CNN to sacrifice last bit of cred for comedy show
In an Ishtar-esque display of WTF, CNN announced this week the debut of a new Saturday morning comedy news program in which anchors will remind viewers via tepid puns why they should change the channel.
The 30-minute "Not Just Another Cable News Show" will air Saturdays at 7 p.m. ET and repeated twice later in the evening. It will be followed each time by News to Me, a series on popular Web videos.
One can only hope that, as with Fox's ill-fated "1/2 Hour News Hour," clips from the show will be leaked online, thus providing the Web with another cathartic moment of collective bershon.
Judging from the smattering of similarly oriented media lately -- Fox, followed by the HuffPo's 236.com, followed byCNN -- there's apparently a consensus among news orgs that their competitive position in the news marketplace is enhanced via homegrown comedy. I'm sure that judgment is based on sound data, data which probably says a large portion of their audience watches (and learns more from) shows like "The Daily Show." Thus, the ideation "we need to do comedy news too".
But that's misunderstanding both the problem and the solution. The problem is that news orgs like CNN -- despite their vaunted budgets and global scope -- are vested less in news and more in infotainment. To suggest that adding more entertainment to that mix will win back viewers who are looking for news is bunk. The solution, obviously, isn't to compete with comedy news but to do better journalism -- an idea which is unfortunately akin to saying "let's make less money". Thus it always has been, and always will be.
