I really am apolitical, and I didn’t watch last night’s democratic debate. I did look at the overnight ratings data, and that I am sort of interested in mostly as a result of this web site.
But via Twitter I saw a comment from @Lons this morning trashing Charlie Gibson in a post titled, You Don’t Need a Weatherman to Know How Much Charlie Gibson Blows (I’m a sucker for a Bob Dylan lyric refernce, I suppose) and then I saw this column from Washington Post television critic Tom Shales titled, In Pa. Debate, The Clear Loser Is ABC.
Said Shales:
For the first 52 minutes of the two-hour, commercial-crammed show, Gibson and Stephanopoulos dwelled entirely on specious and gossipy trivia that already has been hashed and rehashed, in the hope of getting the candidates to claw at one another over disputes that are no longer news. Some were barely news to begin with.
I don’t know that Charlie Gibson didn’t blow, and I can’t say that specious gossip should be the stuff of news, but I can say this: from ABC’s own press release:
For the Wednesday 8-10 p.m. time period, this marks ABC’s best Total Viewing audience since 11/28/07, its largest Adult 18-49 rating since 2/27/08, and its best Adult 25-54 rating since 1/9/08.
Taking it all in, I was reminded of this column recently from Broadcasting and Cable’s Paige Albiniak titled Tim Robbins’ Beautiful, Impossible Media Dream.
It may be a gosh darn shame that specious gossip gets better ratings than hard news reporting, but that doesn’t change the fact that specious gossip gets better ratings than hard news reporting.
People sometimes just want to assume that human nature works the way they wish it did, rather than the way that it actually does. This creates frustration that many people, myself included, struggle with. But sometimes the struggle too, is just part of human nature…
i like hill, the rack and even mccain… i think they are al fundamentally good people… but most of the complaints are coming from barak supporters. if you do anything to make saint barak look bad they freak out like scientologists freak out when you go against their religion. beware jason beghe
I think those last two paragraphs from Robert hit the nail right on the head. Very well written and painfully true. I think it’s something that can’t be fixed. It seems like these debates shouldn’t have commercials or be about ratings. That way they wouldn’t have to ask all these stupid questions to get people to tune in. Maybe have them on PBS? There might be a lot less viewers but at least you wouldn’t have to dumb it down so much for people that only tune in to hear gossip and trivial garbage. Doesn’t Fox have a whole “news” network devoted to that?
The PA debate didn’t have people tune in because Americans wanted to watch Gibson waste our time w/ “specious gossip”! Americans tuned in to a network that promised a debate on the issues, because for an entire year, debates were only on CABLE channels. CNN and MSNBC also received record breaking ratings when they hosted debates between the final 2 Democrats, and when they shared the debate w/ MySpace, FaceBook, and Youtube. The fact that the ABC anchors sunk to such a low is being praised be the RIGHT-WING lunatics on Faux News, and David Brooks from the LA Times- who’s been crazy for a while. I’m totally pro-Hillary and HOPE Obama bows out gracefully, but even I didn’t want to hear Obama answer ANOTHER question about Rev. Wright, or Hillary’s Bosnia story. I care about ending the Iraq war! My brother’s in the Army, and he’s an active duty soldier stationed in Germany, but he wants to go to Afghanistan were he would battle the REAL terrorists (i.e. Al Queda). If he gets deployed to Iraq, he wouldn’t be sent to drive and shoot his tank, which has been a childhood dream of his. The Army invested so much money into training my brother’s platoon to work with tanks it doesn’t make sense to send them to babysit villages in a Humvee. ABC totally dropped the ball, and FAILED the American public with STUPID questions about rumors that had already been answered weeks ago. I’m currently w/o health care, and when I got sick last week, I spent $60 for doctor to look at me for 2 minutes and send me on my way w/ a prescription, which cost $86.74!!!! The pharmacist called the doc, and got me the generic stuff for $7.49, so within 2 days I was good as new, but that was the first time I’d seen a doctor in 3 YEARS!!!
Iraq war, health care, education, the economy, immigration, the environment, Guantanamo Bay, social security, taxes, a woman’s right to choose, Federal Regulation Agencies doing their job (i.e. Chinese toys, pet food, and toothpaste, + FAA and American Airlines) America’s standing in the world, the falling dollar, extremely high gas prices, energy independence, fuel efficiency, etc…. I had hundreds of better questions to ask
Oh yeah and the $1.5 BILLION on Abstinence-ONLY education is a total waste of tax-payer $$$, because teens should know that the 99 cent store sells QUALITY condoms= they are as effective as any Trojan! I HATE how the government spends the people’s money on policies that DON’T work, and know we should be investing in SAFE-sex education, to prevent STD’s, HIV/AIDS, and unwanted pregnancies. What’d I tell you there were so many better- more relevent questions us MILLENIALS would have brought to network TV, than Gibson dared, or cared to do! 1985 was the best year ever!!!!!
Wow, Jenny G. the front runner should bow out gracefully? That makes no sense.
On the topic at hand, ABC proved long ago that their news department is about getting ratings, and that that’s the bottom line. This is the same news department that reports on stories from internet sites that are nothing more than gossip sites. And you are right we can take the high road and say that their approach is wrong, but the fact is their approach is working. It’s not keeping people informed, or keeping politicians honest, but their formula is bringing in the ratings.
ABC News Did a great Job…Its the Obama supporters that were upset about the debate coverage..Move-On.Org Move on please and MSNBC Obama Network…The questions needed to be asked because we are still not sure totally of Obama and the American people care about character.