The death of cable news

I was clicking around the other day on cable TV and happened upon Jim Acosta of CNN.

Jim didn’t look as happy as he usually does, standing outside the White House, his whole tone and demeanor struck me as off. Then I realized why. There was no news coming from the man Acosta and so many others in the press pool clearly can’t stand. For the first time since he came down that escalator at Trump Tower, Donald Trump was quiet.

Not only wasn’t he sparring with the press, there was barely a tweet to dissect and overreact to.

I kept clicking my remote and up popped that kid from the movie “The Sixth Sense.” He was explaining to Bruce Willis that there were dead people walking around like regular people, only they didn’t know they were dead.

I of course immediately thought of Jim Acosta again and all those panels of super smart people on Fox, CNN and MSNBC who have made reacting to President Trump a cottage industry. Love him or hate him, Trump was the gift that kept on giving to cable TV news, the grist for their mill that churned out hours of endless bickering and outrage.

Think about it. Every time the president did something outrageous Fox could spend all day defending him. And the others filled their bland broadcasts with reporters, professors and former Obama staffers bashing him.

Each of the TOS’s lasted one news cycle. Oh, I’m sorry, TOS stands for “Trump Outrage Story.” So, the typical news day involved Jim Acosta waking up and seeing what Trump tweeted at 4 a.m. and then going on TV to feign surprise and outrage. It wouldn’t matter of what the president tweeted made no sense, or appeared to be sarcastic, they’d treat his words as scripture and read them literally, thus revving up the outrage machine.

I’m a journalist and I learned to ignore most of what I see on Twitter, including the president. Oh sure, I paid close attention for about the first year, until I realized whatever he said, he’d likely reverse himself before he had that quarter pounder with cheese for lunch.

I’m not defending the president, far from it. I thought his staff should have hidden his phone and kept him off Twitter these last four years, it certainly would have helped him. But he’s a grown man and here we are, Joe Biden coming in and Donald Trump looking for an exit where he can still save face.

But back to the media. Local news is thriving and I’m not just saying that because that’s how I make my living. We really are doing quite well and viewership on local TV stations is up all over. That’s a good thing because an informed public makes smarter decisions. It also helps that local TV stations (and this newspaper you’re reading) tend to just give you the news of the day that’s happening in your area, not idiots shouting at you from the TV set in your kitchen.

Nobody wants to stir spaghetti sauce with people talking over each other.

Cable news is another story entirely. Viewership for Tucker Carlson and Rachel Maddow and all the rest has been through the roof because of Donald Trump. Now, in less than two months, he’ll be gone and replaced by Joe Biden.

If there’s one thing we know about Joe, it’s that he’s not one to rock the boat or color outside the lines. Let me put it to you this way; you just lived through the Rolling Stones on tour complete with the trashing of the hotel room, get ready for four years of ‘Air Supply.’; Oh, come on, I know you remember them. Very soft rock, “I’m all out of love and I’m so lost without you” kind of music.

Cable news has been able to add jobs and shows filled with panels because of the fresh meat Trump threw them every day.

That’s over now. We have already seen from a Biden administration that we are going back to the days of limited access and press releases vs press conferences. Can you ever imagine Biden standing at the podium for more than an hour taking hits and questions from the media? Trust me it will never happened. That’s not a knock on Biden by the way. If I were advising him, I’d keep him insulated from the Jim Acostas’ of the world as much as possible.

I’ll make a prediction right now. Look for cable news viewership to be down by at least 30-percent by the summer of 2021, to be followed by layoffs not long after.