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FOX News really isn't news. It is opinion television. It clearly leans to the right - with the exception of Shepard Smith, who clearly is the token liberal (and who is definitely more worthy than Alan Colmes, who was so wimpy that he almost never stood up to Sean Hannity's bullying while he was there...). At night your bludgeoned with Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity, and Bill O'Reilly (& Geraldo Rivera disgracing himself even further by kissing Bill's a**) and their insanity against anything and everything liberal. (It makes me want to vomit!)

Then there's CNN ...which is so schizophrenic at this point that it's hard to pin them down. It's still opinion television. It's just muddled in the presentation and decorated with lots of fluff like Larry King Live. Wolf Blitzer, Jon King? Gimme a break! Anderson Cooper is sometimes worth watching...and I enjoy Jack Cafferty's comments, but I usually just can't stay with CNN very long and I feel like I'm missing something...

Their sister station, HLN (formerly known as Headline News) really fares about as well as FOX News with me. And if I see that ambulance chasing Nancy Grace one more time, I think I'm gonna scream! I really miss the days when Headline News had 48 half-hour newscasts a day....13 minutes of straight news (no opinion, just news), followed by Weather, Sports, and Entertainment News. I knew I could depend on that and about 10 years ago it all changed! I hate it now... and what's really frustrating is there are many hours I cannot find ANY real news ...at all... on ANY STATION!

(there's more....you knew there would be...sorry, tang. You've got me on a rant about the state of television news and the lack thereof...)

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(...rant continued...)

And then there's MSNBC, which I do watch more than any other news channel, but they are far from perfect, either... I must confess that I enjoy Morning Joe...much as I hate to admit it. Joe Scarborough is one of the few conservatives who makes sense to me. I disagree with him a lot, but he respects the guests from the left (of which, there are plenty on MSNBC). That old xenophobic Pat Buchanan also frequents the show and I must admit that I enjoy watching the old fart even though he is as crazy as a loon....

I didn't really start watching MSNBC until Rachel Maddow came on board. I would catch Keith Olbermann every once a while .....maybe I'd make fun of Rita Cosby or get frustrated with Chris Matthews.

Now MSNBC is more focused and more consistent in its content than ever before. Chris even stopped kissing up to right-wing nutballs..... And adding Ed Schultz was a stroke of populist genius!

But according to network president Phil Griffin , you'd think MSNBC fell into this liberal niche by accident. I really don't buy that, but I'm glad it happened. I'm glad they got rid of all that nighttime dead weight, but I have a hard time believing that everything that has happened since Rachel was brought on board was just a happy accident. This could be a case knowing the direction and keeping what works to get there... but this may be more calculated than Griffin let on...

Hell, I remember when MSNBC rivaled FOX News as the "Clinton Impeachment channel" and we were subjected to Ann Coulter and Laura Ingraham every day....and don't forget that goofy Tucker Carlson! ...so they have hardly always the liberal channel they tend to be now...

Now, having said all that....MSNBC still tends to opine too much. And much as I like Olbermann, he can be a little much at times...(man, he hates Rush Limbaugh and O'Reilly more than I do...and that's really sayin' somethin'!).

Which brings me back to why I started this rant in the first place, tang.... you will find that even most liberals oppose reinstating the Fairness Doctrine. Thom Hartmann has expressed on his radio show that media is simply too vast these days... the FD would never work today because media is too vast in 2009....with cable news and satellite radio and the internet, people are swamped with information and infotainment to sort though... One has to be aggressively weed though the clutter today and the Fairness Doctrine as it existed until it was killed in 1987 wouldn't change that.

Did I mention that I miss the old Headline News format?....

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