evening news?

Here is the entire newscast of NBC Nightly News tonight (10.14.2009)

-Big executive bonuses (about 4 min)
-Schools are not up to par (2 min)
-Tamiflu scams (3 min)
-President Obama and family salsa dancing (1 min)
-Death of Al Martino (2 min)
-Charlie Rangel doesn't pay his taxes (2 min)
-A story on a decades old state execution (3 min)
-A story on Martin Guitar Co. (3 min)

How does this pass for news?

I love my Martin guitar!

People actually watch television to get their news? Don't you have an RSS feed or Yahoo page that gets your news fix? I'll turn on WHOI to catch rewind, or maybe a local forecast, but that's it.

Thats why the network news and the networks in general are in real trouble....viewership has plummetted.

Its also why there are so many dumb, uninformed people. Even though numbers have plummetted, there still are alot of folks that get their news just as you desribed.

I havent watched a network newscast in years...other than Fox and I dont watch that for news much....Im talking about the actual news hour. I watch FoxNews channel, mainly when there is an emergency being covered or at election time.....I'll tune in to OReilly occassionally, or Cavuto.

And anytime I can catch Juliette Huddy

No doubt. I stopped watching NBC not long after the 2000 election.

At some point (NBC especially) the networks confused human interest/emotion with relevancy.

I generally get my news from a number of places, very little of it from TV. Actually, between Drudge, news Google searching, I get all the information I need, with one exception: Wikipedia.

For all its faults, Wikipedia has a few pages I refer to daily, just to get a better picture of the world:

List of ongoing conflicts: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ongoing_conflicts Over the last couple years, you could get up-to-date information on that page from many conflicts found on this page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wars_2003%E2%80%93current

Emerging markets: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emerging_countries

Recent Deaths Feed: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deaths_in_2009

Wikinews: http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Main_Page

Now granted, with anything Wiki, you have to proceed with caution and check the citations. But you can discover something may be afoot and many things can be found out well in advance of being reported by any media outlets via Wiki.

If you find yourself with about 12 minutes, and have not seen the Daily Show's episode from last night (10/29/09), this might be fun to watch.

http://www.thedailyshow.com/?kw=thedailyshow&xrs=SI_70250909_55098195011_1

While irreverent (and funny) I thought Jon Stewart sort of nailed how news and opinion get mixed on FOX. Now, I'm sure that the same stuff happens on MSNBC (in particular) and other networks, but those who think FOX is squeeky clean in this blow-up with the White House are just not seeing things clearly.

I'll check it out. . .

It does indeed happen on all cable news networks. They have generally fallen under this format:

Early early news, weather, and business reporting
Early morning show (news sprinkled across entertainment, human interest interviews, and weather)
Mid-morning to mid-afternoon (roughly 9 or 10 to 2 or 3) news desk
Late afternoon commentary or business wrap
Evening commentary

The only actual news reporting takes place during mid-day, when most people are still at work. So when people say they watch Fox News or MSNBC, they are likely indicating that they are watching their commentary programming, not their news.

Fox News made a big gaffe yesterday in their online story about al-Marri's sentencing. Mistakes happen across all networks, too.