I didn’t write that…
(but I don’d disagree)
It was written by Dave Winer ( who has been blogging since 1994 and say she is the first blogger).
Today, in excoriating Cable News, Dave wrote:
In the last couple of of days this has been confirmed by appearances by two people, Jay Rosen, my former colleague at NYU, and Julia Ioffe of the New Republic.
Rosen was on Up with Chris Hayes, moderated that night by Ezra Klein, talking about the purchase of the Washington Post by Jeff Bezos. I tuned in of course, because Jay had been firing on all cylinders lately on his blog with perspective on what the Snowden revelations have taught us about American journalism. I was looking forward to Jay’s brilliance to shine through, but I was disappointed. Jay explained later that cable news can’t carry complex, interesting ideas. It’s the can’t part that I don’t accept. I understand that it doesn’t but I think it can.
Here, I have to disagree both with Jay and with Dave.
Cable could do some very intelligent analyses, if it wanted to.
They certainly have the time. And they certainly could book the right people.
But they don’t.
They don’t because cable news, like all TV, is a business. It is not a university.
And as a business, it’s only task is to maximize income.
And income in cable (as in all TV) is derived from advertising sales.
And ad sales are entirely a function of how many people are watching. The more people who watch, the more you can charge for ads, the more money you make.
It’s all pretty simple.
And how do you get more people to watch?
You keep it simple.
You don’t see a lot of people flocking to those live streaming classes from Harvard… but they are very intelligent.
You DO see a lot of people flocking to American Idol.
Give the people what they want.
McDonald’s learned this a long time ago.
They fill their menus with very carefully researched and tested junk.
It’s not really food.
It’s just a glob of sugar and fat, but boy, does it taste good!
McDonald’s is not really in the food business.
They are in the business of selling the most stuff to the most people.
McDonald’s COULD offer a grilled salmon with arugula.
It would be good and healthy and better than the current ‘Filet o’Fish’.
But they would soon be out of business.
Just like CNN if they became more ‘intelligent’.
Copyright Michael Rosenblum 2013
