clowns to the left of me, jokers to the right

I usually explain my opinion on 24-hour news channels like this: MSNBC is on the left, Fox News is on the right, and CNN fucking blows. I used to call them the Good, the Bad and the Ugly, but then Anderson "The Silver Fox" Cooper joined CNN and somehow replaced Wolf Blitzer as the most handsome man in cable journalism.

Wolf Blitzer - the most exciting name, the most boring man

Today's New York Times article outlining how and why CNN is getting royally screwed in the ratings pretty much comes as no surprise, but (even though it doesn't come out and say it) it brings up a few points as to why 24-hour news channels are inherently polarizing. Some claim that there isn't enough news to justify all-day coverage. This couldn't be less true. There just isn't enough interesting news to fill 24 hours. Cable news channels are profit-driven entities, and their business model relies on drawing in the largest audience possible, something that is made much easier by sensationalizing your content. It's simply more profitable to focus on horse race, health scares, celebrity exploits and missing photogenic white girls than it is to report on things that actually matter. Polarizing editorial content to fit certain political demographics also substantially increases ratings. As a result, Fox News has found great success catering to conservatives, MSNBC has found less success catering to liberals because we tend to fucking read, and CNN's in the toilet because cable news doesn't lend itself well to neutrality. Truly fair and balanced coverage isn't inherently exciting, so it's no wonder that CNN's highest rated shows feature the heart-throbbing (~*~*Anderson*~*~) or the heart-palpitating (Lou "if it's brown, flush it down" Dobbs). And even Lou Dobbs is steadily losing ground, because if someone wants to watch a mentally unstable xenophobe rant about illegal aliens, they're probably already a big fan of a certain other channel.

Fox News - where the discerning man gets his crazy on.

Even if CNN goes under, it's not as if we're actually losing anything. No matter how much they love to whine about it, CNN doesn't do a much better job presenting the news (and I mean straight news, not editorial content) than their two competitors, and a much worse job than network news, print and online newspapers, high-profile blogs, and certain Angelfire sites. 24-hour news is a blight on American media, and the less of it we have, the better.

Although that hologram thing on Election Night was hilarious.