, the reporters were all men who had served in WWII as war correspondents and boy did they know how to get stories. Every city had their share of really fearless--non pretty boy-- guys who would literally stand in the middle of a fire (they loved it) and stare into the camera like the shells were falling and do "news." Locally here in LA we had non pretty boys like Bill Stout, Joe Benti, and a guy named Clete Roberts who was so WWII he did news while wearing a hat with matching trench coat. None of them backed off from anything. The news "model" for stations and networks was that the ratings were not that important because news quality "branded" the rest of the entertainment schedule. Respect for truth meant integrity of all product in the public mind.

This model fell apart when the smaller stations told the unions to fuck off and started broadcasting free lance 16mm news film made at night together with union news announcers. The "union only news" could never stand the test of a law suit and the dam just broke as young kids with cameras, and later video tape, just went out and blasted away. The first to fall were the newsmen. They gave way to a bunch of bimbos and male lightweights who never ventured out into the dark and this, combined with the new non-standards, meant a sea change. The guts of the old "news model" was that quality news meant a quality network in the eyes of the public. This view couldn't stand the success test of popular TV shows like Jerry Springer, Judge Judy, and Entertainment Tonight on cable networks with no news at all.

As our tastes got lower and lower while cable expanded the number of stations available from five to more than 150, so did our tolerance for frivolous non news. The large nets found that quality news meant next to nothing when it came to ratings for the entertainment part of their operations. The WWII hard news guys dropped one by one til none of them were left to do anything other than "features" that hopefully would not rock anybody's boat. "News" stories that featured the horrors of nursery school sexual harassment replaced hard news of insurance companies refusing to pay home insurance claims no matter the validity of such claims.

The final stop into the depths has been the propaganda functions of entire networks with nation wide impact that simply slant all their news shows. It has been discovered that nobody watching gives a shit. So here we sit with no real event news, just women's issues, minority group issues, business issues, labor issues, and some real news thrown in.

And the opiate of the masses: sports.

I don't know what the complete prostitution of news like what has happened at NBC (MSNBC) while their entertainment ratings literally have fallen through the floor mean in the overall scheme of things. The "conglomeratization" of all networks means that nobody at the top knows what their money losing bottom is doing. So executive salaries go up while audience shares sink to depths unknown two years ago. And nobody cares.

Is there a pendulum that swings back and forth? It's beginning to look like there is not. Instead there is a straight rail line running forever into the dark, a line to nowhere that carries trains loaded with propaganda and frivolous pap. This one way rail traffic will continue to plow ahead until a dope addicted engineer misses a signal somewhere and there is a head on collision with real news.

I don't see it anywhere. Do you?