HOWARD KURTZ SAYS TROUBLED TIMES

HOWARD KURTZ SAYS TROUBLED TIMES FOR NETWORK NEWS:

The audience is shrinking — and graying — because of changing lifestyles and more media choices. Older folks who came of age in the pre-cable era are accustomed to tuning in for news at 6:30. Most younger people never acquired that habit, are still working at that hour or are just plain less interested in news, surveys show. A growing number get their information online, essentially becoming their own editors.

You got it, Howard. We’re sick of being talked down to, biased reporting, and/or simplification. In an era of a dozen different cable news, sports and financial channels, of hundreds of news and opinion Web sites, and Weblogs customized to a unlimited myriad of personal tastes, the big three networks’ evening news (and PBS’s as well) are done. As Ken Bode, a former NBC correspondent who teaches at Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism says in Kurtz’s article, “When Brokaw, Jennings and Rather retire, it is a perfect time for these corporations to decide their newscasts are no longer worth it.” He adds, “Unless something dramatic happens, inevitably, the network newscasts are gone.”

Wonder what Bernard Goldberg and Glenn Reynolds think of Kurtz’s article.