The Myth of the 24 Hour News Channel

Last Sunday night, while watching my local 11:00 news, the anchor said the name for the Supreme Court justice had been released.

After hearing it, I immediately switched over to CNN where Don Lemon was on, talking about it.

A few minutes later, he stated "That is it for tonight. We will now join (a documentary) already in progress. For more news, tune into AMERICAN MORNING tomorrow at 6 a.m."

In essence, he was saying "We are closing down for the next seven hours. Find out more then".

Everyone loves to talk about one of the problems in politics today being that we have a 24 hour news cycle, how networks have to fill in all that time so the most sensational stories get pushed. But this just isn't the case.

There were several times during the afternoon over this past weekend where I would flip to CNN and there would be a taped program instead of live news. I would then flip to Fox News and they would have an episode of Glenn Beck from last week. On both channels, the overnight hours are just reruns of programs that aired over the day or week.

During the week, I normally watch MSNBC for news, but they go off the air Friday night. The weekends are nothing but infomercials and true crime documentaries.

You would think that it would be pretty cheap for them to do some live programming on weekends. They could call up some news reader from an NBC affiliate to read the headlines, rerun footage shot by NBC and affiliates (who have news seven days a week). It could act as a training ground for future network reporters and keep the network alive on weekends. How seriously can you take a network that airs only 5 days a week?

I guess it all comes down to the fact that networks can make more from rerunning programs, even if no one is watching, than trying to create live content. They would rather show an infomercial than news.

While the print news industry has been hurting, it looks like cable news is suffering as well.