Missing the Boat

Are we watching the final dirt being thrown onto Network news as we know it? Much was said over the weekend over the fact that all three broadcast networks were only bringing us one hour of prime time coverage of the conventions over the next two weeks. An odd decision given the fact that we are at the tail end of summer and the new seasons are weeks away from starting, so it is not as though they were positioning quality programming over the conventions. It's a choice I don't get, but that isn't my beef here today.

Last night I realized that network news has thrown in the towel to it's cable counterparts in earnest. I don't care if you are Republican, Democrat or Independent the fact of the matter is the Kennedy family is a part of our country's political fabric and Ted Kennedy's diagnosis of a brain tumor earlier this year made his appearance at last night's convention newsworthy. It made it worth 'breaking into regular schedule programming' which none of the networks did. Now, not to be morbid, but there is a better than average chance that this moment may have been Kennedy's last at a convention and after 48 years in Congress, he deserved the respect of the networks to recognize the moment in American political history. They missed, and they missed badly. Pundits will talk at nausea over the next two weeks about what each convention's 'infomercial' did or didn't do. Perhaps a critical eye and a couple of those breaths should be put towards how we are feeding the country information. Not all of America gets there news from cable and certainly there is an entire generation that will not be watching CNN.com 'stream' the speeches.

So to CBS, ABC, FOX and NBC, you missed the boat on this one. At a point in time when you should be asserting your relevance and understanding around historic moments in the broader scheme of news you chose to ride the bench, what a loss for those who were watching repeats of Two and a Half Men, Samantha Who, Prison Break or America's Toughest Jobs over on NBC respectively last night.