Is NBC obsolete and irrelevent?

So what's going on over at NBC? And, for all the excitement, who really cares? With 300 TV channels these days, it's quite easy to simply flick the channel and watch something better.

The Today show is still the most respected morning news program, although that not because of Matt Lauers irrelevant attacks on John McCain regarding quotes from the book "Game Change." Recently, Matt had McCain on his program (you can see the exchange here), and instead of asking him relevant questions, he said, "So, is it true in that in your presidential run in 2008 your team failed to investigate Sarah Palin?"

"McCain said, "Um, Matt, that's irrelevant. That happened two years ago. Today we have two wars brewing. Could you ask a relevant questions." Okay, so that's not exactly how the q and a went, but I'm not far off.

He also wasted time asking him what he thought about Senator Reid, and McCain basically said this conversation is irrelevent. Yet he didn't, he played along. Matt said, "People are saying we can't succeed in Afghanistan." McCain said, "Ahhh, Matt, they said that about Iraq too, and we succeeded their because we had confidence and courage to stay the course."

The Today show is good for fluff news, but when it comes to substance, people wait until the evening opinion shows for that. I would have said CNN, yet people are not tuning to CNN for their news either, they are tuning to Fox opinion shows. For the news, most people tune into the new boob tube -- the Internet.

In the morning, I think people simply put up with Matt Lauers irrelevant political questions because they don't watch that show to pick up their political views, they watch it to learn the four best pieces of advice to stick to new year resolutions. They watch the Today show to learn what the seven safest toys are for 2010. They watch it to see what the latest cooking advice is.

Kieth Oberman is the highest rated show on MSNBC, and it fares no better than the third showing of Bill O'Reilly's "The O'Reilly Factor," at 4:00 in the morning. So, obviously, few click on MSNBC for any relevant news and opinion.

Besides, O'Reilly became successful because his quest is to keep an eye on the powerful in this nation to make sure they aren't screwing us. The mission of Oberman is obviously to create another Satellite for the democratic national committee (DNC) to go along with CBS, ABC and, ahem, NBC.

Another satellite for the DNC is the New York Times, and this once prestigious newspaper has seen its viewership and profits tank big time in recent years. That is because it has lost its relevance too. There was a time that what was on the front page of the Times were also the lead stories on NBC, ABC and CBS.

Thus, all the news came from New York, whether it was true or not. And, as we all know, Walter Cronkite, the once most popular man in the world, was a big time liberal. So, my mom and dad had no choice but to watch a slanted news cast.

Today, however, with the advent of now news that can come from folks like you and I, we can get the accurate news and we can get it now. We get it on the Internet. Some actually get the news splashed on their pagers or iphones via text messages.

So, the New York Times is irrelevant to the new generation. Once the old generation fades away, the New York Times and all the little newspapers that rely on it (including the three major networks) will go the way of the Rocky Mountain News.

CNN is tanking because it is sticking to the old fashion news program, which is to have slanted and biased reporters write the news, and throw it at us as though it is news. Granted, CNN has gotten better over the years. Yet, that doesn't matter. What CNN doesn't get is that people don't need CNN for the news.

Fox figured this out. Fox doesn't just rehash the same old news and b.s. of the New York Times. Fox doesn't rehash what good folks like you and I can learn on the Internet. Fox has opinion shows, and news programmers who at least try to show the news from various angles as to not offend those of opposing viewpoints.

Thus, Fox is leading the cable news race. Yes, it is true some programs on Fox seem to be slanted one way or another, yet Fox has a real and documented following of liberal Americans. This is while NBC is obviously as slanted as Walter Cronkite (of whom my parents had no choice but to watch), my generation has free roam of all those 300 cable networks -- and a remote control.

The whole purpose of Matt Lauer is to take the opportunity to trash Sarah Palin becuase she had view he doesn't agree with. The same is true of Kieth Oberman on MSNBC, and perhaps even the New York Times and CNN. People have caught on to this.

And with Conan O'brein being kicked off the tonight show after only 6 months, will the one time late night ratings winners finally be irrelevent at night too? It seems someone is making some bad decisions at NBC.

So, with the advent of news from all angles, 300 cable networks, and the remote control, it is my hypothesis that NBC and it's DNC satellites are now pretty much obsolete and irrelevant.

A humble report on the news networks

Just in case you were wondering where the best place is to find the most news with the least bias, I have decided here to do an honest and pithy analysis of the all the TV news sources.

Here goes:

1. Fox: They seem to be optimistic and patriotic. This is the only channel you will see true conservative opinion on, which is kind of a shocker to me considering polls show 23% of Americans say they are conservative and only 14% admit to being liberal. Likewise, a majority of Americans tend to lean just to the right of center, as I proved in this article. So it only makes sense Conservatives should have a voice somewhere. And, since you do see conservative opinion on Fox News, many anchors on the other channels say Fox is conservative. Actually, you will also find an equal number of Conservatives as Liberals as Independents as Libertarians. All political affiliations are represented on this channel. You will also see liberal democrats, moderate democrats, moderate republicans and conservative republicans represented. The news on this channel does seem to be fair and balanced as they claim.


2. CNN: This is actually a good news channel, but when it comes to opinion they tend to only show the opinions of moderate republicans paired with any kind of democrat. It is for this reason that many conservatives gave up on this network and tuned into Fox. Also, many Independents and Liberals turned this channel off years ago because they like to know what's going on over in the conservative world, and they surreptitiously turned Fox on. The philosophy here is it's better to know all the news even if we don't like it than some of it. Some liberals still think that all the political viewpoints that need to be given a voice are fully represented by CNN. Some people actually call this the independent network. Still, it's not Independents who run the political world, and (unfortunately for Ted Turner) most Independents don't watch the news nor care about it, so that's why Fox kills in the daily ratings.


3. MSNBC: Well, let it be known that this is now officially the Kieth Oberman Network. The other day I even watched NBC sports and he was a sports commentator. I watched the democrat and republican conventions, and he was the anchor for that. Then, during the presidential debates he was a political commentator because many people said he was too bias to be the official anchor of MSBC (of which he was during the conventions). This is where you go when you want to know what the liberal part of the democratic party is up too. It's kind of their version of Rush Limbaugh, only without the ratings. Heck, even Hardball tends to swing left handed. That only makes sense since Chris Matthews used to work for a democrat.


4. CBS/ NBC/ABC: I lumped these all into one because who the heck watches them anymore these days. I imagine it's the baby boomers and the parents of baby boomers. The rest of us get our news from the Internet and go to Fox and CNN for opinion. These networks tend to be satellites for the New York Times. If you get that paper, you won't need to watch these three major networks because all they do is spew what the Times already reported. And, of course, we know the Times is yet another satellite of the DNC. So, I suppose these three networks are surrogates for the Times.


5. PBS: Does anyone really get their news from here? I have yet to find someone who admits to it. So I will have to pass on commenting. Although some of my surrogates tell me this channel is in bed with the DNC too. But I have yet to watch to find out.

That's my humble analysis of TV news. More reporting will come later. Thanks for tuning in.