Category: Bad Idea

CNN+ FADES INTO HISTORY

Not that it was ever a bright light to begin with, but the last of CNN+ is out the door, as the company handed out pink slips to the remaining 20 staffers. Many, many ...

CANCEL IN HASTE, REPENT AT LEISURE

Did anyone really think through the cancellation of CNN’s “Reliable Sources” or was Chris Licht in such a hurry to please major Warner Discovery stockholder John Malone that he preferred to leave a gaping ...

LOG-ROLLING IN OUR TIME

Log-rolling: [from a former American custom of neighbors assisting one another in rolling logs into a pile for burning] : the exchanging of assistance or favors specifically : the trading of votes by legislators ...

WHAT ARE THEY THINKING?

“A well-functioning democracy depends on healthy and trusted public and private institutions; an economy that provides broad-based opportunity and prosperity; tolerance and respect for one another and our differences; and a vibrant civic life.” ...

CAN WE JUST STOP THIS?

We at NewsBlues have long contended that newsrooms, local, network and cable, would all serve their viewers better if the suits that run them end the practice of hiring politicians, past, present and future, ...

ANOTHER GRAY NEWSER PLAYS COVID ROULETTE

Gray Television’s corporate vaccination policy continues to claim victims. This time it is 18-year veteran Meggan Gray, the popular co-host of “Good Morning Mississippi” at WLOX in Biloxi, MS. http:// She really didn’t elaborate ...

PAY TO PLAY IN DES MOINES

Bucking the recent trend in launching “new” and “expanded” newscasts in order to cash in on the flood of political ad money in 2020, Nexstar’s WHO in Des Moines, IA will premiere “lifestyle” show ...

CONSOLIDATION TALES

Friday night, after 20 years in the anchor chair at KDLT in Sioux Falls, SD, Tom Hanson signed off for the last time. The anchor chair no longer exists with the consolidation of KDLT ...

A QUESTIONABLE CALL

What do you get when a billionaire media mogul decides to throw his hat in the presidential nomination ring and 34 billion dollars in ad money after it? You get a media company that ...

THIS WEEK’S DUMB IDEA…

For some reason, a number of media types out there, including MSNBC’s Mika Brzezinski have fallen in love with the idea that presidential wanna-be Michael Bloomberg is the perfect guy to buy Fox News ...

STILL ANOTHER BLOVIATOR

It was bound to happen sooner or later. Cable news’ addiction to talking heads has been flirting more and more with bottom feeding of late as it seeks to fill that 24/7 beast with ...

SOME DREAMS NEVER DIE

Frustrated in his efforts to change the impeachment narrative among the Beltway press corps, mainly because new whistleblowers keep turning up, Mr. Trump is once again dreaming a dream from 2016 – namely the ...

LINE?? THERE’S A LINE?

We can’t think of too many instances where a reporter, print or otherwise, inserts themselves into a story they’ve been covering. Until Kate Amara of Hearst’s WBAL in Baltimore earlier this month appeared to ...

A SHOWDOWN LOOMS

Today is D-D Day for AT&T’s DirecTV outlets and the Sinclair monolith. D-D meaning “Drop Dead” which is what could well happen to Sinclair’s 136 television stations on the AT&T’s dish. The two sides ...

REALLY????!!!

A NewsBlueser was rather appalled at what spilled out of the computer lately. We thought we’d share it with some brief observations. Is this considered a “best practice” use of “Facebook Live?” Scripps might ...

ANOTHER PAY TO PLAY COMES TO CHICAGO

“Lifestyle programming” is coming to NBC’s WMAQ in Chicago. “Chicago Today” will premiere September 6 and will be hosted by Cortney Hall, who signed off last week from Tribune-soon-to-be-Nexstar’s WGN, where she was the ...

SURPRISE, SURPRISE, SURPRISE (NOT)

It really was about the only high-profile recourse she had post-White House. Former White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders’ reward for a fairly consistent record of obfuscation and press-bashing/bullying is a job as ...

FAMILIAR GASBAG HIRED AT CNN

Talking heads are like potato chips to the execs at CNN. They never know when to say “enough, already.” So they’ve gone out and hired Terry McAuliffe, Democrat, Clinton operative and one-time Virginia governor ...

A BAD PRECEDENT

Increasingly, we find that we are being badly served by both political parties and cable news in the run up to the 2020 elections. Not that we weren’t the last time around, but the ...

NOT WITH A BANG, BUT A WHIMPER

WWOR might be licensed to Secaucus, NJ, but soon, any reminder that it once actually  operated out of a New Jersey facility will be erased. The building which once housed WWOR on Meadowlands Parkway ...

JUST WHAT WE NEED

If we haven’t made is clear enough already, we have a deep and abiding loathing of those cutely-named “lifestyle” programs that have become a pestilence on local television. Thinly-disguised as real information, they are ...

YES…BUT WHY?

Proof that persistence pays off. Ad man-turned TV gasbag Donny Deutsch has been hanging around 30 Rock, seemingly forever, as a regular source of noise on the “Morning Joe” panel on MSNBC. And now ...

WANTED: ONE NEWS DEPARTMENT

It’s not an opening but KJNB in Jonesboro, AR, and WJNB has eliminated the news director position at these stations owned by Waypoint Media. We’re told that news people will report to the GM ...