Peter Bart: Cable News Needs To Recruit New Anchors Amid Fears Centrist Hosts Won’t Fly
26.08.2022 - 00:25
/ deadline.com
News junkies this week are agitated over the disappearance of CNN’s Reliable Sources, but cable news network chiefs have a deeper concern: the disappearance of reliable anchors.
Ratings of news shows continue to plunge as programmers struggle to figure out what sort of host (and ideology) would appeal to their once formidable audiences. Power players like John Malone have proposed that viewers might welcome a return to centrist personalities rather than shrill advocates like Sean Hannity.
Skeptics counter that there is no “middle” in America anymore: Witness the list of missing hosts like Brian Williams, Chris Wallace or Chris Cuomo. Or Brian Stelter, the abrupt, speed-talking host of Reliable Sources, who tried to find fragments of truth amid the rhetorical debris.
Centrist personalities like Michael Bloomberg increasingly find themselves drawn into firestorms like Florida’s “Stop Woke Act”; witness his fiery attack of Gov. Ron DeSantis in the Wall Street Journal‘s op-ed pages. Under Florida’s initiative, Bloomberg argues, politicians will ban any teaching that “could make students feel guilty about history as it relates to race or gender.”
Given the “hard right’s” definition of “guilt,” this bill could have a sweeping impact on school curricula, Bloomberg warns.
The turnover of news anchors, and the ambiguity of their replacements, have played havoc with news ratings on all the networks, with CNN suffering the biggest losses. Viewer fatigue over Ukraine has added to the problem.
The networks’ tactical response has been confusing. CNN has been rotating hosts in the once key Cuomo spot (Cuomo last month signed a deal with NewsNation). MSNBC has followed the awkward strategy of assigning the solo Monday 9 p.m. slot to Rachel