Koppel Talks TV News

If you're looking for Frank Rich's column this week, you ain't gonna find it here. And you won't find it anywhere else, either. After his piece last week, he's taken some time off to work on a book. But in his place this morning, The New York Times is offering Ted Koppel, recently retired from ABC News. Alas, Koppel has literally stepped into Rich's shoes, right down to being hidden behind the Times's subscription-fee wall. Fortunately for us and unfortunately for the Times, of course, that wall hasn't proven to be terribly effective, so as Frank Rich has been week in and week out, Koppel can be found for free. We're getting him this week from freepress.net--thanks to them for making him available.

Koppel doesn't really tell us anything we don't know, but it's nice to hear from an insider.

The accusation that television news has a political agenda misses the point. Right now, the main agenda is to give people what they want. It is not partisanship but profitability that shapes what you see.

Most particularly on cable news, a calculated subjectivity has, indeed, displaced the old-fashioned goal of conveying the news dispassionately. But that, too, has less to do with partisan politics than simple capitalism. Thus, one cable network experiments with the subjectivity of tender engagement: "I care and therefore you should care." Another opts for chest-thumping certitude: "I know and therefore you should care."

Even Fox News's product has less to do with ideology and more to do with changing business models. Fox has succeeded financially because it tapped into a deep, rich vein of unfulfilled yearning among conservative American television viewers, but it created programming to satisfy the market, not the other way around. CNN, meanwhile, finds itself largely outmaneuvered, unwilling to accept the label of liberal alternative, experimenting instead with a form of journalism that stresses empathy over detachment.

Athough the networks seem to be bleeding viewers and influence, Koppel points out that this view of the situtation might not be completely accurate.

What is, ultimately, most confusing about the behavior of the big three networks is why they ever allowed themselves to be drawn onto a battlefield that so favors their cable competitors. At almost any time, the audience of a single network news program on just one broadcast network is greater than the combined audiences of CNN, Fox and MSNBC.

Reaching across the entire spectrum of American television viewers is precisely the broadcast networks' greatest strength. By focusing only on key demographics, by choosing to ignore their total viewership, they have surrendered their greatest advantage.

Networks running scared is not exactly breaking news, but it's still interesting to note that, although network influence is waning, for the time being, anyway, it remains far more powerful than its cable competitors. If the nets would just try to regroup themselves and play to their own advantages, they could plot out their own future success rather than simply react to outside forces.