Globex Corporation Newsletter

I'm a news junkie. I'm unapologetic about that. I really like information. While the internet is great for having news at your fingertips, my medium of choice, at least for breaking stories, is television.

I was sick and home from school the day Anwar Sadat was assassinated in Egypt. The, the big 3 networks were really the only TV news operators. I watched the coverage on NBC news, which was my favorite news operation at the time. There were, of course, technical difficulties in getting the story to the United States, it was 1981 after all and the whole world wasn't wired together like it is today. While satellite technology was in existence, it wasn't as mobile and prevalent as it is today. And everything wasn't shot on video like it is today.

But video was shot and it ended up at a satellite uplink (presumably in Cairo) and images were available to a high school boy too sick to go to school that day.

I think of how the President of Egypt was assassinated and how, while it was an important news story, the networks didn't go absolutely ape shit over it. A lot of that was because of technological limitations, but there really wasn't a demand for that coverage in the United States.

In those days, the news that we received on television was from a news division at one of the networks. The entertainment divisions of NBC, ABC and CBS were the money makers, news was never supposed to make money. And news never did make money.

Now CNN existed at this time, but not like we know it today. It wasn't in nearly as many homes as not nearly as many homes subscribed to cable as do today. I didn't have CNN when Sadat was assassinated, so I don't know how they covered the story. My guess it was much the same as NBC did.

I can't tell you exactly when things changed. My guess is the first Gulf War, when CNN was light years ahead of the broadcast networks in their coverage. CNN was ready for a war, they had reporters in place, had flashy graphics ready to go. Look, we all knew this war was going to happen, hell we knew exactly when it was going to start. NBC, ABC and CBS were somehow caught flat footed.

I was working at an NBC affiliate at the time. When I went home I would watch NBC, but I would also watch a lot of CNN becasue they seemed to be on the ball.

CNN gained a lot of prestige from the war. The were suddenly a player in international news, and a profitable one at that. But the war was the story for 1,100 hours and once that was over, CNN had trouble keeping viewers.

CNN was 24 hours a day, they were competing against networks, but networks with news divisions that weren't expected to make money. Yes, CNN was owned by Turner and Ted's pockets were deep and he had other money making media holdings, but to survive, CNN had to be sensational.

Then other news networks were born, Fox and MSNBC were launched. CNN had competition in cable news. All tried sensationalism. And it's worked.

Anna Nicole Smith died yesterday, a woman who is primarily known as a former stripper who married an octegenarian Oil mogul. I just watched 15 minutes at the top of the hour on CNN, all about Anna Nicole Smith. Anna Nicole Smith!

I understand that she was a celebirity. If Tom Cruise were to die tomorrow, CNN, Fox News and MSNBC would go ape shit for a week. I get that, but for fuck's sake, there's a war going on. People are dying every day, people who aren't famous like Anna Nicole Smith, but whose lives every bit as important as.

The problem with television news is that it has to make money. So it has to pander to the lowest common denomonator. Anna Nicole Smith. They have to keep the ratings up, so they have to do stories that people will watch, not the most important stories, but the ones that will improve the ratings.

I like CNN. I watch every day, some days it's the only thing I'll have on my TV. I like my ability to see TV news 24 hours a day, every day. But I want to see news. I don't want to see bullshit about some feud between Rosie O'Donnel and Donald Trump. I take that back, I do want to see that, but not only that. I don't need fifteen minutes at the top of the hour about a dead bimbo.

BOJ