A merger of CNN and ABC’s news operations could produce an unmanageable organisation incapable of reacting quickly enough to events, senior figures on both sides have warned.
Interesting that neither side is all that sanguine about it, at least at the level of where the work gets done (Mr Eisner’s opinion is not as important).
But my favorite snippet was this one:
Earlier this year, ABC sought to replace journalist Ted Koppel’s respected news programme with David Letterman’s comedy show. Ultimately the plan failed when Mr Letterman refused to leave the CBS network. But inside ABC News the effort was seen as an indication that ratings had become more important than news.
Ratings have always been more important than quality on the entertainment side of things (how else do you explain Three’s Company or Married with Children?): why should news be any different?
Local news has been following the “if it bleeds, it leads” model for years: their latest trick is starting the local newscasts at 4:57, to make viewers who tune in at 5 PM think they’ve missed something.
I say scrap network news altogether: when there’s an event, people go to CNN on the air or on the web anyhow: why bother to fund an operation that no one cares about? When was the last time one of the networks broke a story, versus reporting an existing one?