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Chapter 4 -- The Cable Wars: Another Approach to Popularizing Commercial News

The recession that began in 2008 has spurred or accelerated very significant, perhaps crippling, economic troubles in most sectors of the news industry. According to the Pew

Center‟s annual State of the report, most major commercial news formats, including local news broadcasts, network news divisions, news magazines, and especially daily newspapers, experienced declining revenues in 2008 and 2009.1 Media companies also made steep divestures in the newsroom budgets in these news formats. Many analysts suspect these retrenchments are not only the effects of the financial downturn generally; rather, the core business models that have supported commercial appear to be faltering in a media environment undergoing fundamental transformation in the digital age. Yet, one kind of commercial news outlet that did not face declining revenues in the midst of recession: cable news stations.

Cable news is a puzzling genre in many respects. It straddles a line between a

“traditional” news format and something new. Given that much discussion about the future of news pivots on a distinction between traditional news models and emerging in a landscape reshaped by digital and , where does cable news fit? Is it a harbinger of things to come or a last gasp of an increasingly obsolete news trying to find relevance?

Like most of the traditional news outlets, the most popular cable news stations are all owned by major media conglomerates, rely on professional for most of their newsgathering (if not their commentary), and, at least for now, the majority of their programming embraces some

1 Pew Project on Excellence in Journalism, The State of the News Media (Washington, D.C.: Project for Excellence in Journalism, 2009), http://www.stateofthemedia.org/2009/index.htm; Pew Project on Excellence in Journalism, The State of the News Media (Washington, D.C.: Project for Excellence in Journalism, 2010), http://www.stateofthemedia.org/2010/. claim to fairness and balance.2 Furthermore, cable news programming still shares many basic elements in with local television news and network news -- from frequent shots of anchors behind desks to the use of many of the same kinds of soundbites and live shots.3 Yet cable news differs in other respects from legacy news organizations. The medium itself is far younger than . ‟s CNN launched in 1980, but it was not until

1996 that MSNBC and launched to spur serious competition in the U.S. cable news market. Cable as a medium isn‟t simply newer; it has been articulated to different kinds of audiences and programming strategies than broadcast television.4 As many television scholars have argued, the multi-channel environment of cable has meant a potential for fracturing the monolithic “mass” associated with the heyday of network television into a system that focuses on targeting distinct niches. While cable news has borrowed many conventions from other news media, it has also been cultivating its own forms of news storytelling, some of which are in pointed opposition to the objective style that characterized 20th Century print and broadcast journalism. The most prominent most prominent markers of cable news‟s difference from broadcast news has been its prime- programming. As I will discuss later in the chapter, cable news hosts such as Bill O‟Reilly, , , and have crafted their personas in contrast to network news anchors. Even CNN‟s , who eschews the partisan identity associated with MSNBC and Fox News, is promoted by CNN as a

“fast-moving, surprising and provocative alternative to the typical network evening newscast.”

(http://www.cnn.com/CNN/Programs/).

2 Interestingly, the term “objectivity” appears less frequently in discussions about cable news. Perhaps “objectivity” connotes a bland neutrality that cable news is trying to distance itself from while its journalists still seek to lay claim to some form of professional grasp on truthfulness and comprehensiveness in their coverage. 3Some cable hosts have been moving away from the anchor-behind-the-desk convention. CNN‟s , in particular, has penchant for standing during his show and moving around the studio to point at maps, charts, graphs, and even the occasional hologram. 4 Amanda D Lotz, The Television Will Be Revolutionized (: New York University Press, 2007). The relative economic success of cable news suggests these channels might be setting a path that other commercial news media will follow. This raises the question of whether the kind of journalism associated with cable news contributes to a healthy democratic media. Many journalists and critics believe cable news has been exerting a strong influence over the rest of the news media, but many believe cable news‟s influence has become a negative one. During the earlier years of CNN, the reaction to cable news from the community of professional journalists seemed to be somewhat skeptical overall, but nonetheless they engaged in a rather balanced debate over the merits of twenty-four hours news.5 Yet after the competition among these stations became heated in the late 1990s and early , more critics saw cable news as detrimental in its impact on democracy.6 Even President Obama has singled out cable news and its particular demands on the “twenty-four hour news cycle” as harmful force for U.S. political culture. A reoccurring refrain has been that these cable stations have developed in a way that has squandered the democratic potential cable news once held. Cable news stations have much more time to tell news stories and offer description and analysis of current events than television broadcasters who reserved only a small portion of the day for news. Despite its 24 hours a day airtime, cable stations have gained a reputation for focusing more than intensely than other sources on a few big stories rather than offering breadth. The Pew Center‟s State of the Media

Reports provides evidence to support this perception, and their research also suggests that in

2010 cable news focused much more exclusively on domestic U.S. stories than other types of news media.7 The 2010 report also found that even though cable stations had branded

5 Media Institute, Cnn Vs. the Networks--Is More News Better News?: A Content Analysis of the Cable News Network and the Three Broadcast Networks, Media research series (Washington, D.C: Media Institute, 1983). 6 For example, see Neil Hickey, “Cable Wars.,” Columbia Journalism Review 41, no. 5 (January 2003): 12. 7 Pew Project on Excellence in Journalism, The State of the News Media. themselves in opposition to one another, “the basic menu of the top subject matter covered on the three cable channels was relatively similar.”8

In this chapter I explore major strategies cable news stations have used to gain audiences and popularity. The argument I make is that the form of news storytelling that has thrived on cable stations has been shaped to a large degree by an evolving common sense among industry players about what their audiences want, a sense I refer to as “the industry popular.” I analyze several of the key intuitions among cable news producers about what they need to do to compete for audiences and make their programs appealing and profitable. My purpose is not only to describe defining features of cable news, but also to offer the concept of the industry popular as an alternative to technological, market, or cultural determinism for making sense of why cable news have adopted their restricted range of current programming strategies. In referring to other modes of determinism, I want to suggest that neither cable‟s technological capacities, nor the

“market” (taking the market as simply a system in which producers compete to make the most profit meeting consumer demand), nor a general sense of U.S. “culture” can, by themselves, account for the distinctive innovations of cable news. The focus of my analysis is on the prime- time programming that has emerged since MSNBC and Fox News launched to compete with

CNN in 1996. The reasons I focus on prime-time programming after 1996 is because it is this programming that has been the object of cable news stations most intense efforts to win over audiences. Even though the prime-time programming differs significantly from the daytime programming on all stations, it is the prime-time programming that has been primarily tasked with establishing a brand image for each channel and securing a daytime audience.

In what follows, I first propose the concept of the “industry popular” and discuss its connection with the framework introduced at the beginning of this dissertation as well as its

8 Ibid., http://www.stateofthemedia.org/2010/year_sectorhighlights.php#cable. special relevance for understanding cable news. Second, I provide a very brief history of CNN and the model it had set for cable news programming before the launch of competing U.S. cable news channels. Third, in the most central section of this chapter, I analyze five key dimensions of the industry popular for cable news – five attributes of cable news programs that have been widely accepted as essential for its popularization. Lastly, I conclude by bringing this analysis of cable news into a discussion about the popularization of news in general and the central themes of this dissertation.

Approaching the Industry Popular

Let‟s say, hypothetically, that cable news programming over the last decade has become increasingly targeted toward specific niche audiences segmented by political affiliation. This has become a prevalent notion among certain media critics, and although I will question this hypothesis later in the chapter, it serves as a concrete example of the kind of problem this chapter explores. That problem is: How can we understand the forces behind trends in such cable news?

Let me posit two popular ways of approaching this problem. 1) The increasingly partisan tendencies of cable news reflect popular tastes and broad changes in political culture. In a society where different viewpoints increasingly appear incommensurable, people in the U.S. have started to prefer only news sources that share their same political perspectives. 2) This programming reflects changes in structural elements of the U.S. media system. Partisan news is a symptom of a post-broadcast media system in which cable and Internet availability has eroded barriers to entry that once prevented niche outlets from achieving widespread circulation.

Each of these theories may offer explanatory value, but the point I want to focus on now has to do with the level of analysis they offer. Both of these analyses lean toward macro-level explanations for cable news trends. The first offers the most “macro” perspective and the most cultural. It tries to explain the changes in the production and circulation of a genre of news programming by reference to exclusively cultural forces on the level of the social whole. In the clinical light of this schematic breakdown, such an analysis might seem a relic of an outmoded style of functionalist sociology. Yet this type of thinking is quite familiar in popular media criticism and even in media scholarship. The second type of explanation is not quite as broad.

Instead of pinning changes in a news genre to the social whole, it looks more specifically at a certain social domain or field – the media system. This explanation also looks to changes in technology, infrastructure, and markets rather than cultural factors. Much of the work identified as “political economy” of media offers an explanatory framework along similar lines as this second example.

I believe we need a third approach, one that is complementary to the other two, for making sense of some of the particular characteristics of cable news. In the introduction to this dissertation I discussed the concept of “cultures of production.” Cultures of production refer to the beliefs, values, and proclivities of media producers -- a group of people who have a relatively greater control over media than others – and their immersion in a meaning-making practices akin to their own subculture.9 The term “culture” here serves to counter a tendency to see media producers only as rational business actors whose decisions respond only to bottom line demands or as autonomous creators driven by their own artistic spirit or ethical conscience. Instead, seeing news production through the lens of cultures of production suggests that newsmakers choices are shaped by shared systems of belief and feeling. To understand the forms of news that have thrived on cable news, we need to consider not only the influence of changes in

9 This term can be found in John Caldwell, Production Culture: Industrial Reflexivity and Critical Practice in Film and Television (Durham N.C.: Duke University Press, 2008). technology, markets, and cultural values and tastes at large, but also the specific meanings that news producers have made out of these changes and the “group think” that has guided their responses to them.

One way to help understand cable‟s innovations in television news is through examining how cable news culture of production as crafted specific “rules of the game” for the cable news competition and settled on certain notions of what qualities attract cable news audiences. I introduce this notion of “the industry popular” name the common sense among media producers about what kinds of material can be popular with audiences. The industry popular offers a variation on cultural studies concern with “the popular” as a central concept at the heart of contemporary cultural struggles.

Stuart Hall argued that the popular could be understood as “those forms and activities which have their roots in the social and material conditions of particular classes; which have been embodied in popular traditions and classes.”10 By employing the term “industry popular” I intend to shift the focus away from the question of which cultural forms, images, or traditions resonate most with the groups Hall refers to as the popular classes. Instead, this concepts helps pose the question: what cultural forms (specifically of news) do media industry discourses suggest have the potential for popular appeal? Of course, the way media industry discourses construct the popular is not the only important focus for cultural analysis, but there is a unique value to isolating the industrial popular from the notion of the popular at large.

Industry discourses tend to make sense of kinds of programming might “work” with audiences through the lens of genres. Within the television production community as a whole, there is something akin to a meta-level industry popular encompassing the industry‟s common

10 Stuart Hall, “Notes on Deconstructing the Popular,” in People's History and Socialist Theory, by Raphael Samuel (: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1981), 235. sense about what kinds of genres and formats might have popular appeal in the first place. This meta-level industry popular may also specify a style, or range of styles, associated with popularity across genres. One example of thinking about the industry popular at this level is television scholar John Caldwell‟s claim that in the 1980s television producers began to understand their medium through a new framework, one which he calls “televisuality.” Caldwell argues that with the rise of cable, the introduction of new digital technologies, and other broad cultural changes starting in the 1980s, mainstream U.S. television producers moved “from a framework that approached primarily as a form of word-based rhetoric and transmission” to “a visually based mythology, framework, and aesthetic based on extreme self- consciousness of style.”11

The industry popular can also describe the industry‟s common sense about what kind of aesthetic elements programming must have to achieve popularity within a genre. In this study, my focus is on the industry popular within the genre of cable news. Through examining the industry popular that has developed during the cable news wars, I will show how this competition has led to certain ways of talking about and thinking about how news can be made popular. Following John Caldwell‟s call for media scholars to explore television‟s “culture of production,” I suggest the culture of production that has been giving shape to the industry popular for cable news includes media critics, media reporters, and trade journalists as well as cable news executives and producers.12 All of these voices have contributed to a common sense about what makes for popular cable news. Just as the industry popular for entertainment

11 John Caldwell, Televisuality: Style, Crisis, and Authority in American Television (New Brunswick N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1995), 4. 12 My uptake of Caldwell‟s concept of the “culture of production” shifts the focus from his ethnographic attention to all levels of production workers to a focus on the discourse on cable news that includes voices coming from not only workers but other participants identifying with industry perspectives, such as media critics and trade journalists. John Caldwell, “Convergence Television: Aggregating Form and Repurposing Content in the Culture of Conglomeration,” in Television After TV, by Lynn Spigel and Jan Olsson (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2002), 42. television recognizes that many different genres and styles of programming can be popular with audiences, the industry popular for cable news now embraces a range of styles and strategies for popularizing news.

The industry popular reflects what members of the news production community in institutions conceive of as forms of news storytelling, promotional strategies, and audience segmenting and targeting strategies that will prove most popular and most profitable. Obviously, what is believed to be most profitable to companies may differ from what is believed to be most popular among audiences.13 Yet this tension tends to be denied or ignored in the discourses of news production. Hence, the industry popular speaks of the type of programming believed to be most profitable in the name of the popular, eliding the difference between the profitability and popularity.

Constructing the Popular in Cable News.

CNN, the Birth of Cable News, and the Aesthetic of Liveness

For this study, I combine an analysis of cable news programming strategies with a discourse analysis focusing on how popular interest in cable news has been talked about by the production community. Tracking various scheduling and programming changes on cable news channels would not be very revealing in itself. My concern is not only to trace cable news programming strategies, but also to examine how discourses of the cable news industry relate

13 A rare example the of disjuncture between the popular and the profitable being recognized can be found in discussion about “the CNN problem.” On one hand, CNN has with low ratings when there is not any phenomenal (no disjuncture there). On the other hand, when there is breaking news and CNN‟s ratings surge this could still be a problem for advertisers because the breaking news might be grim or serious in way that sets a tone not conducive to advertising messages. In the latter scenario, there is clearly a disconnect between audience and advertising interests. See Sally Beatty, “Show Time: As Hard News Gets Harder, CNN Segues To Glossier Format --- It Offers Stars, Features, Lots Of Talk as Some Advertisers Shun the Gorier Coverage --- Threat From Fox and MSNBC,” Wall Street Journal, July 5, 2002. these programming strategies to popular desires. For this kind of analysis, I turn to an examination of discourse about popularity and news from 1996 to 2008 in trade journals, interviews with news executives, autobiographical writing of cable news workers, and the work of prominent media critics and reporters. All these texts illuminate what common sense understandings about audience desires and tastes prevail within the culture of news production.

Trade journals and media journalism can reveal just as much as news worker interviews about the common sense regarding audience desires and popularity accepted by production culture. I take these texts to be indicative of the general range of formulations, circulating among news production decision-makers and their colleagues, about what strategies can be used to make news appealing to audiences. Hence, unlike ethnography focusing on specific media organizations and their attempts to cultivate unique styles and identities for their programs, this type of discourse analysis shines light on the general beliefs about the range of style choices seen as viable options among production culture at large. My approach follows from Kress‟s description of the functioning of discourse:

That is, in relation to certain areas of social life that are of a particular significance to a

social institution, [discourse] will produce a set of statements about that area that will

define, delimit, and circumscribe what it is possible to say with respect to it, and how it is

to be talked about.14

I want to emphasize that, perhaps unlike some discourse theorists, I do not suggest that discourses only have a one-way relation to material realities. In no way do I deny that ratings, for instance, have a force of their own. Nor do I want to deemphasize the economic conditions that shape the context in which the industry popular is formed. It is simply that the impact of

14 Gunter Kress, “Ideological Structures in Discourse,” in Handbook of Discourse Analysis: Discourse Analysis in Society ed. T.A. Van Dijk (London: Academic Press, 1985), 28. ratings, profits or losses, letters from viewers, and every other form of feedback that producers encounter about the reception of their programs take on their meanings and impact only as their significance is interpreted by producers.

In reading trade journals, articles in newspapers, and participant accounts concerning the cable news wars, I saw four themes emerge as the key elements for popularizing cable news: creating anchor star power, infusing opinion or attitude into news, pursuing niche demographics, and popularizing content or visual style. I discuss these themes below, though it is worth qualifying this discussion by noting: Many of these themes are interrelated. These are the most prominent but certainly not the only themes, and there is significant variance in the degree to which each of these themes appears to be a unique product of the cable news wars (as opposed to having begun to develop during the reign of the dominance of network news).

In analyzing the literature, I looked both for instances in which news producers or media journalists endorsed specific strategies as likely to be successful at popularizing news as well as instances in which media reporters framed the discussion of popularization around these elements without explicitly endorsing them.

Anchor Star Power

Since the early days of broadcast news, anchors and star reporters have achieved a celebrity status. In his history of American television news, Steve Barkin argues the celebrity status of anchors and reporters grew as television newsrooms became more profitable.15

Emphasis on promoting the star quality of anchors has been particularly important in the cable news arena. We can see the importance attributed to anchors by the cable networks‟ willingness

15 Steve Barkin, American Television News: The Media Marketplace and the Public Interest (Armonk N.Y.: M.E. Sharpe, 2003), 16. to sign multi-million dollar celebrity anchor contracts, the money and energy the channels have invested in promoting the recognition and branding of their stars, and the way in which star power has figured into the discourse on the cable news wars as a key element of competitive struggle.16

One of the first moves made by MSNBC and Fox News to break into the cable news markets was to hire well-known anchors. MSNBC was initially expected to be the more powerful of the two challengers to CNN because it had some of the star power of the NBC

Nightly News staff at its command.17 Walter Goodman, a TV critic for , voiced his skepticism about MSNBC‟s promotional claim that “The Revolution Begins Here” by suggesting that it was news stars and not an innovative news style that MSNBC was promoting on cable. Noting MSNBC‟s emphatic investment in its stars, he wrote that MSNBC “is depending on star power to crush CNN. The stars naturally come out at night, but they were promoted incessantly all day every day through the week; it was an NBC News iconography.”18

Fox New also quickly entered the star search game. One of their first major acquisitions of a well-known on-camera personality was , who had been

16 For just a few examples of the scores of articles that frame star power as a key element of the cable news competition see: Bill Carter, “Bitterness and Posturing As Rivalries Resurface In Fight for Cable News,” New York Times, June 3, 1996. Sean Callahan, “Fox Hounds Rivals into a Star Search,” Advertising Age 73, no. 23 (June 10, 2002): S-4-14, Mike Tierney, “Ads Accent CNN Stars' Lighter Side,” The Journal - Constitution, November 16, 2004, , “Fresh Face on Cable, Sharp Rise in Ratings,” The New York Times, October 21, 2008, sec. Arts / Television. Ned Martel, “Outfoxing Fox -- take 6; Besieged on All Sides, the Latest Leader at CNN Pursues the Thorny Task of Crossing Hard News Coverage with Star Power,” Times, March 6, 2005. Stuart Elliott, “As Television News Enters the Post-Lewinsky Era, Fox Pushes a 'Powerful Prime Time' Campaign,” New York Times, March 8, 1999. Also, Fox News President makes this point, saying “Yes, well, crisis drives news. When there's no crisis, then it's up to a star to bring people in.” Quoted in Steve Donohue, “With Allies at Helm, FNC Ascends,” Multichannel News 22 (, 2001): 8.

17 Collins 70.

18 Goodman, Walter. “New and Familiar Faces In News Channel Debut.” New York Times, July 23, 1996. C.18. for ABC. Media reporters across the country saw Hume‟s acquisition by Fox as a boost to its brand recognition and as a newsworthy event in itself.19

Throughout the cable news wars, one of the major tactics for gaining ratings employed by all sides has been to leverage anchor star power. Competition over star anchors led to one of the most aggressive moments in the cable news wars when CNN hired away from the

Fox News channel. The nabbing of one of Fox‟s young anchors led to bitter recriminations from

Fox, including a lawsuit Fox filed against Zahn for breach of contract that was quickly dismissed by a judge. Roger Ailes, the former Republican campaigner and president of Fox News Channel since its inception, challenged the influence of Zahn‟s star power in a statement echoed throughout the world of media reporting, telling a New York Times reporter that in lieu of Zahn,

“I could have put a dead raccoon on the air this year and gotten a better rating than last year. All our shows are up.”20 Soon Ailes executed his revenge against CNN by hiring away one of its own stars, . Van Susteren‟s departure from CNN created even more publicity for Fox as she publicly talked about corporate mismanagement at CNN and appeared on the cover of People magazine after undergoing cosmetic surgery.21

In addition to hiring ready-made stars, the cable news channels have invested considerable resources in building and transforming their existing on-air personalities. Several of these in-house promotions have yielded successful results. CNN management gave more airtime and encouragement to Lou Dobbs as he transformed himself from their Moneyline business reporter to the anti-immigration and nationalistic populist who now hosts the nightly

19 For examples of coverage, see: , “ABC's Brit Hume turns to Fox.” Globe, December 11, 1996. John Carmody, “Hume Moves to Fox.” Times, December 11, 1996. 20 Quoted Collins 181. See also Carter, Bill. “Fox Loses Round in Its Suit Over Anchor's Move to CNN.” New York Times, May 1, 2003. C.6.

21Verne Gay. “A Foxy Move/ Greta Van Susteren's Departure from CNN has Left Her Former Employer Nervous,” Newsday, June 29, 2003. D.12. primetime show .22 MSNBC supported the transformation of Keith

Olbermann from a somewhat quirky and charismatic sportscaster-turned-news anchor to the

Murrow-conjuring critic of the Bush administration and host of the network‟s top rated program to date.23

The cable networks also promote anchors‟ star power through advertisements that accentuate personality factors that are supposed to draw viewers. To counter the image of itself as a stuffy news network, on the heels of the 2004 election ratings boost CNN ran a series of ads trying to draw out the humorous side of its most well-known personalities including Christiane

Amanpour, Wolf Blitzer, Anderson Cooper, Paula Zahn, Dr. , and Lou Dobbs.24 A minor controversy broke out when a CNN advertisement for Paula Zahn‟s American Mornings suggested that Zahn was provocative, smart and “oh yeah, just a little sexy” with an accompanying sound that many believed was a zipper. CNN denied the sound was a zipper and pulled the commercial off the air after a day.25

Cable news insiders understand the star power of cable news anchors and reporters as having more than just the ability to increase the networks‟ ratings while the star is on air. Stars may also help promote other programs through passing viewers off to an adjacent program or through one star grooming another. made regular appearances on MSNBC‟s

Countdown with Keith Olbermann before she was given her own show airing right after

Olbermann‟s. Maddow‟s show started with exceptionally high ratings, and media journalists and

22 Ken Auletta, “Mad as Hell,” New Yorker, December 4, 2006, 66-73.

23 Peter J. Boyer, “One Angry Man,” New Yorker, June 23, 2008, 28-34.

24 Mike Tierney. “Ads Accent CNN stars' lighter side.” The Atlanta Journal - Constitution, November 16, 2004. 25 Lisa de Moraes, “CNN Caught In 'Zipper' Ad For Paula Zahn.” , January 8, 2002. C.1. MSNBC personnel attributed at least part of her success to her association with Olbermann.26

More important than providing a boost to adjacent programming, however, stars are essential assets to the overall brand identity of networks in the imagination of the industry popular.27 The frequency with which stars have been traded among the different channels indicates that the value of stars for cable news brands may not only be how the star‟s unique image adds to the brand‟s image. Certain stars also seem to carry a general quality of esteem that is transferable among brands.

Espousing Opinion and Attitude

One element of the cable news industry popular is the idea that viewers are more interested in opinion-injected commentary than straight news reporting.28 Conveniently for cable news producers, opinion-driven talk programming tends to be much less expensive than news reporting, especially news reporting that requires field operators and scattered news bureaus.

Certainly a taste for opinionated journalism is nothing new. Journalism historians have established that journalism at the time of the American Revolution did not separate factual reporting from editorial opinion. U.S. journalism has seen waves of movements pushing against a “just the facts” descriptive style of reporting from the call for “interpretative journalism” in the

26 Matea Gold, “MSNBC's New Liberal Spark Plug; Rachel Maddow, Political Junkie and TV Rookie, Launches to Surprising Ratings,” , September 29, 2008. Brian Stelter, “Fresh Face On Cable, Sharp Rise In Ratings,” New York Times, October 21, 2008.

27 Many writers take this as a tacit assumption, but for an explicit endorsement of this connection see Rob Owen, “News Teams Establishing Brands,” Cincinnati Post, May 26, 2003.

28 Jim Rutenberg, “In an About-Face, CNN Turns to News Talk Shows to Polish Its Ratings,” New York Times, January 1, 2001. 1930s to the intensely subjective “new journalism” of the 1960s.29 Even after the professional ideal of objectivity became dominant, mediated versions of opinionated commentary survived in numerous venues from political magazines to alternative newspapers to talk shows. The new trend with opinionated journalism in cable news is that opinionated (and attitude-inflected) journalism is being positioned as a substitute for rather than supplement to a highly visible form of journalism – the nightly television news report. One of the reasons offered for this substitution is that cable stations no longer need to focus only on providing a summary of the day‟s breaking news events during the primetime hours. As Jonathan Klein, president of CNN

U.S., stated:

For too long, CNN was a place where, come primetime, we kept on doing the same thing

we've been doing all day. Keep giving you the . And that was fine when we

were the only game in town, now there's kind of another outlet for people to get their

headlines on demand, and it's no longer cable news. It's the Internet.30

Given the prevalence of this sense that viewers are no longer looking for just headlines during the primetime hour, it is not surprising that attention has turned towards other values cable stations can add to primetime news programming.

A range of programming formats in cable news channels are now competing with traditional styles of “objective” reporting. I will focus on primetime programming, which is the timeslot that the cable channels have invested in most heavily in terms of both promotion and production costs. Primetime cable news programming has also generated far more commentary than non prime-time programming. One new primetime format lies somewhere between a talk

29 Michael Schudson, Discovering the News: A Social History of American Newspapers (New York: Basic Books, 1978). 143-149, 187-188.

30 Ned Martel, “Outfoxing Fox -- take 6” Los Angeles Times, March 6, 2005. show and a news broadcast. This format includes host-driven shows like Fox‟s The O’Reilly

Factor, MSNBC‟s Countdown with Keith Olbermann and CNN‟s No Bias, No Bull with

Campbell Brown as well as debate-oriented programs such as Fox‟s Hannity and Colmes. These shows generally offer discussion of current events of the day and give special attention to any large breaking news stories of the day. This set of shows is different from Live or

CNN‟s early years of Crossfire. Programs from the previous generation of cable news talk shows were not often tied to breaking events of the day, and hence not positioned as alternatives to traditional news broadcasts.

Cable stations have also been replacing traditional news broadcasts with daily news broadcasts similar in format to the traditional news but with an emphasis on reporters and anchors displaying personality and attitude. , known for delivering “news with attitude” as the host of Fox‟s signature news program , was one of the pioneers of this style.31 Critics and insiders have understood the success of Smith‟s show, which has frequently been the top rated cable news show of its time slot, as having to do with his infusion of attitude into his “the kinetic, slickly produced program.”32 Like many in the cable news business, Smith brought prior experience from work in the more clearly tabloid side of the industry as a reporter for A Current Affair.

Perhaps the most emblematic figure of the new cable news reporter is CNN‟s Anderson

Cooper. While Cooper‟s programs have not proved to have the ratings draw of Bill O‟Reilly or recently Keith Olbermann, probably no other cable news figure has received as much consistent

31 Peter Johnson “Will Fox News' Success Force Competitors to Take Sides? Experts Predict More Partisan Cable News,” USA Today, November 22, 2004. Elizabeth Jensen, “An Anchorman with Attitude: Fox News Channel's Shepard Smith Hasn't Let an On-air Gaffe Put a Dent in his Career Arc.” Los Angeles Times, December 13, 2002.

32 Matea Gold, “At Fox News, He's the Man in the Middle: Shepard Smith Stands Out at the Network with his Fast- paced, Fact-based „Report‟,” Los Angeles Times, October 8, 2006. praise as Cooper among media critics and his employers. The image that has been fashioned for

Cooper is one that combines the elements of both the traditional reporter and an expressive personality style gaining popularity on cable news. On one hand, Cooper is a dogged correspondent dedicated to pursuing his stories even in the face of danger. He is well-known for his on-the-ground reporting in war and disaster zones. On the other hand, Cooper‟s emotional sensitivity and willingness to break the pose of objectivity is what media critics and CNN producers have said set him apart.

Cooper began to make a name for himself in reporting by sneaking into Burma, ,

Somalia and other conflict zones with a forged press pass to shoot his own freelance .33

Yet just before coming to CNN in 2001, he found himself on the entertainment end of the television spectrum, serving as host for two seasons of ABC‟s reality show “The Mole.”

Cooper‟s most notable CNN breakthrough came during . In New Orleans shortly after the catastrophe, Cooper was shown nearly in tears during moments of his coverage, and he became one of the first national reporters to aggressively question major politicians about their apparent satisfaction with the government response to the calamity. Shortly after his

Katrina coverage, CNN expanded Cooper‟s prime-time role. Jonathan Klein, then president of

CNN/U.S., said in a New York Times interview, “He is the anchorperson of the future.” Klein stressed that Cooper is “all human. He's not putting it on.” Klein called him “an anti-anchor person.”34

33 David S Hirschmann, “The Suddenly Ubiquitous CNN personality on Burma, Anchoring, and the Perils of Celebrity Jeopardy!” interview posted Mediabistro May 11, 2004, http://www.mediabistro.com/articles/cache/a1582.asp (accessed December 6, 2008).

34 Elizabeth Jensen, “An Anchor Who Reports Disaster News With a Heart on His Sleeve,” The New York Times, September 12, 2005, sec. Arts / Television. Because CNN is the cable news channel that has most consistently highlighted its commitment to preserving traditional news values, has invested by far the most in its news coverage budget, and remains the recognized leader of “quality” cable news coverage, CNN‟s programming may be the best indicator of cable producers‟ changing attitudes towards traditional news styles. CNN‟s 2007 decision to replace Paula Zahn, the highly prized anchor the network had nabbed from Fox years earlier, with its new rising star Campbell Brown is another sign of how production culture believes audiences prefer opinion and attitude over

“straight” news delivery. After the decision was announced, Zahn told the New York Times‟s

Jacques Steinberg, “We worked so hard to maintain a high quality of objective reporting on the air. Yet what has become clear when you look at the landscape, particularly in the 8 o'clock hour, it seems pretty obvious the audience is drawn to opinion-driven shows. That is not what I do.”35 While Steinberg stated that the decision to replace Zahn “was ultimately a function of ratings,” her show‟s ratings had actually been rising. However, they had not been rising fast enough in comparison to her competitors at Fox and MSNBC for that hour. What Steinberg‟s article obscures is the point that it was not the Nielson ratings themselves that made the firing decision. The numbers spoke something meaningful only to producers ready with an interpretative schema in mind, one contrasting “straight news” to “opinion-driven talk” as the key to understanding audience preferences.

Pursuing Niche Demographics

An idea pervading the media industry today is that the era of broadcasting has given way to one of narrowcasting. Narrowcasting refers to the practice of targeting distinct demographic, or perhaps „psychographic,‟ groups. Rather than trying to capture the wide net of what used to

35 Jacques Steinberg, “Paula Zahn to Leave CNN, Replaced by Campbell Brown,” New York Times, July 25, 2007. be known as the mass or popular audience, narrowcasting targets finely gridded niche audiences.

The current state and significance of narrowcasting remains in debate within academic television studies, but some scholars have argued that we have entered into a “post-network era” in which narrowcasting has already become the dominant television paradigm.36 Are the cable news wars best understood within this framework?

Cable news channels have at times clearly embraced strategies towards targeting particular age groups and, more controversially, each station has to some degree targeted certain partisan or ideological affiliations. However, most of the targeting has seemingly been part of a larger strategy of building coalitional audiences rather than branding stations as targeted only for exclusive identities. Cable news channels remain unwilling to identify their point of view with a particularized perspective. Another way of saying this is that within the discourses of the industry popular, as of 2008, niche targeting seemed to be understood more as one tactic for popularizing the news rather than as a fundamental strategy at the basis of each station.37 That said, the competition among CNN, MSNBC and Fox News has led each cable network to attempt to cultivate a more unique brand identity and product than broadcast news divisions ever have. In the high modern period of broadcast news, the networks largely tried to compete against each other in reference to a more or less similar standard of quality. This is not so for cable news. Still, the product differentiation spurred by the cable news wars has not meant that each channel has been pursuing wholly distinct audience demographics.

36 For one example of this argument see, Amanda D Lotz, The Television Will Be Revolutionized (New York: New York University Press, 2007).

37 It could be argued that television news has long targeted the middle and upper middle class, particularly the upper-middle class white male. This is probably even more true of cable news than broadcast news, but perhaps in part because of the assumed neutrality of this subject position, production discourse surrounding cable news has not explicitly raised awareness of this subject as recognized niche target. Part of the rhetoric of both Fox News and MSNBC near the time of their launches was that they aspired to appeal to younger viewers than CNN.38 MSNBC in particular sought to capture the attention of younger viewers through quickening the pace of the newscast, staging more dramatic visual displays, and even creating a set that had the appearance of a - style cafe.39 Many of each networks‟ experiments with visual styles, technological convergence, and hiring younger stars have been understood as efforts to build greater numbers of younger viewers.40 Cable news producers, as well as trade journal writers and media reporters, have been particularly concerned with each networks‟ ratings in “the demo,” the 25-54 age range.

However, the actual audience of cable news channels tilts heavily towards older viewers. Even for MSNBC‟s Countdown with Keith Olbermann, which recently celebrated a victory over CNN and Fox in “the demo,” the median viewer age is 59 according to MSNBC‟s own research.41

Cable stations seem reluctant to pursue younger viewers at the expense of older ones.42 For while “the demo” represents the most generally prized advertising demographic, cable news stations have also profited greatly from advertisers who want to reach older and wealthier viewers who are hard to reach through other outlets.43 One notable, though not entirely unusual, example of this advertising strategy was George W. Bush‟s reelection campaign in 2004, which

38 Greg Braxton, “News With Attitude on 'Fox Files': In a Crowded Field, the Newsmagazine Targets Younger Viewers with Quick Editing, Music and Slow-motion Footage.,” Los Angeles Times, December 3, 1998.

39 Collins 131, , “Is Fox's News Channel Cable-Ready?” The Washington Post, October 14, 1996.

40 David Bauder, “Networks woo youth with popular anchors,” Tribune, , 2003.

41 Bill Carter, “MSNBC's Star Carves Anti-Fox Niche,” New York Times, July 11, 2006.

42 For an example of a discussion of this dilemma, see Jim Rutenberg, “CNN Aims at Young Viewers As It Revamps News Format,” New York Times, August 5, 2001.

43 John M. Higgins, “D'Alba Keeps Fighting for CNN,” Broadcasting & Cable 135 (October 17, 2005): 40. bought hundreds of spots on all cable news channels (along with a strong investment in Golf

Channel advertisements) in efforts to reach older and affluent viewers.44

A much more controversial strategy is the pursuit of viewers supporting a particular party or ideology. Fox News, of course, has been widely seen as a Republican or right-wing news network. Fox News‟ startling ratings success, consistently overtaking CNN in terms of the average number of viewers since January of 2002, made other networks and critics search for the key to popularizing cable news in the strategies that prompted Fox‟s soaring ratings.45 Critics gave different reasons for Fox‟s success, including its more opinionated and attitude-infused style of news delivery and certain elements of tabloidization associated with the network, but the right-wing partisan bent of Fox News came to the forefront in most of these discussions.

At least the initial understanding of Fox‟s ratings victory among the producers and critics was not that it was simply a matter of Fox targeting any ideological niche. The assumption was that specifically targeting a right-wing niche had led to Fox‟s success. There might have been many reasons for believing that targeting a liberal or left niche would not succeed in the same way. The argument coming from many leaders at Fox was that liberals already controlled most of the news media. Alternatively, one could argue that liberals would be more open-minded and less drawn to programming presenting a narrow range of opinion. Further, liberal perspectives, and especially left perspectives, could be too likely to clash with advertisers‟ interests or generate flak from the powerful right-wing institutions, as appears to have been the experience of

44 Joe Flint, “Bush Cable Ads Aim to Solidify 'Partisan' Vote,” Wall Street Journal, August 26, 2004.

45 Jane L.Levere, “The Fox News Channel Tops CNN's audience, and Casts its Eyes toward its Advertising Rates,” New York Times, January 30, 2002. Ken Auletta, “ Fox; How Roger Ailes and Fox News are Changing Cable News,” , May 23, 2003. Peter Johnson, “Will Fox News' Success Force Competitors to Take Sides? Experts Predict More Partisan Cable News,” USA Today, November 22, 2004. Richard Linnett, “Fox Trumpets Victory Over CNN,” Advertising Age 74 (July 14, 2003): 8. the liberal talk network, Air .46 Probably the most important reason though for seeing success specifically in pursuing right-wing niches was that right-wing talk programming had already proved to be commercially successful on radio. This not only meant a greater feeling of about the probability of right-leaning talk resonating with viewers and pleasing advertisers; it also meant that an audience for right-wing talk had already been gathered and mobilized. The rapidity with which Fox News ratings rose was probably due in part to its ability to tap into a pre-existing audience, aided by advertisements on stations. Fox News was also able to draw on the social capital of conservative institutions willing to promote the station and conservative politicians willing to grant exclusive interviews and endorsements.

During the first years of the Bush presidency, CNN and MSNBC tried to follow Fox

News‟s success by making their own attempts to target conservatives. In 2001 CNN tried to hire the most valuable player in all of talk radio, .47 Also in the summer of 2001, the new CNN News President sparked controversy by making a series of visits to conservative lawmakers to see what the network might be able to do to assuage conservative hostility about CNN‟s alleged liberal bias.48 In 2003 MSNBC went even further than Fox and created a show hosted by far right extremist whose raging attacks against women, the LGBT community, minorities and liberals had once been aimed at MSNBC itself.

Savage had referred to the network as “More Snotty Nonsense By Creeps” and degraded the anchor by calling her “the mind-slut with a big pair of glasses that they sent to

46 Maria Aspan, “Some Advertisers Shun Air America, a Lonely Voice From Talk Radio's Left,” New York Times, November 6, 2006.

47 Jim Rutenberg, “Seeking Sizzle at CNN,” New York Times, August 15, 2001.

48 Collins 169-170, Maureen Dowd, “CNN: Foxy or Outfoxed?” New York Times, August 15, 2001. Afghanistan.”49 Though MSNBC initially decided to air Savage despite large-scale protests from LGBT activists and other groups, Savage was fired a few months after his first show for calling an antagonistic caller a “sodomite” and telling him, “you should only get AIDS and die, you pig.”50

The cable networks have been much less aggressive in their attempts at niche targeting of liberal or progressive viewers. Fox and CNN largely tried to entice “liberal viewers” to their network through offering “liberal” voices in discussion formats such as CNN‟s Crossfire and

Fox‟s Hannity and Colmes or special news panels. Jeff Cohen, the founder of the left media watch organization Fairness and Accuracy In Reporting (FAIR), appeared on all three cable networks from 1987 through 2003. He believes that television news producers‟ preferences for right-leaning news talk guests originated before Fox. Since the early days of CNN‟s Crossfire and PBS‟s current affairs programming, Cohen argues the pattern of opinionated guests appearing on television news talk shows has always favored moderate and establishment liberals yet sought out flamboyant conservatives who identify as generally right of the Republican party.51 The timidity with which MSNBC experimented in 2002 with a program hosted by Phil

Donahue, who is generally considered a progressive liberal, illustrates this point starkly. As a senior producer for , Cohen wanted to pursue a liberal niche audience for the program, drawing up plans for an advertising campaign in progressive magazines, but MSNBC denied this marketing approach and demanded more celebrity stories and the inclusion of more pro-war than

49 Howard Kurtz, “Protest Letters To MSNBC Draw Savage Response,” The Washington Post, March 5, 2003.

50 Brian Lowry, “Savage Gets the Boot After On-air Anti-gay Outburst,” Los Angeles Times, July 8, 2003.

51 Jeff Cohen, Cable news Confidential: My Misadventures in Corporate Media (Sausalito CA: PoliPointPress, 2006). 22. anti-war voices during the build-up to the invasion.52 In 2003 Donahue was MSNBC‟s top- rated program, though still under-performing by comparison to programs on other cable news networks, and it was cancelled supposedly for its poor performance. Yet a blogger leaked an internal MSNBC memo suggesting other reasons for the show‟s cancelation; the memo stated that Dohahue presented “a difficult public face for NBC in a time of war.” The memo conveyed a worry that MSNBC could become “a home for liberal antiwar voices at a time that our competitors are waving the flag at every opportunity.”53

As the popularity of the Bush presidency plummeted towards a historic low, targeting liberals, Democrats or at least anti-Bush audiences began to appear as a more viable programming strategy. MSNBC has promoted a few shows led by hosts known for their liberal views–Keith Olbermann, Rachel Maddow, and a somewhat reconstructed .

Olbermann‟s show Countdown with Keith Olbermann led the charge when he gained attention for his sharp criticism of the Bush administration during his “Special Comment” in which he has denounced Bush and his cohorts in harsh terms. Olbermann has in some ways attempted to fashion himself as the anti-Bill O‟Reilly. He has consistently baited O‟Reilly with attacks, such as repeatedly nominating O‟Reilly for his “Worst Person in the World” segment, and O‟Reilly‟s counterpunches may have given a further boost to Olbermann‟s ratings.54

The ascendency of liberal voices on MSNBC as a counterbalance to the conservativism of Fox News (with CNN vying for a centrist or independent identity) has already led to speculation that cable news may be evolving into a reconstituted form of the partisan press. Yet

52 Ibid. 165.

53 Cohen 186, Tom Shales, “A Media Role in Selling ? No Question,” The Washington Post, April 25, 2007.

54 Bill Carter, “MSNBC's Star Carves Anti-Fox Niche,” New York Times, July 11, 2006. there is little evidence that partisan divisions among cable news channels will remain permanent or extend to a wide range of the political spectrum. During the 2008 presidential elections,

MSNBC removed Olbermann and Matthews from their roles as hosts on election night after widespread criticism that their role as opinionated talk show hosts and made them unacceptable as professional journalists hosting coverage of such major events.55 The recent step closer towards liberal and conservative cable news channels appears more clearly as a business strategy linked to a particular political situation. Unlike 2002 when the anti-war views occasionally expressed on Donahue would have found little support among Democratic elites, the current anti-Republican rhetoric heard on Olbermann‟s and Maddow‟s programs expresses sentiments that were also being voiced by powerful Democratic leaders. This is not to say that these programs only mimic the official word of the Democratic party; however, there is little sign that any of MSNBC‟s liberal programs focus attention on stories representing left or progressive concerns that are not being championed by political elites. Whereas FAIR has documented Fox

News‟s agenda-setting attempts to make news items out of stories coming from far right-wing media and conservative think tanks, MSNBC‟s liberal programs have not shown any inclination to pick up the type of stories found in the U.S. only in left magazines or on left news programs like Democracy Now!56

Another reason to cast doubt on the inevitability of the partisan of cable news is that all cable news stations vehemently profess non-partisanship. Fox President Rogers Ailes, and more recently MSNBC‟s , have both resoundingly denied right or left biases in

55 Brian Stelter, “MSNBC Takes Incendiary Hosts From Anchor Seat,” The New York Times, September 8, 2008, sec. Business / Media & Advertising, http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/08/business/media/08msnbc.html?ref=politics&pagewanted=print.

56 Seth Ackerman, “The Most Biased Name in News: Fox News Channels Extraordinary Right-wing Tilt” Extra (July/August 2001). the overall nature of their programming and particularly in their news reporting.57 To the critics of the Fox News Channel, its “Fair and Balanced” and “We Report, You Decide” may only appear at best as laughable ironies, or, at worst, authoritarian “lies” told by “lying liars.”58

Yet to whatever degree Fox News‟s actual programming deviates from the codes and routines of professional journalism, the very fact that its spokespeople are unwilling to cross a threshold and disavow journalistic balance speaks to current limits of producers‟ willingness to fully embrace partisan niche strategies. Furthermore, many of the cable news hosts who most flaunt their opinionated styles, including Bill O‟Reilly, Lou Dobbs, Chris Matthews and Campbell Brown, vociferously proclaim their independence from any political party or ideology.

Popularizing Visual Style and News Content

Media critics and cable news producers have thought one way forward in the ratings competition is for cable news to make use of more arresting visual displays and styles. Fox

News and MSNBC in particular led the way with experimenting with new graphic interfaces and jolting audio effects. Part of the philosophy of keeping viewers is simply that more sensual stimuli keeps attention. One innovation created to meet this need was the constant running across the bottom of the screen. News programs had experimented with crawls or tickers, streaming texts with news updates running across a portion of the screen, during times of crisis for many years before they became a regular feature of cable news. The big three cable stations all started making more regular use of tickers to cover non-emergency news as they

57 Auletta “Vox Fox.” Brain Stelter, “MSNBC Takes Incendiary Hosts From Anchor Seat,” The New York Times, September 8, 2008, sec. Business / Media & Advertising,

58 , Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them: A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right (New York: Dutton, 2003). transitioned out of crisis coverage of the September 11th attacks.59 The ticker itself became the subject of media accounts. While many media accounts differed in how they highlighted the potential for the ticker to yield information overload, all accounts framed the device as a mechanism for quickening the pace of incoming information or catching the attention of visually hungry viewers.60

In talking about efforts to popularize the content and visual style of cable news, industry discourses tend to borrow much of their vocabulary and concepts from other genres. In particular much of this discourse relays understandings about audience tastes derived from entertainment television and tabloid print journalism. Many articles about cable news pose the question as to whether cable news programs have become more like “tabloids.” Perhaps even more common are articles that report on channels needing to make the decision as to whether to pursue more tabloid-oriented programming in order to improve ratings. But what are the characteristics of “tabloid” news? While clearly the term “tabloid” suggests something about catering to a category of taste placed lower on a hierarchy of cultural capital than high-brow news, the term conflates numerous different elements that may or may not be linked together.

One tabloid-like strategy for popularizing cable news content is sensationalizing, or hyping, its presentation. Sensationalizing involves heightening the sense of urgency or importance of a topic through conveying a strong emotional or visceral reaction to it; the quality of that reaction can greatly vary from shock, to fear, to moral condemnation. Many types of

59 Robert Strauss, “Tough on the Old Ticker?; The constant crawl along the bottom of the screen on cable news channels keeps us up to date but may be information overload. What keeps the words rolling along?” Los Angeles Times, December 31, 2001.

60 Ken Kerschbaumer, “Cut the Clutter,” Broadcasting & Cable 134 (November 11, 2004): 22. Deborah Potter, “The TV Ticker Parade,” American Journalism Review 24 (2002). Allison Romano, “Ticker Embedded in News.,” Broadcasting & Cable 132 (July 29, 2002): 26. Robin Finn, “Writing Miniature Messages for a Maximum Medium,” New York Times, August 18, 2005. stories can be presented sensationally, including topics frequently associated with more “hard” news – such as a war or economic troubles – and those associated with “soft” news – such as kidnappings or celebrity scandals. There are similarities between this kind of presentation in cable news and the kind of sensationalism Michael Schudson says Joseph

Pulitzer brought to the New York newspaper world of the 1880s. In Schudson‟s analysis

“sensationalism meant self-advertisement,” and its techniques in the 1880s included more illustrations, boasting of circulation numbers and larger and more prominent headlines.61 For cable news, news stories are self-promoted through other devices such as attention-grabbing banners like “Countdown to War,” thumping music introducing a story, and the emotional expressiveness and language used by the on-screen personality conveying the story.

Another strategy associated with tabloidization is devoting coverage to stories believed to evoke popular interest but that do not coincide with professional news values privileging politics and public life. Such stories tend to focus on entertainment news, celebrity, and/or scandal. In the late 1990s, some representatives from MSNBC and Fox News offered justifications for focusing on more entertainment news and scandal as part of an effort to democratize news agenda setting. Eric Sorenson, then president of MSNBC, echoed this sentiment in a 2000 interview:

To an 18-year-old, news might be that 'Erin Brockovich' is No. 1 at the box office. News

might be that 'N Sync has the hottest album at Tower Records. News might be that there's

a cool new Web site that allows you as an Internet consumer to download an MP3 to your

hard drive. . . .When we're applying our decision-making apparatus to the flow of all the

61 Schudson 95.

news that's coming across the transom every day, we're thinking of it from a 25- to 54-

year-old point of view, and we don't make any bones about that.62

However, it is important to stress that cable news producers and critics see limits to the appeal of content focusing on entertainment and scandal. These are not merely ethical concerns, but also worries that audiences do not always value such content and that too much focus on tabloid content may degrade the brand, either by turning off advertisers or eroding audience loyalty in the long-term. Since Jonathan Klein became president of CNN/U.S. in 2004, the channel has refocused its energy on branding itself as a “hard news” station, even if that means delivering hard news with more emotion or attitude.63 In 2008 MSNBC rebranded itself as “The Place for

Politics” and a study by the Project for Excellence in Journalism found that in 2007 MSNBC had devoted twice as much time to traditional political topics as its rivals.64

62 Heyboer, Kelly. “Cable Clash,” American Journalism Review 22 (June 2000): 20.

63 Martel, “Outfoxing Fox -- take 6.” John Cook, “'Crossfire' Demise Another Attempt to Redefine CNN,” , January 9, 2005.

64 Project for Excellence in Journalism, “The State of the News Media 2008: TV, Audience” http://www.stateofthenewsmedia.org/2008/narrative_cabletv_audience.php?cat=2&media=7 (accessed December 02, 2008).