Have you noticed something, mister and misses cable news watcher? Though their political ideology differs, CNN has suddenly adapted the look and feel of its main competitor the Fox News Channel. The Fox News Channel and its morning show have a three person hosting team with that talk showesque couch and now Jeff Zucker revamps CNN and suddenly the CNN morning show has a three person crew and the couch and the requisite blond anchor from central casting. Even the CNN afternoon show and the FNC afternoon show are almost indistinguishable. Same interview on the plaza with the same rabble rousing news maker sounding the political trumpet for their respective political party.
So let me get this straight? CNN wants to be taken seriously again as a legitimate news outlet for the liberals and yet, it hires Jeff Zucker. Jeff Zucker, the man who turned a once proud beacon of journalism known as the Today show into a banal exercise of fluff and irrelevancy. I mean, Zucker was the man who thought it would be a prudent move to inflict Kathy Lee Gifford on the public again when Today was expanded to four hours. But GMA actually started beating Today when they took Zuckers formula for dumb down and used it to take over the top spot in morning news.
So I guess you could say that CNN is simply being proactive by attempting to beat Fox News Channel, their rival, by mimicking their format at every turn. Or maybe this was the CNN game plan when Piers Morgan was hired to replace Larry King since Piers Morgan is the UK'S version of Geraldo Rivera with the sound and bombast turned down a few decibels. Like good old Geraldo, Piers Morgan seems adept at making the story all about him. So with this being said, I wonder what's the next step for CNN under Jeff Zucker? Well, Jeff Zucker can't counter the Kathy Lee Gifford move by hiring Regis because Regis is working for Fox Sports One at the moment. So I guess Jeff Zucker will have to find another quasi celebrity who makes you yearn for the virtue of silence and or euthanasia. If Jeff Zucker is going to go all single white female and morph into a clone of FNC, he'll have to start finding doppleganger's for FNC sacred cows like Shephard Smith. Surely, he can find the liberal version of old Shep, as they call em. I'm sure it'll be easy for Jeff Zucker to find an elitist talking head with a twang and a liberal slant. Or maybe CNN already has their Shephard Smith in their very own Anderson Cooper; or, AC, as they say in the business. Maybe this is a trend. Maybe the liberals will start pumping out their own politically slanted Limbaugh clones to take the airwaves back from the Conservatives. The left will try to look and sound like the right and the right will try and look and sound like the left.
So what have we learned here, ladies and gentlemen? Well, we learned that people like to bitch and moan about fluff, yet gobble it up every morning when they watch the Today show and GMA cross promote their respective mother nipples into oblivion. And we've learned that CNN wants to be the Fox News Channel but they want to lean forward like MSNBC does while they do it. And we've learned that CBS WANTS to be credible but can't seem to get out of its own way. Only CBS could pledge its dedication to heard news in the morning and then hire a friend of Oprah's to hijack the last hour of their respective morning program with the same fluff that people are watching on NBC and ABC in record numbers. Well, at least CNN doesn't have anchors on the payroll that want to be country singers. There's hope yet.
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