As the legacy of the vacuum tubes and five tons of American-Scottish ingenuity no longer require two grown men to carry a television from the rear of a vehicle into the proverbial home of white picket fences and 1.5 children, an exploratory information gathering tool is near extinction.
And the legacy of Ted Turner is not to blame. At least not yet.
“Hanoi Jane” Fonda on the other hand is a different creature of habit and should be treated so in the wake of preventable malevolence and the decrying of fundamental freedoms and an unacceptable demise of capable individuals who fought for the dream that is Capitalism and along with it free will. Even in the Liberal haven deep blue sky waters of Seattle she was spat at during a book signing from a could have been fan lingering for the privilege of an autograph.
Cable TV news has been gradually phased out or is on the pathway to obscurity, especially the mecca of CNN as social media embracing groupthink and tribalism is how the global community responds to data stimulus of a populace gorging on the inane and addicted to profane. News directors and editors are trained in the style of Kabuki theater. The ratings have been historically paltry in the wake of the Presidential election and the aversion of younger people to advertising, who spend more cash in a day to avoid aggressive digital marketing than at a mundane behemoth of a coffee franchise unleashed and yet resolute over three decades of domination among consumers.
According to the Nielsen ratings, while Fox News remains steady among the 25-54 year old demographics, the rebranding of MSNNBC as MS Now experienced perceptible growth, CNN or the “Chinese/Communist News Network” continued on a downward spiral onset by cultural opioids and the fabrication and “breaking” broken coverage of what could loosely be defined as authentic news events. The future is Mao among dissidents.
With the prevalence of Artificial Intelligence as the flavor of the month, fact and reality has been clouded by agenda, corrupt data, and a lack of accountability among unfettered incredulous social media posts, which unfortunately at a surface level are believable to those who lack the skillset to effectively research and make reasonable conclusions.
Flipping the coin to land its edge, the recourse and reinvention for the future of broadcasting is spewing ignorance for the sake of futility and the gentle kiss of irreverence on the forehead of a loved one. Defeatism has never been more abundant in the abyss of chaos.