08-06-2023, 02:49 PM
(08-06-2023, 12:39 PM)Newsroom Wrote: Brian Steltar, famously axed without reason by Chris Licht wrote a really good piece for the Washington Post yesterday which takes a look at what went on and lead to his firing!
It is paywalled, but you get one free read!
www.washingtonpost.com
He's right on the hypothesis that it must be an ideological decision by Malone. There's just no business sense in shifting to the 'centre' (which is actually the right). Just see what happened when Fox News happened to shift to a be a little more fact-based when they called Arizona for Biden! If viewers on the right would quit Fox in non-negligible numbers for what is really not even proper 'centrist' reporting (it was the regular Fox News in primetime!), what makes anyone think that shifting a little to the right would attract these viewers? And let's be frank, the only viewers that they'd be seeking to attract would be those who already watch cable news, no one who quit watching cable news years ago will switch their TV back on just because CNN is now doing bothsidism.
And beyond the reputational damage bothsidism like the Trump Town Hall causes, ratings matter regardless of what they say. See the cuts which happened recently at CNN. Pragmatism will eventually take the upper hand over ideology again. The network can't keep hemorrhaging viewers which would affect profits especially considering that Discovery needs to find its new footing after the merger.