I liked Michael Calderone’s piece on the Sabbath gasbags, especially this:
The shows are particularly ripe targets for critics who see them as the epitome of insider Washington and conventional wisdom. James Wolcott, writing in Vanity Fair last year, for example, described watching the show that Stephanopoulos recently vacated to be “like receiving an engraved invitation to apoplexy.”
“With occasional exceptions, the Sunday shows come across as geriatric and insular, having long been eclipsed and upstaged by Jon Stewart, Stephen Colbert, Bill Maher, Fox News, MSNBC and much of the Web,” New York Times columnist Frank Rich, a frequent critic, said in an e-mail to POLITICO.
I always wonder if the reason that these shows have such old guests (McCain, Broder) is that they have such old audiences. But, honestly, I’m pretty sure my 89 year-old grandmother is sick of Cokie Roberts and David Broder by now. So that can’t be the whole explanation.
Yutsano
I work a less that traditional schedule that starts on Sunday at noon, so I end up waking up well after 10 am usually. Trying to fit the Sunday shows into my mornings ends up very low on my priority list. Plus Food Network has great gems on until I have to head to work, so why would I subject myself to that?
DonBelacquaDelPurgatorio
Duh. This must be fascinating for the six people in the world who still haven’t figured this out.
Linkmeister
Ted Koppel as a possible replacement for Snuffleupagus?
Actually, I might be interested in that (we get that show at 3:00pm out here) if they dumped the roundtable’s usual suspects and got some new ones. Koppel can still run rings around most other interviewers.
Chris
I think they’re just rubbing it in now: “Look who we’re putting on your teevee!”
moe99
Rinse, lather, repeat. See, that was easy.
asiangrrlMN
The institution is collapsing into itself, and the Villagers can only respond by clinging to their outdated beliefs even harder. I don’t watch the Sunday Morning Bobbleheads because it just seems like so much shit to me.
Jim
Don’t kid yourself. I’m too lazy to google right now, but I’d be willing to bet that the gasbag shows have a higher average audience than Stewart, Colbert, certainly Maher. And demographically, the old people who watch the old people are probably much more reliable voters, on average, than the typical cable viewers. My politically aware and liberal father was shocked to find out I was sending money to Ned Lamont (neither of us has ever set foot in CT), he thought Joe Lieberman was a decent guy. A fiftyish cousin, very liberal, told me during the ’08 campaign that she really missed Tim Russert being on TV.
Yutsano
@Linkmeister: That would be fantastic if they could get Koppel out of retirement. I can’t think he’s happy with the current state of journalism especially after the things he did as a journalist and anchor over the years. ell if he became a NYT columnist it might just salvage the Gray Lady.
Brachiator
Worse, even more geriatric syndicated pundit shows like the McLaughlin Group make the Sunday shows seem like Teen Pundits Gone Wild.
But they are all tiredly insular, even the PBS equivalent, Washington Week in Review. And the moderators and guests all blithely prattle on, not realizing or caring that time has passed them by.
Jim
and stale/male/pale isn’t the only problem
I can’t for the life of me imagine that Ifill would’ve been substantively different from Gregory. She’s a Villager to her bones.
freelancer (itouch)
To repost a comment of mine from earlier tonight:
that being said, it’s a damn shame Moyers is hanging it up this spring.
DonBelacquaDelPurgatorio
The Sunday shows are basically a way for tv networks to pretend to meet their public service responsibility.
morzer
The horrifying thing is that 11 million people can bear to watch this dreck. Mind you, that number and the total number of teabaggers does seem to correlate quite well, so perhaps there’s no real surprise in any of this. It’s the classic moron circle: morons watch morons watching morons.
Calvin Jones and the 13th Apostle
On an average Sunday fewer than 11 million Americans watch the network political programs. In a nation of 300 million people, the combined audience watching the Sunday morning programs is statistically insignificant.
I am shocked it’s that many. The only time I’ve watched any of them for longer than five minutes(if K-Thug is on) was when Kos faced off against Harold Ford, Jr., a few years ago on MTP. The reason I remember that is because David Gregory was guest hosting because Russert was too busy at Martha’s Vineyard.
DonBelacquaDelPurgatorio
@Jim:
Ifil is smart and well informed, and articulate. She might be the nicest person on television.
But she is boring to the point of tears.
freelancer (itouch)
@DonBelacquaDelPurgatorio:
Sure did a yeoman’s job moderating the Palin/Biden debate
/phhhhhhhhttfhhh! [snort]
DonBelacquaDelPurgatorio
I love this graph.
jcricket
I think of these shows as the TV equivalent of people against gay marriage. Right now they represent the “majority”, but as soon as they die, their views will fast be eclipsed by people who think totally differently. And I bet you the change will feel more sudden than we expect.
I don’t know exactly what’s going to “replace” the MSM (probably no “one” thing) – but these ancient windbags can go extinct – their ecological niche no longer needs filling.
Sly
I’m pretty sure the purpose of MTP under Russert (who’s tenure spanned nearly two decades) was to generate political buzz for Monday morning papers, and the other shows basically followed along. Prior to that Sunday shows were set up as informal press conferences with journalists asking questions instead of one on one interviews.
MTP then switched to having party flaks provide a semblance of actual debate and controversy. If you can find clips of the show when it was hosted by Martha Rountree or Ned Brooks, the damn thing was actually informative. And that was really its purpose, more or less. Not to generate buzz for political reporters.
Problem is this is the same format that every other show has adopted, and the Monday morning papers aren’t as prominent as they were in the 80s and early 90s. For instance, I doubt a Full Ginsberg would be nearly as noticeable today as it was in 1998. So the audience shows like MTP became dependent upon for its status is basically disappearing.
Jim
The unholy alliance of Russert and the Matalin-Carville Borg. Wasn’t it cute? And then Tim and Jimmy would trade some macho-talk about sports, ’cause they were just a coupla regular guys!
Mike Kay
A youtube viral clip has far more impact than the Sabbath shows.
Think about how Palin’s disastrous interview with Katie Couric lit up the intertubes or Colbert at the WH press diner.
Anne Laurie
@Yutsano:
The most significant of which may have been pulling the “What if your wife was raped and murdered?…. You just don’t GET it, do you, Governor Dukakis?” stunt that did so much to help Bush-the-Not-Quite-So-Lesser take the 1988 election. Koppel was so godsdamned pleased with himself for “exposing” Dukakis, as he never ceased to describe that Colbert-worthy episode. For all his current back-of-hand-to-forehead sniffiness about the gotcha media, Koppel was one of the founding practitioners of its modern incarnation, and I will neither forget nor forgive. Anybody who describes Henry Kissinger as “a great man” is by definition untrustworthy.
Mike Kay
Ted Koppel is only 70.
He’s far too young to for the Sabbath shows.
But then again, maybe the crypt keeper is already booked.
freelancer (itouch)
@Mike Kay:
Don’t hold your breath. Which show is McCain on next week?
Chuck Butcher
I can’t think of why people are impressed with Koppel, Annie’s example is one of many.
Joe Max
Koppel almost single-handedly established the standard of pants-pissing, terror-monger, yellow “journalism” that has continued to the present day, with his year-and-a-half long “America Held Hostage”™ TV show that morphed into “Nightline” once it had no further reason to exist, after helping make Ronald Reagan the president.
Fuck Koppel.
ds
11 million is huge.
The cable network freakshow gets only a slight fraction of that.
The Sunday shows are a creaky old machine, no doubt, but I wouldn’t question their power.
Who won the Republican nomination last time around? They might as well have nominated Tim Russert himself.
DonBelacquaDelPurgatorio
Meet The Press NBC 3,080,000
Face The Nation CBS 2,950,000
This Week ABC 2,790,000
I am pretty sure that most of these are the same viewers. The 11 million figure is a total of views of these shows, not 11 million people.
You are probably looking at around one percent of the population.
SiubhanDuinne
@Anne Laurie: I don’t think hat was Koppel who put the raped-and-murdered question to Dukakis in 1988. I’m prett sure it was Bernard Shaw. Have to Google that, and I’ll be back (only one window at a time on the BB).
Steeplejack
@SiubhanDuinne:
May as well stick this here:
To get your cat picture
>^..^<
you need to use code for the carets: & # 094. (Take out the spaces.)
I had to go to work Saturday and didn’t catch the rest of that other thread until late last night.
Col. Klink
I’m sure they’ll punch up the Sunday Circuit as their audiences pass on by bringing in ‘new’ and ‘exciting’ guests and hosts like Jake Tapper, Mark Halperin and Meaghan McCain.
I’m fairly certain Halperin, Tapper, and guys like Mike Allen will be the next wave on the Sunday Circuit. They’ll take a Weekly Standard meets People Magazine approach to the whole thing. The emphasis will focus almost entirely on insider gossip, but we’ll learn valuable lessons along the way on why free markets are great except when it comes to buying prescription drugs from Canada, why a flat tax is the most fair social policy ever created, and what Dem got a blow job and why he should immediately resign for doing so. In other words, same shit only a little hipper and edgier. Politico for Teevee in other words.
How’s your Mandarin coming along?
SiubhanDuinne
@Steeplejack: thanks, Steep. Let me try it here (don’t know whether I can do that code on the BB and won’t know if it works until after I’ve hit submit). Deep breath — here goes:
>^..^<
SiubhanDuinne
I’ll be damned. Thanks!
SiubhanDuinne
@Anne Laurie: According to Wikipedia (and a raft of other citations that popped up on Google), it was Bernard Shaw, not Ted Koppel, who asked *The Question* of Michael Dukakis in the October 13, 1988 debate: “The most memorable moment came when reporter Bernard Shaw asked Dukakis whether he would support the death penalty if his wife were raped and murdered.”
Not that Koppel didn’t go after Dukakis hard in other settings, but that particular gotcha belongs to Shaw (who was, indeed, proud of it to the point of smugitude).
@DonBelacquaDelPurgatorio #12: I agree with you that the Sabbath Snoozers are a way for the networks to “pretend to meet their public service responsibility.” I’d just add that they must be laughably cheap to produce. For the nets, that’s full of win-win.
bemused
I know my 90 yr old fil who has voted Dem all his life is totally frustrated with the sunday shows. He doesn’t watch as much anymore but still can’t give up completely. Then the inlaws visit us later on sunday & he bitches about what he has watched. He still thinks Russert was heads above all the others.
valdivia
The problem is that there is no alternative model for intelligent political discussion. If what we are going to get is Politico TV and Halperins then things are going to get much much worse before they get (if they ever do) better.
JD Rhoades
@DonBelacquaDelPurgatorio:
And yet, at least 80% of the liberal blogosphere is blowing a gasket over the Sunday shows by 1 PM. The other 20% is freaking out over something said on some wingnut blog that maybe a thousand people read, tops. I’m not passing judgment; I’m guilty of it myself.
aimai
I think the moment of greatest danger for the sunday talk shows–which I have watched precisely never, and I’m 50, is when they try to “update” or “upgrade” as their old talk show guys die off. The shows were modeled on the notion that certain people are newsmakers and interpreters. Its not that these people were always old–originally, I believe, even McCain and Cokie were merely middle aged–but the bookers and the interviewers got lazy and also decided to treat the sunday show less as information and more as brunch. You don’t just up and invite new, young, brash people you don’t know into your house for brunch, do you?
And of course in a sense they were right to treat the talkers as a kind of team of vetted buddies–the show is beamed into your home. People who watch this crap like to think they are getting “the news” from “the newsmakers” or the inside scoop or whatever but the truth is that the whole idea of these people has become more like family who come over every sunday. Its awful to have cranky old cousin mccain, but it would be worse to have some stranger. It gives people’s lives and their political insights a kind of comforting continuity to see the same faces every week.
But as those faces die off, or the viewers die off, only the networks will think that halperin or any of those other plump and recessive fools will take their place. Because people my age aren’t watching this stuff–I’m busy on sunday morning, for one thing–and people younger than me don’t get their information from the sunday morning lineup, do they? Or from Halperin et al who are, at most, drudge like remoras on actual news. The very fact that they had to hire “li’l luke russert” as digby calls him on one of the evening shows demonstrates that they have zero interest in attracting new viewers.
aimai
aimai
I think the moment of greatest danger for the sunday talk shows—which I have watched precisely never, and I’m 50, is when they try to “update” or “upgrade” as their old talk show guys die off. The shows were modeled on the notion that certain people are newsmakers and interpreters. Its not that these people were always old—originally, I believe, even McCain and Cokie were merely middle aged—but the bookers and the interviewers got lazy and also decided to treat the sunday show less as information and more as brunch. You don’t just up and invite new, young, brash people you don’t know into your house for brunch, do you?
And of course in a sense they were right to treat the talkers as a kind of team of vetted buddies—the show is beamed into your home. People who watch this crap like to think they are getting “the news” from “the newsmakers” or the inside scoop or whatever but the truth is that the whole idea of these people has become more like family who come over every sunday. Its awful to have cranky old cousin mccain, but it would be worse to have some stranger. It gives people’s lives and their political insights a kind of comforting continuity to see the same faces every week.
But as those faces die off, or the viewers die off, only the networks will think that halperin or any of those other plump and recessive fools will take their place. Because people my age aren’t watching this stuff—I’m busy on sunday morning, for one thing—and people younger than me don’t get their information from the sunday morning lineup, do they? Or from Halperin et al who are, at most, drudge like remoras on actual news. The very fact that they had to hire “li’l luke russert” as digby calls him on one of the evening shows demonstrates that they have no interest in attracting new viewers.
If this double posts its because the phrase “zero interest” put me into moderation.
aimai
SiubhanDuinne
@DonBellacquaDelPurgatorio #17:
I read through the linked article three times (well, it’s early and I’m still pretty sleepy) but I absolutely can’t find that graf about The Weather Channel-NBC Nightly News symbiosis. And it’s a great point. But it’s not in the Calderone article as far as I can tell. Please to provide a link or addtional pointy information.
Svensker
@morzer:
If the teabaggers are watching, it’s because they’re horrified by the “liebrul” media. Those people think David Gregory is a commie.
eemom
This is a great piece. Never heard it put so perfectly. “An engraved invitation to apoplexy,” indeed. I can’t stand to listen for more than 20 seconds when C-Span replays the Sunday gasbag lineup on the radio, and as for looking at their smugly babbling mugs on my teevee — NEVAH.
DonBelacquaDelPurgatorio
@SiubhanDuinne:
It’s the second paragraph under the subheading “Journalistic Corruption” in this story.
jl
My parents are hard core liberals (I fancy myself a moderate liberal). They regularly blow mental gaskets watching the Sunday bobbleheads. I tell them to stop watching and go to the library or hit the intertubes and get some information.
As I age into a pre-elderly cranky old man, I wonder more and more about why people want to listen to, get upset about, and argue with, random people. People like Will, Roberts, Matthews, Dowd, etc. are surely random people in terms of their opinons and information, maybe worse than random. Why do people care what their aunt or uncle or sibling or nephews or kids think about politics? If you want to change things, and these people think wrong and ignorant stuff, so what? They only have one vote, just like anyone else. Just forget about it. But, I guess getting upset because random people have random opinions about politics has been a popular hobby over the last, what, 4000 years?
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@aimai:
Really good analysis. We tend to get so wrapped up in a political view of things that we forget about the social aspect. Watching the Sunday morning shows is a ritual, no matter how stupid, annoying or pointless it may be, or how factually challenged the usual suspects are. Much like hearing Terry Bradshaw pontificate on an NFL pre-grame show, when we know full well from past experience that the actual game as played will bear no resemblance to anything coming out of his piehole. It is just something we do to pass the time while waiting for the real deal.
The other thing is that the Sunday shows originated in the era of the smoke filled room, when even the primary elections had a mostly indirect effect on who was actually nominated by each party, and policy decisions were six times more opaque than that. Back then it made sense to get the Wise Men on TV, because they were the ones making all the decisions.
Al Swearengen
Millionaires giving the millionaire conventional wisdom to other millionaires. How edgy! And boring. And completely fucking predictable.
I used to watch all of them religiously, because they kind of felt warm and comfortable. But I quit watching any of them after they all jumped on the Iraq War bandwagon. The fact that supposed “journalists” would completely ignore the detailed evidence Hans Blix put forward over Bush’s ever-changing shoulder-shrug rationalizations showed them for the ignorant, shallow, lazy media whores they are.
SiubhanDuinne
@DonBelacquaDelPurgatorio: Thanks for the link (I doubt you’ll ever see this, but thanks anyhow).
LanceThruster
Buddha bless the interwebs. I used to watch these public affairs programs “religiously”, but once I saw just how lacking their credibility was, there was no longer any point. It was just easier to get a summarization somewhere else of their disinformation.