Covering Coverage

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Drudgereport says that David Gregory will replace Olbermann/Matthews as the MSNBC election coverage anchor.

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Olbermann really shouldn't be put in a position of news, but Matthews is great on election night. The dude will sit down at 2PM and carry on until 5 in the morning, comparing what's going on to obscure elections from the 1930s and so on. I remember two years ago I called him a fucking iron man.

 

I don't know how he does it, although I suspect there's a nasty pile of bottles sitting behind that desk.

 

Godfuckingdamnit.

I'll say. You're using IE?

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Olbermann's a bigger partisan hack than I am. Unless they can get him to tone down the rancor a bit, Gregory's a better choice (though he's as interesting as watching grass grow).

 

 

 

It seems like you forgot that Bush already bamboozled Americans into voting him to be president TWICE. Now that they have the pin up girl for the party I'm surprised they're not 10 points ahead.

 

People vote for the top of the ticket.

 

If its this close after the first debate, I'll admit it looks grim for my team.

[Guest דניא&#15]

Drudgereport says that David Gregory will replace Olbermann/Matthews as the MSNBC election coverage anchor.

That's a smart move insofar as it boots Olbermann, but I've never gotten the impression that David Gregory has more stage presence than a potted plant. As I said in Sports Coverage, of all places, the ideal choice for the driver's seat is Tom Brokaw, the most respected newsman at the network, or maybe Brian Williams, but maybe they just don't want to do that.

 

There's a time and place for Olbermann in the big picture of election coverage, but it's over at the rotating panel of idiots with Buchanan, Scarborough, Maddow, Gene Robinson, Matthews, and whoever else. They're analysts, you see. Countdown is a news analysis program, just like O'Reilly. Tom Brokaw is an anchor. The anchor throws it to the analysts, not the other way around. To use a sports analogy, appropriate for Olbermann, it's like making Vin Scully subordinate to Shannon Sharpe. Kudos to MSNBC for righting the wrong, but it's too little, too late, a reactive move after more and more people figured out "hey, you're starting to do the same bullshit that they are, and you're goddamn NBC with a standard to meet." Furthermore, this move is negated by jettisoning Dan Abrams, who was the least prone to partisanship and unchecked ranting of the MSNBC personalities, and replacing him with Rachel Maddow. This gives you a prime-time lineup of

 

6 p.m.: Chris Matthews

7 p.m.: Keith Olbermann

8 p.m.: Rachel Maddow

9 p.m.: repeat of Keith Olbermann from two hours ago

 

My concern isn't that it's biased, it's that it's crappy television. I think we should have a thread dedicated to news coverage, the same way that we have one for sports coverage. I take an interest in this aspect of the big race, much more than the nuts-and-bolts policy stuff or the "ground game." My only fear with the spinoff is that it would just turn into fact-checking. It made me laugh to present that as if it were a negative, I'll admit, but it's so fish-in-a-barrel. It's simply assumed at this point that Fox News is spewing bullshit. I want to know how they can get away with it. Any other channel that pulled those stunts would be dead in the water, but there's more to the presentation puzzle here.

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I would like to see the TV news thread.

 

In Olbermann's defense, it sounds like he was the one who initiated this change. Gregory will be terrible. Brokaw will be good but the idea there is probably that he can't anchor the full night's coverage. Williams can't because he has to do the regular NBC stuff.

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The old joke is that CNN is a channel with a website, and MSNBC is a website with a channel. They rely on a lot of Dateline-esque documentaries and stuff to fill up time, I'm not shocked their primetime is a bit weak.

 

But the fact is that all three of 24hr networks suck. MSNBC could help themselves by removing their executives from the Olbermann-O'Reilly bitchfest and recognizing what it looks like when two children go at it.

 

Olbermann's a bigger partisan hack than I am. Unless they can get him to tone down the rancor a bit, Gregory's a better choice (though he's as interesting as watching grass grow).

Keep in mind who else they have on there: Pat Buchanan (far right), Harold Ford (Clinton/DLC middling nonprogressive), and numerous McCain proxies.

 

The best thing they could do is limit Olbermann to his own show and let Maddow take his place as the left-wing personality at the table. Olbermann isn't the same if he isn't throwing papers into the camera and calling people names, anyway.

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Fox News will probably just rotate coverage based on whoever's timeslot they are in.

 

CNN will bore us with Bill Schneider's inside reporting, which usually just state the obvious.

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Maddow is already on the roundtable. She's Pat Buchanan's designated sparring partner. She, too, now has her own opinion show, because apparently the public was clamoring for more Rachel Maddow. I mean, there's so much to love about her.

 

I think Fox usually has Brit Hume as their coverage host. Could be worse. Could be Sean Hannity.

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I dunno about Maddow, but I'm definitely clamoring for more Michelle Bernard. Ten minutes at the end of Hardball's just not enough.

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Should've given Tucker's show back.

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I think Fox usually has Brit Hume as their coverage host. Could be worse. Could be Sean Hannity.

He's their Chris Matthews, and as much as the right loves him there are political connections to him. I mean, there is if you think Tim Russert is biased because he once worked on a campaign, as someone at the other board once told me.

 

Matthews/Olbermann is MSNBC's Hume/Kristol, but they won't be going anywhere.

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But the fact is that all three of 24hr networks suck. MSNBC could help themselves by removing their executives from the Olbermann-O'Reilly bitchfest and recognizing what it looks like when two children go at it.

 

That's the only reason to watch Olbermann, him going off on O'Reily is great. David Gregory is going to suck as he's just so boring. I just can't believe they gave Maddow her own show. She's fine for like 5 minutes but an hour? My god that is going to be annoying.

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But the fact is that all three of 24hr networks suck. MSNBC could help themselves by removing their executives from the Olbermann-O'Reilly bitchfest and recognizing what it looks like when two children go at it.

 

That's the only reason to watch Olbermann, him going off on O'Reily is great. David Gregory is going to suck as he's just so boring. I just can't believe they gave Maddow her own show. She's fine for like 5 minutes but an hour? My god that is going to be annoying.

Do some googling; the Internet is in love with this woman. All over, it's "FINALLY! A bright, witty, and BEAUTIFUL woman with a sparkling wit to complement Keith O! MSNBC made a great move." I think there's something weird about her neck.

 

I think Olbermann's war with O'Reilly is petty, spiteful, and undermines the high road he sporadically claims to take. I don't watch O'Reilly: how much time does Bill take to retort, if he does at all? I find the whole feud a bit silly.

 

I think Russert did a good job of calling it down the middle. Hume probably doesn't, but I can't tell because he directs that same half-asleep grumble to everyone. Olbermann is pretty transparent, screaming "THIS WAS A GRAND SLAM" over the post-Obama fireworks.

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If I'm not mistaken, which I probably am because there's quite a layer of static on my television screen (better check that coaxial cable), the new Rachel Maddow show uses Gotham as the typeface for its bottom-third graphics. From what I've seen, it feels like Olbermann Overtime. Exact same snark.

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Maddow is nifty when she's got someone to talk to, but the times she's filled in for Olbermann, she's kinda lame.

 

Maybe this new show'll let her stretch her Ph. D. wings and she won't seem like such a hack.

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That's kind of what I noticed. She keeps a good dialogue going, but her monologues are tiresome. Also, because of the Obama interview from Countdown, most of her first show consisted of...well, highlights from Keith Olbermann. My favorite charge is that somehow the Republicans are behind the programming changes there.

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Czech, what's with you and fonts? Are you a Communication Design major or something?

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Czech, what's with you and fonts? Are you a Communication Design major or something?

Hell no, son, you don't have to be that fancy.

 

You should see me when I ride subways, noticing all the different fonts that are just slightly different to one another. To some people passing by they look the same, but to me it looks like a jumbled mess. Toronto's is a mess, since you have Univers and Helvetica and something that isn't Helvetica and is totally shitty.

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Do some googling; the Internet is in love with this woman. All over, it's "FINALLY! A bright, witty, and BEAUTIFUL woman with a sparkling wit to complement Keith O! MSNBC made a great move."

 

Not necessarily related to the topic of this thread, but I have to say that I found the fawning over Maddow's looks in lefty blogworld to be a little unsettling. I mean, (a) she's okay looking (I guess) but I don't think any impartial observer would ever confuse her w/ a super model or whatever (and she herself would probably agree) and so the pounding insistence that she's the most stupendously gorgeous creature to ever grace cable news really came off as kind of weridly condescending. Like, "Oh Rachel you're so beautiful! Words can't bring you down, girlfriend!" and (b) Why do her looks even matter? Isn't constantly emphasizing the way a woman looks as one of her chief positive attributes exactly the sort of gendered/sexist/patriarchal/etc thinking that liberal progressives are supposed to be against? Like, if she's such a smart witty liberal why does it matter if she's attractive or not?

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Does the American media not understand the lipstick/pig saying or that it's been around forever?

 

Looks better in this thread.

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I watched Hardball today, and Chris Matthews actually spent most of the show calling bullshit on the lipstick attack.

 

Also, from the other thread (because it's such a good point)...

 

The problem here, as is almost always the case, is the media's insistence on focusing on these big campaign meta-narratives instead of on things like, I don't know, actual facts. And so you get shit like, "McCain is trying to position himself as a maverick who fights against the big-shots in his own party" but then instead of looking into that claim and seeing if it's actually true or not (hint: it's not) they bring in a couple Campaign Strategists or whatever to debate whether this tactic is going to "work" or not.

 

 

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Campbell Brown just tore the Republicans to pieces today on CNN over the "lipstick on a pig controversy". I'm really starting to like that woman.

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For a party that prides itself on being tough and straightforward, they sure like to scapegoat the media a lot.

 

"Waa...the press is picking on us...waaa..."

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Real Time with Bill Maher would be one of the best programs on HBO (better than Entourage, you queers) if they got rid of the audience. Though some of the panel dynamics are a little weird--it must be so humbling for John Fund to be shouted down by Janeane Garofalo as she peddles bullshit like "Democrats are fundamentally more decent humans"--the show would be so much more interesting without all the pandering to a partisan crowd. It's a confusing little program, because Maher wants to do serious interviews in the second segment and the panel segment, and his closing monologues, while humorous, can be pretty astute, but then you have those little go-nowhere field pieces and produced gags, and the one panelist every week who doesn't have a fucking clue but still gets applause for being famous and knowing the audience. (Bill's tendency to reliably find a seat for attractive black women has been noted elsewhere, and is being noted here for the sake of being noted, but its impact on the quality of the program is negligible.) This could be a very compelling show week-in-week-out. As it stands, sometimes it's great, and sometimes it's The Daily Show That Says Fuck.

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So I flipped around my cable.... CNN has Palin expose on, and Fox Newz has Palin: An American Woman

 

I became enraged at this for unexplored reasons

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This could be a very compelling show week-in-week-out. As it stands, sometimes it's great, and sometimes it's The Daily Show That Says Fuck.

I always thought that the Daily Show That Says Fuck was when it was at it's best, and at it's worst it sounds like the Berkeley College Radio Show That Says Fuck. Maher helps set the tone for that when he goes off on a tear about how people are stupid for buying things from chain corporations.

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So apparently "The View" is just too hard-hitting and inquisitive an interview for John McCain. I guess he can always do another spread for People Magazine.

 

Anyone think that a McCain administration would quickly reach Nixon levels of paranoia and avoidance of the "unfriendly media"?

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Looks like McCain's free ride from the press has finally come to an end, and he's not happy about it.

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So apparently "The View" is just too hard-hitting and inquisitive an interview for John McCain.

Cindy McCain: Tough interviewers 'picked our bones clean'

 

(CNN) –Cindy McCain, wife of Republican presidential nominee John McCain, criticized the media at a weekend fundraiser, telling supporters that the hosts of The View “picked our bones clean.”

That's the first time I've ever seen anyone say The View is a "tough interview."

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I can't take Olbermann seriously as a news pundit...I just remember his days at Sportscenter. He does a tremendous job on "Football Night In America" that he should stay there. O'Reilly's show is way better than Olbermann's by a mile, at least O'Reilly will clobber everyone equally.

 

Don't know if this belongs here or not, but how convenient that Oprah won't interview Palin on her show until after the election, when she had more than enough time for Obama.