Salon.com > Cable News

Time Warner drops Current after Al Jazeera deal

Thu, 03 Jan 2013 15:57:00 +0000

Al Jazeera this week purchased Al Gore's cable network Current TV in what the New York Times' Brian Stelter called "a coming of age moment" for the Qatar-funded network in the United States. By buying Current, Al Jazeera seemed set to establish itself in the U.S. after struggling for years to gain purchase in unreceptive markets outside of New York and Washington.

However, hours after the estimated $500 million deal was made, Time Warner Cable announced that it would no longer carry the Current channel, and thus Al Jazeera's new channel Al Jazeera America would not be distributed by the cable provider. Although the Current deal will still bring Al Jazeera into around 40 million American homes, the Time Warner move constituted a considerable blow for the globally respected network -- Time Warner Cable reaches 12 million homes.

As HuffPo's Michael Calderone reported:

Hack List No. 8: MSNBC

Wed, 19 Dec 2012 19:48:00 +0000

This year, my annual list of the worst of political media highlights not just individuals, but the institutions that enable those individuals. The 2012 Hack List will be counting down the 10 media outlets that are hurting America over the next two days -- stay tuned! (Previous Hack List entries here, here and here.)

MSNBC, we're told all the time, is the liberal Fox News. That's reductive and stupid. It isn't. MSNBC isn't the liberal Fox News for two very important reasons: It usually demonstrates a greater respect for the truth than Fox News, and it's not as good as Fox News. It's not as good at being liberal as Fox is at being conservative. Fox is rigidly ideologically consistent, with its "straight news" programs echoing the same talking points and pushing the same slanted stories as its opinion shows. While there's no doubt that MSNBC is more unapologetically liberal than it used to be, it's still all over the place, with a conservative anchoring its flagship morning show, objective Beltway "straight news" proponents like Chuck Todd and Andrea Mitchell dominating in the daytime, and weekends full of ... prison shows. But more important, it's not as good as Fox at being compelling TV, which is why millions more people watch Fox every day. (There are demographic reasons for Fox's advantage, too, but it's still a huge number.)

CNN hires failed gimmick king

Thu, 29 Nov 2012 21:27:00 +0000

Who better for the job of turning around CNN than the man who took NBC from first to last? Jeff Zucker, the brain behind TV's "Joey," is going to be the new president of CNN Worldwide. The decision basically confirms that CNN, and Time Warner, have no clue what's "wrong" with their struggling channel, nor the first idea as to how to fix it.

It's been pointed out before that CNN doesn't actually need rescuing. The ratings at the flagship channel are atrocious, but the organization is profitable and its international arm is respected and successful. Departing CNN Worldwide executive Jim Walton was quite successful at making Time Warner money. Its primary problem is one of "embarrassment": the embarrassment that the clowns of Fox News and MSNBC are beating them in prime-time ratings, primarily, but also the embarrassment the very serious and good journalists of CNN feel regarding the shoddy product the bosses have been producing over the last few years. Zucker is theoretically capable of reversing the ratings trend, though I wouldn't hold my breath. But he's definitely never shown any ability or interest in producing less embarrassing programming. The man to rescue CNN from a loathsome charlatan like Piers Morgan is not the man who made Donald Trump a nationally recognized prime-time television clown.

Fox News licks its wounds

Wed, 07 Nov 2012 04:41:00 +0000

To the victors goes the Schadenfreude. The day after Barack Obama's and the Democrats’ fairly decisive electoral victories, Fox News is still licking its wounds, in simultaneously hilarious and terrifying fashion. On the riotous end, they’ve repeatedly shown a scruffy 20-something in Colorado screeching, “I’m going to get high tonight!” while petulantly complaining about Obama’s lack of bipartisanship. On the hair-raisingly efficient end, the talking point engine is already humming along, keen to make the “fiscal cliff” situation as much of a traumatic, partisan experience as the debt ceiling crisis. So 14 hours after Obama's victory, Fox News is basically back to normal, having traded in yesterday’s super-sad faces and Karl Rove’s deranged attempt to flip Ohio and the election for Romney, for its more standard anxiety-mongering. Fox may have lost the election, but it still has a job to do: Even when one’s worst fears have been realized, there is always another fear (even if it has the lame name "fiscal cliff," which sounds like it could be Jimmy Buffet’s backup drummer).

Jack Welch still thinks the government did some fuzzy math

Fri, 05 Oct 2012 22:27:00 +0000

Prodigious firer of employees and former captain of industry Jack Welch ended his day with some conspiracy-mongering on "Hardball."

Poll: Americans really don’t trust the media

Mon, 24 Sep 2012 15:25:00 +0000

Americans have a record lack of "trust and confidence" in the media, according to a new poll from Gallup.

The poll finds that 60 percent of those surveyed have "not very much" trust in the media, compared with 40 percent who said they had a great deal or a fair amount. The numbers have been steadily on the decline over the last 20 years, dragged down by Republicans and independents. The same poll shows that Democrats have more trust in the media than they did last year.

On the whole, the survey shows that 39 percent of people are paying "very close" attention to political news, up from 35 percent last year, but down from 43 percent during the last presidential race in 2008.