Author: Brian Lambert

This past Monday the Star Tribune staff received the following memo from editors Nancy Barnes and Scott Gillespie.

“Rob Daves has agreed to take on the role of project manager of buzz.mn through the end of March. In this role, Rob will be in charge of working with everyone in the newsroom to make the buzz.mn website a success and lay out a plan for its future, including developing marketing plans. To make this a success, we’ll need everyone’s help. Buzz.mn will succeed on the combined efforts of the newsroom, and contributors from the community.

“Only a handful of staffers currently contribute to the site on a regular basis. We’d like for all staff members who live in the communities where we are now developing buzz.mn to contribute items each week. We’re not talking about devoting large chunks of your day, but to file two or three short items off your beat or from your community. You don’t have to be a reporter. In fact, any member of the staff can participate. If you have any questions or need help learning how to contribute, please see Rob or your team leader.

Nancy and Scott

What is noteworthy here is the fact that no mention is made of Daves’ role as head of the paper’s Minnesota Poll, an iconic piece of enterprise reporting that is operating on a much diminished schedule compared to several years ago. By the estimate of one person with knowledge of such things, the current, McClatchy-operated, Star Tribune is devoting something in the range of 15% of what used to be budgeted for polling.

With Daves making this temporary move to goose growth in buzz.mn, one of a half dozen special/web-related productions the Strib has going, suspicions rise that cuurent managers may be quietly shutting the door on the Minnesota Poll in advance of their new, more likely than not budget-cutting owners, the Avista private equity group.

I called Daves for his comment and he made a convincing show of enthusiasm for the buzz.mn work he has been asked to do, but defered any speculation on the vitality of the Minnesota Poll to Scott Gillespie.

So … I sent Gillespie the following e-mail …

Scott:

I’m doing a media blog for The Rake. I’m told Rob Daves is temporarily moving over to handle one of your websites. I called him and he seems enthusiastic about the assignment, but defers any questions about the future of the Minnesota Poll to you.

Frankly, I’m getting expressions of concern from your newsroom that the Star Tribune is planning fewer polls rather than more, and/or that this move portends the demise of the Poll entirely. Can you comment on that?

I’m told the paper is budgeting roughly 15% of what it budgeted for the polls in their glory days. Is that number reasonably accurate?

Can you say how many polls you have planned for ’07? ’08?

Once Daves finishes his work with Buzz.Mn. will he be returning to his same role with the Minnesota Poll at the same or increased budget?

Thanks.

In an entirely timely fashion Gillespie replied as follows …

Thanks for asking, Brian, and I’m sorry it took me so long to get back to you.

The Minnesota Poll will live on. Rob’s a really versatile editor who’s handled many temporary projects for us over the years while also running the poll. I’m not going to get into internal budget figures or frequency issues with you because we have competitors who would love to know what we’re doing and when. But I can assure you that the Minnesota Poll will continue to be an important part of our news report.

Hope you’re doing well.

–Scott

I think its safe to say that a few questions were left unanswered there. One I hadn’t thought of is, “Who really poses any serious competition to the Minnesota Poll”?

I’ll take Gillespie at his word, I guess, that the Minnesota Poll, which I regard as a valuable contribution to Minnesota discourse, will continue to be, “an important part” of the Strib’s news report”. But one truism of modern news “reporting” is that the public rarely complains about what is NOT in the paper, and pricey, labor-intensive endeavors like long-term investigative reporting and polling are therefore easily, uh, “down-sized”, occasionally to oblivion.

Finally, as someone who marvels at the dramatic increases in productivity of American workers … in a time when the real value of their wages has barely kept up with the rate of inflation … I have to be amused at Barnes’ and Gillespie’s call for “all staff members”, reporters and otherwise, to “file two or three short items off your beat …”, each week. You know, when they’re not doing anything else … and with no hint of financial incentive, other than of course keeping their jobs through the next round of “down-sizing.”

Steve Perry, the talented and reliably caustic editor of City Pages handed in his resignation Monday, ending 13 years, in two separate shifts, as the alternative weekly’s ruddering hand.

Perry cited more or less predictable philosophical differences with City Pages’ new(ish) corporate management, a recognition that journalism is moving on-line and that now was his time to bust a move in that direction. He offered praise to City Pages’ current publisher, Mark Bartel, (brother of Rake publisher, Tom Bartel).

The stories of writers and subjects getting bleeding rashes from Perry’s not-exactly warm and maternal personality are legendary, and pretty damned funny. But after making the obligatory rip on Perry’s prickly ‘tude, even the most offended conceded he was an unusually talented editor. Moreover, to political progressives so often dismayed at the compromised reporting/thinking of the mainstream media, Perry’s indignation was both timely and articulate. I’d like to think we’ll see his kind again soon. But I doubt it.

The mice were snickering Monday. Within the Star Tribune there was much chatter about Kate Parry v. Sid Hartman, Round Two. Or is it three? Or four? Maybe you caught Parry’s ombudsman column Sunday criticizing Hartman — Sid Friggin’ Hartman! — for appearing in an ad for Sun Country airlines, (with Ex-KSTP sports anchor, Joe Schmit). As I read it, I detected Parry’s displeasure both with Hartman’s appearance in the ad AND the fact he did not notify his, uh, superiors and ask for permission.

Parry frets that Hartman’s appearance might lead readers/viewers to perceive a conflict of interest, as in, I guess … “I saw Sid do an ad for Sun Country. So how do I know the Strib isn’t lying the next time they say Sun Country had a lousy third quarter?” Do you know anyone who thinks like that?

If you haven’t seen the spot, Sid appears from behind a copy of the Star Tribune and tells Schmit, who is yammering about Sun Country, to pipe down, because he’s reading, “the greatest newspaper in the world”. (Sid may be the only person capable of making that claim with a straight face. But to his credit as the ultimate homer, he said it). Hartman says nothing one way or another about Sun Country. But obviously his appearance is a tacit endorsement. (Hartman tells Parry he’s donating the free plane tickets he received as compensation, and I’m inclined to believe him. Believe me, Sid himself could take the Strib private. He does NOT need two Sun Country Super Savers to Cancun.)

But it was the other worldly loftiness of Parry’s concern that set off the snickering. The gist of the joke being … WHO, i.e. what possible reader, would ever connect Sid Hartman doing his patented Sid shtick in an ad with the grand ethics of the Star Tribune as a whole? In the interests of further full disclosure let me be among those who urge Parry to print the mail she gets on the topic, in particular the best case any outraged reader/ethics expert makes for how Sid on a Plane undermines the integrity of the work of hundreds of others.

I’m sorry, newspapers have a longstanding problem with the double standard that grants all sorts of latitude, in terms of outside compensation, to sports writers while keeping a very tight rein on most everybody else. Anybody in newspapers sees that all over the place. But lets not pretend anyone outside a 10′ radius of some pedantic editor’s office gives a damn. This kind of hand-wringing just doesn’t register with the general public. Nor should it. It just doesn’t matter.

As far as I can tell, the slice of the public that is hip enough to big media’s myriad failings is a hell of a lot more upset about a major newspaper’s errors of omission — like keeping their heads down and voices low as a President with killer poll numbers gins up a fraudulent war — than whether some sports columnist plugs a local airline.

As for 85 year-old Sid Hartman getting permission from his superiors … don’t make me laugh.

I’ve been cautioned to be careful with this. Schadenfreude, though a lovely sounding word, is unseemly. Its supposedly beneath a responsible adult. But what the hell is a media blogger supposed to do when confronted with the train wreck ratings for KTLK-FM (100.3), where I very briefly co-hosted a show? I mean, come on kids, this is news!

KTLK is one of gargantuan media empire Clear Channel’s experiments with FM talk. The way it was supposed to go was Clear Channel would steal Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity away from rival local stations, in this case KSTP-AM, (Clear Channel owns Limbaugh’s syndicator, Premiere Radio Network), and build a kind of instant dynasty in what the radio industry blithely refers to as “news-talk”. In reality of course these stations provide very little in the way of news, (Fox News is a punch line, not a news service), they do precious little original local reporting, and 95% of the talk is pretty much of the hard-right, mostly bullshit vein we’ve all heard for years and years ad nauseum.

In a very significant gamble, Twin Cities Clear Channel managers negotiated a deal, rumored to be worth $300k/per year for five years, to bring Jason Lewis, once a solid performer for KSTP-AM, back from exile in Charlotte, NC. Tragically, this meant tossing my partner, Sarah Janecek and myself out on the streets.

So what happens? More specifically, what happens through October, November and December 2006? Through the teeth and aftermath of another hotly contested election? With endless opportunities for impugning the patriotism, sanity and toilet training of liberals?

According to the quarterly Arbitron ratings report, KTLK, home of Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Jason Lewis and various bizarre, late night Fox News fungal species, delivered an anemic 2.1 share of the Twin Cities radio market, good enough for … 18th place among adults 25-54 listening from 3pm to 7 pm. (The station is 13th with a 2.6 share through Limbaugh’s midday shift — virtually tied with Air America on AM 950, and 21st, with a microscopic 0.9 share through morning drive.)

It would be a monumental understatement to say that expectations for both the station and Lewis were much higher. Now in fact, the hourly breakdown of these ratings won’t be available for another couple days, which means KTLK may argue that the abysmal ratings for 3-to-7, which is two hours of Sean Hannity (3-to-5) and two hours of Lewis, (5-to-7), is all Hannity’s fault. And maybe that is so. But, bad as I am with math, it seems to me Hannity would pretty much have had to turn off the mike and play dead air in order for Lewis’s audience to “lift” them to a 2.1 share.

By the way, that 2.1 share/18th ranking puts KTLK in a tie with MPR’s “classical music service” on KSJN, and two notches BELOW, “The Lori & Julia Show” on FM 107.1, (a.k.a. “The Chick Station”). Meanwhile, MPR’s “news service” ranked 8th with a 5.0 share, and Clear Channel’s country station, K102, led the pack in afternoon drive, with a 7.2 share.

Now, I make jokes about the Arbitron diary keeping process. In the radio business people are often heard saying how all it takes is, “two drunks in a trailer court”, to skew the numbers all over the place. So yes, everything could change when the current quarter’s numbers come out in April. But KTLK’s audience appeal has remained more or less constant since the station debuted in January ’06, replacing Smooth Jazz. It is beginning to look like a 2-to-3 share is pretty much reality … for a radio property that has been the beneficiary of a wholly unprecedented year-long billboard campaign valued at nearly $1 million. (KTLK’s parent company, Clear Channel, owns the billboards you see all over town, which means they don’t have to pay rent on them, but I’m just talking value here … and those billboards will most likely disappear once Clear Channel goes private and cleaves off its’ outdoor advertising arm).

Because the fate of KTLK will be a fascinating story to watch over the next few months, I’ll spare you my deep analysis of what has happened so far. But I ask, what do YOU think is going on when the established, franchise lions of fog and spin generate so little business through an election season? Is the audience for run-of-the-mill “news/talk”, (i.e. “Fox News”/ludicrous spin), abandoning it just as average Republicans have abandoned George W. Bush’s failed presidency? Does that mean, as some of us have long said, that the fundamental emotional appeal of “news/talk’s” bloviating gurus is their delivery of bullshit triumphalism? And that people have had enough bullshit? Or has the rancid partisanship of the past dozen years — goosed in large part by Limbaugh et al and “hot talk” — finally turned off the public, leaving only the delusional core?

I don’t know. But when a proven act like Lewis comes back to town, with a hefty paycheck and more road signage than I-35 and his audience is so small he’s two rungs down the ladder from “The Current” (MPR’s eclectic pop act, at 89.3), something significant is going on.

Here’s the rankings for afternoon drive, adults 25-54, Oct.-Dec. ’06.

1. K102 7.2
2. KSTP-FM 6.1
3. KTIS-FM 5.5
4. KQRS 5.5
5. WLTE 5.4
6. KSTP-AM 5.2
7. Jack FM 5.2
8. KNOW 5.0
9. Cities97 4.9
10 KFAN 4.9
11 KOOL108 4.5
12 93X 4.1
13 WCCO 3.6
14 KDWB 3.1
15 “Current”2.4
16 FM107 2.4
17 B96 2.2
18 KTLK 2.1
19 KSJN-FM 2.1
20 AM950 1.8

A generally reliable voice from within the Star Tribune’s reporting ranks defends Ms. Moses in the previously-posted back and forth e-mail spat with City Pages’ Steve Perry. Reliable Voice defends her on the grounds that she may actually be making a defensible argument. Voice argues that Moses probably saw that she was the only one among the Strib’s current managers willing to defend the tattered ship, but that she feared corporate repercussions because she does not have authority to speak for her peers and superiors.

“The real problem here,” said Reliable Voice, “is that there’s no one running the place. What she said is probably true, as far as we know. But she’s not in the position of being able to say so publicly.”

The tiff left me bemused, because of years of listening to newspaper managers parrot the high-minded virtues of transparency … as in “we are a public institution”, “let the public see how we function” and “FOR PUBLICATION”. If Moses, by all accounts a McClatchy corporate climber,is confident enough in her argument and as passionate about the Star Tribune as she says she is, she ought to do the virtuous thing and say what she believes is right and proper and corrective in a transparent, public way, McClatchy bureaucracy be damned. If she can’t summon the courage to go public, well then, maybe she ought to just CALL Perry … or put a sock in it.

But the idea that you have this snippy back-and-forth and CC a bunch of reporters — OK, five not a dozen, sheesh — and think somehow no one will disclose anything to anyone beyond the perimeter is, uh, naive. McClatchy has pretty much torched the “loyalty” card in Minneapolis, and Moses ought to be smart enough to realize that.

Any professional newspaper manager who thinks the wretches are unconditionally sympathetic to the McClatchy corporate predicament might want to buy a few rounds of drinks and see what they’re really thinking.

Just one question here. You’re a big city newspaper manager. Why declare a letter to a rival editor “Not for Publication” and then copy a dozen reporters, several if not all of whom have little reason to be sympathetic to your argument? Have you perhaps not heard of the internets? You know, the thing with all those tubes?

For your edification. An e-mail exchange between Monica Moses of the Star Tribune and Steve Perry of City Pages.

Here is the City Pages package on the Strib sale.

__
From: Monica Moses [mailto:mmoses@startribune.com]
Sent: Friday, January 12, 2007 3:35 PM
To: Letters
Cc: Anders Gyllenhaal; Doug Grow; Derek Simmons; Mike Meyers; Pamela Miller; Rochelle A. (News) Olson; Steve Brandt; Scott Gillespie
Subject: letter to editor, NOT FOR PUBLICATION

To the editor (NOT FOR PUBLICATION):

It’s tiresome to have to correct some of the biggest leaps of logic in City Pages’ recent coverage of the Star Tribune sale. But here goes.

It’s true that Star Tribune daily circulation declined 4.7% between 2001 and 2006. But guess what? That’s the third best record among Top 20 local U.S. newspapers, behind only The New York Post and The New York Daily News. Compare our five-year decline with that of the Boston Globe (down 17.3%), the Detroit Free Press (down 18.4%), the Los Angeles Times (down 20.3%), the San Francisco Chronicle (down 22.5%) or Newsday (down 25.7%).

Since 2004, the Star Tribune has deliberately reduced circulation sponsored by a third party by 20%, which accounts for a significant piece of the decline.

It’s hardly the case that the 2005 redesign caused some kind of notable circulation drop. Furthermore, circulation is not a terribly reliable indicator of how a newspaper is doing with its readers. Circulation is still the prevailing metric among U.S. newspapers, in large part because the big advertisers on the Audit Board of Circulation like it that way. Circulation declines mean cheaper ad rates.

Newspapers in Canada moved from circulation to readership some years ago, and the most respected researchers in the United States think readership is a more meaningful indicator of a newspaper’s value among its readers. Circulation measures how many newspapers have been somehow pressed into the hands of readers. Readership measures how deeply and frequently readers actually engage with your content –how many people are actually reading.

And that’s where you’ll find the real story of the Star Tribune following the redesign. Readership increased 2.3 percentage points, or 6%, in the six months following the redesign, according to Scarborough Research. That’s the first increase since 2002 and the biggest jump since 1996.

Monica Moses
Star Tribune
NOT FOR PUBLICATION

>>> >>> “Steve Perry” 1/12/2007 4:02:31 PM >>>

*Why* not for publication, Monica? Because it’s not exactly immune to rebuttal?
_

________________________________

From: Monica Moses [mailto:mmoses@startribune.com]
Sent: Fri 1/12/2007 4:16 PM
To: Letters; Steve Perry
Cc: Anders Gyllenhaal; Doug Grow; Derek Simmons; Mike Meyers; Pamela Miller; Rochelle A. (News) Olson; Steve Brandt; Scott Gillespie
Subject: RE: letter to editor, NOT FOR PUBLICATION

Ha. I have absolute faith in my argument.
The letter is not for publication because I am not the newspaper’s spokesperson. Moreover, your publication has not proven itself to be honorable in accepting criticism and looking at facts that don’t fit a preconceived, predictable, cynical, narrow portrait of the Star Tribune. Your motives are not pure. You can’t be trusted to do the right thing with the information.

Monica Moses
Star Tribune

______________________

From: Steve Perry
Sent: Fri 1/12/2007 4:36 PM
To: Monica Moses; Letters
Cc: Anders Gyllenhaal; Doug Grow; Derek Simmons; Mike Meyers; Pamela Miller; Rochelle A. (News) Olson; Steve Brandt; Scott Gillespie
Subject: RE: letter to editor, NOT FOR PUBLICATION

I’ve always heard that you were a first-rate suck-up.

Ha yourself.

________________________________

Here’s an interesting look from Slate’s Jack Shafer into the notorious incident up in Minot, North Dakota a few years ago when a train derailment threatened the city with a poisonous vapor cloud, but authorities couldn’t alert the population because all the Clear Channel-owned stations were on robot control …

I don’t know who looked less credible on last night’s edition of “60 Minutes”, George W. Bush or the president of Duke University, but the CBS News crew deserves a shout out for allowing both men to present their case regardless of how anemic each was.
It is fashionable to avoid ever complimenting bigfooting mainstream media for doing a decent job on a truly influential public figure. Presidential interviews in particular are generally way too deferential. And God knows history is not being kind to network news orgs and major newspapers for the way they capitulated in the face of Bush’s sky-high approval ratings prior to the Iraq invasion. (A failure I fully expect them to commit again, the next time a popular politician scams the public as baldy.)
Anyway, when you write about the MSM some unwritten law of cynicism says you’re supposed to niggle, I guess.
But Scott Pelley I thought got as much out of Bush as I would ever expect from a network correspondent allowed the kind of access Karl Rove has been cooking up for certain key media outlets as he desperately seeks support for Bush’s escalation in Iraq. (Pelley even declined to use the word “surge” in his knee-to-knee interview with Bush at Camp David, hitting him instead with the far more precise, “escalation”.)
Sure, Pelley could have wiped Bush’s face with a long list of outright lies and distortions the guy has engaged in — from Iraq to Intelligent Design to Kenny Boy Lay to Global Warming — but Pelley’s not Noam Chomsky and CBS isn’t TPM Muckraker.
What struck me was how Bush brought nothing new to his rationale for continuing the fight with US troops, and his weirdly rigid gait and stance as Pelley and he did the strolling-interview shtick around Camp David. You’d think Rove or somebody would be working with Bush full time, especially in the aftermath of his stiff, discomforting demeanor in the actual primetime speech last week. If nothing else, at least fake an appearance of confidence.
I’m sorry, I think Bush is losing it. (Pelley asked him as much.) The smirk never did anything for me, but I think Zoloft zombie when I watch him now.
BTW, let me go on record here, or in any betting pool anyone wants to start, and say that I see the prospect of a bonafide constitutional crisis if Bush and Cheney try to gin up some kind of Gulf of Tonkin rationale for attacking Iran. If they try something like that the only people willing to support him will be the talk radio choir, a gang of cynical bullshit artists that would rally behind him if announced he was deporting everyone lacking a first generation northern European bloodline.
But ask yourself, if Bush tries something militarily, based on his interpretation of “presidential authority”, how far would you be from accepting/consenting to a state sponsored coup d’etat?
As for the Duke president … pitiful chump. His position in the first hours of the rape charges against the lacrosse players was not enviable. He had every good reason to trust the DA — the now wholly discredited Mr. Nifong — but clearly overreacted to the roar of black activists and handed down highly punitive judgment well before all the facts were known.
The whole case is another example of the work left to be done in applying reason and perspective to race relations in this country. Fundamental to every individual and institution, particularly a toney institution like Duke, is the fear of being charged as racist. Like pedophilia, that sort of thing doesn’t wash off easily. As a consequence, you get frightened, ill-considered, media appearance-driven decision-making like we see at Duke.

A nagging techno-glitch has had the mighty Lambert mainframe down for a few days. Anyone out there who knows a sure-fire, never fail fix for preventing a router from crashing the cable internet connection, drop me a line.

As on election night, I spent the post-Bush “surge” speech with MSNBC. Since Fox is … well, Fox … and useful only as a window into the White House spin room, and CNN wouldn’t say “feces” if it had a mouthful, the Chris Matthews-Keith Olbermann act is my idea of the going gold standard in cable chatter. Besides, damn me to hell, but I love so splendid a clash of titanic egos.

Not to be a complete sexist swine, but watching Keith and Chris maneuver for higher ground is like watching a couple society divas duel for preeminence at a power lunch. See, the thrust of top end jewelry! Watch, the parry of the finest cosmetic surgery hedge fund money can buy!

Olbermann has been where he has been since Bush Co. started taking this thing — this Iraq-muddled-with-terror thing — over the cliff five years ago. That said, his latest “Special Comment” was unusually angry/passionate, which is damned refreshing, even if it is garnering him ratings. But what was noteworthy was Matthews, who, in answering a simple question from Olbermann about the White House’s political strategy, delivered his own angry stemwinder, lacerating the neo-cons and snapping at the end that it isn’t so much what Bush knows that we don’t, but rather what we know that Bush doesn’t. (Olbermann gives that rhetoric another twist in his “Special Comment” by wondering if even Bush knows what Bush knows.)

There may be some degree of theatrical shtick to this burst of passion, but I’m not one to complain. This isn’t Nancy Grace harping on some missing teenager, or homicidal husband, or Sean Hannity gasbagging Nancy Pelosi’s winery. Iraq is a monumental disaster and its encouraging to see someone in the MSM, say so … loudly.

The report Friday that The Fox News Channel, (“FNC” in acronym argot, or “Faux News” if you aren’t drinking the Kool-Aid), was the 8th highest-rated cable channel of 2006 wasn’t exactly a press-stopper. But for those who don’t follow this stuff, #8 may seem low considering the tankers of ink media types dump into re-cycling Fox’s hype and press releases. (Personally, I’m one of those who thinks of Fox News as far more marketing scheme than news service; a marketing scheme with a client base of one … itself. Face it, all of Fox’s “reporting” is orchestrated to heighten its brand.

Anywho … the basic report merely compared FNC with its cable rivals, CNBC, CNN, CNN Headline and MSNBC, all of whom trailed at considerable distance. The cursory report did however note that FNC, home to Bill O’Reilly and Sean Hannity as if you needed to be told, lost 26% of its audience among 25-54 year-olds over the course of ’06, while CNN lost 17% and CNN Headline 5%. Only MSNBC, (up 7%) and business-news CNBC (up a fat 32%) showed growth, among newsies.

Duly noted in most leads was that O’Reilly’s numbers, while down, were still substantially greater than Keith Olbermann’s. Olbermann, a hero to liberals for his righteous articulation of patriotic anger during the ’06 campaign, is clearly the act driving MSNBC’s numbers. He was the cable media story of the fall. (Several reports noted that Olbermann, a man blessed/cursed with a prodigious ego — right down to the Murrow-like quarter-profile he gives his Murrow-like “Special Comments” — is clearly positioning himself for something better than a life at the country’s 36th-highest rated cable news network.)

Don’t hold your breath though waiting for, say, CBS to acknowledge its Katie Couric mistake and dare something as unhinged and open to crackpot bombardment as dropping an unabashed truth-speaker to power like Olbermann on to its anchor desk. This country is far closer to a president with the middle name of “Hussein” than a liberal sensibility with an off-beat sense of humor fronting a network news division.

Also, while I’m thinking of it, let the record show that MSNBC’s Olbermann-Chris Matthews election night duet was TV’s most engaging analysis act, in no small part because of the fun of the tension of two cocks of the walk in full plumage display barely contained by the same puny camera frame.

But what is rarely referenced in these cable network reporting stories is what Americans are really spending their time watching. I mean, O’Reilly scored, on average, an audience of 2.3 million. Big whoop. (Even less big really, when you consider the average age of your cable news watcher is older than the average newspaper reader, practically an IV drip crowd, and that Fox’s viewers are the oldest — and male-est — of the bunch.)

Basically, the real cable story is, “screw news”, Iraq, off-year elections and Lou Dobbs howling about porous borders withstanding. The USA Network, with all entertainment, had double Fox News’ primetime average, ditto TNT, (“The Closer” did great business for them), and, as usual, ESPN, this year with “Monday Night Football” pulled down the bulk of the weekly “most watched program” bragging rights. (Worth noting is that the premium package Disney Channel is #2 in the US).

I could prattle on, but you get the idea. A reminder, really. Most of the country’s cable watchers remain pretty damned resistant to the cable news shtick. Too bad, perhaps. But maybe it is an example of “wisdom of crowds” and we are generally refusing to engage with all shtick, all the time.