Once again, access = bias--or even better! OK, so CNN resigned Jon Klein for another four years. Oops, make that re-signed!
And The New York Observer's Felix Gillette seems really happy, perhaps because Gillette either sat in on Klein's peptalk to CNN-ers in NYC, or else he got a tape or a verbatim report.
Evidently Gillette was so happy with his insider-y status that a genuine howler got past him. Gillette wrote that Anderson Cooper "currently trails" FNC's Greta Van Susteren.
Currently? The Cable Gamer is still laughing over this one. “Currently”?!?!??! Try ALWAYS! According to The Free Dictionary "currently" is defined as "belonging to the present time." You know, as in temporary.
But there seems to be nothing "temporary" about Cooper's lagging behind Greta in the ratings, or in the demo. Has La Anderson ever won a month? That would be a no. Since he launched in November of 2005, Cooper has lost every consecutive month in both viewership and 25-54 demo to Van Susteren. Indeed, TCG hears from Nielsen that the Fox host has been #1 for 67 consecutive months! That’s a bit different than currently! How did Gillette miss that one?!
These things happen in the MSM, as well as the blogosphere. As alert Cable Gamers have pointed out, I predicted that "The Half Hour Comedy Hour" would be a hit. Well, I was wrong about that one! Oh well.
In the meantime, Felix will have more journalistic lives. And he offers some interesting stuff in his piece, such as this discussion of CNN's troubled first hour of prime time:
Mr. Klein suggested that Campbell Brown’s new 8 p.m. show, set to debut in February, would compete by being “more talk-oriented,” by featuring fewer “formal pieces,” and by on occasion capitalizing on Ms. Brown’s sometimes-comic sensibility towards the news, à la Comedy’s Central The Daily Show. “Jon Stewart should not corner the market on innovative uses of tape,” said Mr. Klein. “He wishes he had access to the amount of material we get in every day.”
So Klein is kinda raising the expectations game here. Campbell Brown has always struck me as a perfectly adequate anchor. So if she were just content to do some news and ask some questions on her forthcoming show, well, that would be OK--although she would still be overshadowed by Bill O'Reilly's ratings and Keith Olbermann's hype. But now Cambpell is supposed to be Jon Stewart? Using closely edited tape with the comic, or otherwise effective, timing of Stewart. That'll be tough, to put it mildly.
