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June 28, 2006
Nightly News
On Monday night I did something I had not done for a long time: watched the national evening news. My parents were in town and wanted to watch the nightly news so we turned on ABC news. I had forgotten how terrible and excruciatingly slow the evening news is. Years of relying on Drudge Report, Instapundit, and other news aggregating internet sources with hyperlinks has spoiled me. It took half an hour to go over about five stories none of which had more than a minute's worth of real information. There was plenty of pointless news footage of the flooding in DC, a rather lame attempt at balanced news commentary about Iraq by George Stephanopoulos (anyone willing to bet that a major network will offer Karl Rove a plum job like that?), inane speculation on what Warren Buffet's donation will pay for, pathetic man on the street interviews of young men on the crisis with boys, and that was followed by more pathetic interviews with people about how coffee is good for you. Forget about bias, this was simply a half hour of pointless drivel. If you are going to do half an hour of news provide more than five minutes of substance. I had free cable at my last apartment and I would on rare occasions watch cable news for a few minutes at a time, but now that I do not get Fox News or even CNN it will be a long time before I watch more than a few seconds of news again.
Posted by Pete at June 28, 2006 09:24 PM
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Comments
I stopped watching the news because I could no longer tolerate the anchor/reporter cadence of speaking. I find it incredibly annoying.
Way back in high school, I would watch CNN Headline News in the morning for a quick synopsis of the big news. Now, though, it's some insufferable perky morning show with windows and frames all over the screen. Fox and CNN have their own idiotic morning shows with folks sittin' around joshin' each other and talking. Screw that. I want my news plain, simple, and straight. I don't need some idiots putting on a buddy routine. Like you, I read all my news now.
Posted by: Dangerous Dan at June 29, 2006 01:06 PM
I will watch one of the local news stations if their is a flood here and I will occasionally try to catch a friend of mine that now anchors/reports for one of the stations here. Local San Antonio news tends to be even worse and more fluffy and 'if it bleeds, it leads' than the national news.
Fox news is the least worse of the national news programs, but that is not saying much. I tried watching it in the morning for a while as I ate breakfast, but would usually turn it to the weather channel unless Fox had an interesting guest. Until TV news adds hyperlinks I will not be watching.
Posted by: Pete at June 29, 2006 08:53 PM