Tuesday, February 16, 2016

How Liberal Teevee Died


To me, this perfectly sums up what MSNBC has sunk to: a camera pointed at an empty Donald Trump podium as a talking head vamps until Trump shows up and says something.

Not with a bang, but a whimper.

9 comments:

Unknown said...

It's really sad. I still watch Rachel Maddow & Lawrence O'Donnell but I have followed Rachel from her Air America days and it's sad that she's obviously working inside a "permitted box". She still does good work, but she does seem to be working inside a box. Just my opinion / perspective.

Skeptic Rising said...

The devolution will be televised.

Unknown said...

It feels like this is the only candidate MSNBC wants to cover: with less than a day's notice, the network advertises a town hall with only Trump, to be hosted by Scarborough and Brzezinski, whose bias towards him confirms this town hall is already compromised and will not be a critical interview of the candidate.

While the network also will have Chris Matthews interviewing John Kasich beforehand, there is the stench of favoritism, an invitation extended to Trump for the 8:00 PM time slot, with an ever-present countdown clock naming only him and advertising only his town hall, and no advertisement for Kasich's talk and no released plans for similar one-candidate town halls for any other candidate, Republican or Democrat.

MSNBC has as its goal ratings, reducing politics into a game for entertainment. It feels like there is no news on the network, no intelligent commentary: just live coverage of whatever political trainwreck they can find. What a shame to see a network fall apart like this. While other web sites will cite MSNBC, I've given up on the network: I flip by it, but I don't watch any of its shows anymore. Reading the news at least lets me take my time to analyze a topic, rather than reducing it into a soundbyte or an eight- to twenty-minute segment before cutting away for a commercial break.

Unknown said...

It feels like this is the only candidate MSNBC wants to cover: with less than a day's notice, the network advertises a town hall with only Trump, to be hosted by Scarborough and Brzezinski, whose bias towards him confirms this town hall is already compromised and will not be a critical interview of the candidate.

While the network also will have Chris Matthews interviewing John Kasich beforehand, there is the stench of favoritism, an invitation extended to Trump for the 8:00 PM time slot, with an ever-present countdown clock naming only him and advertising only his town hall, and no advertisement for Kasich's talk and no released plans for similar one-candidate town halls for any other candidate, Republican or Democrat.

MSNBC has as its goal ratings, reducing politics into a game for entertainment. It feels like there is no news on the network, no intelligent commentary: just live coverage of whatever political trainwreck they can find. What a shame to see a network fall apart like this. While other web sites will cite MSNBC, I've given up on the network: I flip by it, but I don't watch any of its shows anymore. Reading the news at least lets me take my time to analyze a topic, rather than reducing it into a soundbyte or an eight- to twenty-minute segment before cutting away for a commercial break.

Robt said...

How will we know when Trump pays for that sort of air time vs the network giving free time (for ratings).

I realize you are portal framing this instance. Yes, it is much more than that.

I did not watch the last GOP debate. I read the transcript of it.

As David Frum put it;
(His fluffy account link) http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/02/the-republican-partys-internecine-fights-spill-into-the-open/462768/

For a decade and a half, Republicans have stifled internal debates about the George W. Bush presidency. They have preserved a more or less common front, by the more or less agreed upon device of not looking backward, not talking candidly, and focusing all their accumulated anger on the figure of Obama. The Trump candidacy has smashed all those coping mechanisms. Everything that was suppressed has been exposed, everything that went unsaid is being shouted aloud—and all before a jeering live audience, as angry itself as any of the angry men on the platform. Is this a functional political party? Is this an organization readying itself to govern? Or is it one more—most spectacular—show of self-evisceration by a party that has been bleeding on the inside for a decade and longer?

Unknown said...

The Machine is smiling.

Empy said...

Phil Donahue asks, WTF?

Wendy said...

Funny how Obama can't get this much coverage.

Okay, it's not funny.

Between this and the relentless news crawl at the bottom of the screen, MSNBC has become virtually unwatchable.

ThatOtherDaughter said...

The only show I still watch is TRMS. It is very sad to see MSNBC make a hard right turn. I've turned to Free Speech TV for the most part.