Whats it been like to watch the shrinking impact of network television news?
The fact is that I think most Americans probably already know pretty much what’s happened by the time they get home at night, with radio and the Internet and iPods. So at 6:30 p.m., they don’t want to sit in front of television for a half hour and have someone tell them what they already know. So today, for those who don’t already know, the program begins with maybe 7-8 minutes of news and the rest of the program is kind of soft feature stuff. The Cronkite news program was a fairly hard news operation. Not until you got toward the end of the broadcast did you get analysis or Charlie Kuralt “On the Road” feature … So it’s frustrating and it’s irritating and it’s kind of sad. You know why it is happening, you’re just sorry that it has happened because I think the country deserves better than what it’s getting from commercial television and cable television. Do you think the decline is cyclical and that it might improve? You certainly hope so. But the economic realities are probably suc
