The Impenetrable Stupidity of CNN

John McCaslin writing in the Washington Times reports:

CNN has another new network president, its fifth in four years. Jonathan Klein's mission: take back the million-plus viewers CNN has lost to Fox News Channel in fewer than four years. Take ever-important prime-time numbers (7 to 11 p.m.), as examined by Nielsen Media Research -- CNN: 775,000 viewers (Anderson Cooper, Larry King, Paula Zahn, Aaron Brown); Fox: 2 million viewers (Shephard Smith, Sean Hannity & Alan Colmes, Bill O'Reilly).

Mr. Klein's assessment of his competition?

"They've tapped into an outrage that's lurking among a certain small segment of the population, mostly angry white men, and those men tend to be rabid," the new CNN chief tells Charlie Rose of PBS. "They tend to be habitual. They tend to like to have their points of view reinforced."

And CNN?

"And a, quote-unquote, 'progressive' or 'liberal' network probably couldn't reach the same sort of an audience, because liberals tend to like to sample a lot of opinions," Mr. Klein continues. "They pride themselves on that. And you know, they don't get too worked up about anything. And they're pretty morally relativistic. And so, you know, they allow for a lot of that stuff. You know, Fox is very appealing to people who like to get worked up over things."

"Rabid?" Hmmmm...

Klein's statements, in addition to being hopelessly outmoded [rooted in the discredited old Frankfurt School analysis of conservatism], betray an almost ludicrous left wing bias, and, frankly, a degree of bigotry. If he views the audience for cable news that way, he has no hope of attracting them. CNN will soon be looking for a replacement for him.

But there is an even deeper level of misunderstanding than left wing bigotry. CNN and other cable networks seem to think that their competition is FOX. It isn't. Their real competition is the broadcast networks. They are not going to draw an appreciable number of viewers from FOX. If they want to enlarge their audience they are going to have to draw viewers from ABC, CBS, NBC, and PBS. That's where they should be looking, not to FOX.

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