The “average audience for the network TV Sunday morning political talk shows on ABC, CBS, Fox and NBC … declined 8% in 2018, to about 2.3 million average viewers,” reports the Pew Research Center.
That’s an eight percent decline in just two years, since 2016, meaning — hold on to your hats — a near double-digit decline during the Trump era, which this same media told us was a Boom Time for the media because Har-de-har, Mr. President, your hate only makes us stronger!
And yet…
No.
The media are the opposite of stronger.
According to this same survey, since 2016, the network morning shows are down four percent, the evening news programs remained steady, and the nightly newsmagazines (20/20, Dateline, 60 Minutes, etc.) have also declined by eight percent.
But-but-but the media told me Boom Times!
It’s all fake news, y’all…
Everything is fake news.
And as the Washington Times astutely points out, the only network news genre not shrinking is the nightly news, which still works the hardest to hide its far-left agenda. “Relatively unembellished news — with less opinion or agenda — seems to be holding its own,” writes the Times.
But “holding its own” is the same as treading water.
And it is just not network news. As Breitbart News reported last week, the overall American media will be hit with some 12,000 job cuts this year, the largest number since the Great Recession of 2009, and nearly three times as many as were cut in 2017.
Then there is the far-left fake news outlet CNN, which is in a literal ratings death spiral — regularly losing what few viewers it once had by double digits.
But back to the Sunday shows…
Those of us of a certain age remember when Sunday morning public affairs shows … mattered.
Believe it or not, there was a time when anyone interested in knowing what the following week’s news cycle would look like, would tune into, at least, Meet the Press and This Week. You see, for a time, by means of vital guests and tough interviewing, Tim Russert and David Brinkley were able to set the table.
Russert and Brinkley were journalists first. No one knew how they voted, and they never came off as stenographers, or as Tools of the State, or Castle Guards, or Mouthpieces for The Agenda. And so, their questions were designed — not as cheap gotchas to make elitists cheer — but to find things out: Why did you do this? Why do you believe this? What’s next?
Watching Tim Russert grill a powerful politician — Democrat or Republican — was like watching Michael Jordan dunk — a thing of beauty.
And the old pros never got angry or pissy or indignant like Chuck Todd and Jake Tapper and Chris Wallace and the rest do now. Those guys knew it was not about them or what they believe. Rather, it was about the guests, what our elected leaders believed. What a concept!
What’s more, the talking head roundtable discussions that closed each show helped to contextualize the Big Interviews and were almost always enlightening in some way, or at least offered a moment or two of insight. In other words, after an hour, you felt better informed, so it was worth your time.
Well, that was then…
Today, the Sunday shows are just another predictable irritating cable news hour of shouting, cheap gotcha questions, virtue signaling, peacocking, and agenda-pushing — another hour of establishment-types establishing why the establishment should remain established.
In other words, today’s Sunday shows are freakin’ DULL.
It is always the same guests, or the same type of guests, and the same talking heads with the same talking points who are not there to inform or enlighten or surprise, but to assure their peers that we’re the grown-ups, we’re the elite, we’re the best-and-the-brightest, and if we just keep telling ourselves this, the Unwashed will eventually get bored and return to their bread and circuses 99 cent cheeseburgers and Netflix.
They no longer talk to us; they talk to each other.
Years ago, I stopped watching the Sunday shows not because of the left-wing bias, which was always there to one degree or another, but because these shows are now ridiculously predictable and tedious. Every Sunday is essentially a rerun of the hundred previous Sunday shows.
How many times can you watch the same show?
Why tune into a show when you already know what’s going to happen, what will be said, and who will say it?
Because both are were intelligent, Fox’s Chris Wallace and NBC’s Chuck Todd used to at least surprise me once in a while, but Trump broke them both. Today, ChuckWallace is just like JakeStephanopoWhoeversHostingCBS — both are #Resistance Parrots terrified to step off the left-wing plantation, terrified of the Twitters, of the mob, of challenging even the madness of a mentally ill man in a dress sharing a locker room with your daughter.
What kind of “news man” devotes a full hour to climate alarmism without inviting even a single dissenting voice on board?
One voice.
One opinion.
One point of view.
BORING.
But because he’s a chickenshit, Chuck Todd would rather bore us than risk rocking the boat.
The bottom line is this…
Placating the Woke Mob does not make for good or insightful or entertaining television.
What’s more, it never results in television that matters because propaganda never matters.
And if you boil them down to their essentials, that is all the Sunday shows do now … play to the mob.
The Sunday shows were always biased.
Now they’re just ZZZZZZzzzzzzzzzzz…
Follow John Nolte on Twitter @NolteNC. Follow his Facebook Page here.
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