Reading this story in the New York Times, that "Weather Channel Is Sold to NBC and Equity Firms", reminded me of a great idea I once had for a cable network.
Imagine this: every half-hour, for the convenience of viewers just stopping in for the TV news headlines, this channel would provide a decent update on the day's news events. Some stories with more in-depth coverage would be included on a two-hour rotation.
I even had a good name for it: "Cable News Network."
It turned out, of course, that there already is an organization of that name -- I had assumed that the "C" in "CNN" stood for "Castrated" -- and that it was mostly dedicated to ensuring that we could enjoy the conservatice Sunday Morning pundit shows all week long.
So I came up with an alterative title: "Headline News." It turned out that that too, rather than giving you the news over a half-hour whenever you tuned in, was largely devoted to maximizing the airtime given to conservative pundits and center-right thinking journalists for balance.
I still think this would be a great idea -- if I could come up with a name that already hadn't been reserved for another purpose.
I chose the subtitle of this diary with misgivings, because it has nothing to do with conservative Southern Gothic writer Flannery O'Connor's provocative liberal-tweaking short story nor with the philosophy of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin from which it gets its name. The convergence I discuss is a matter of corporate imperative rather than spiritual law. And yes, I know that I've guaranteed that most of the comments will be on O'Connor and/or Teilhard de Chardin rather than my topic, but I'm at peace with that. I would have chosen "I get a shiver in my bones just thinking about the Weather Channel" so that we could talk about 10,000 Maniacs, but that was too long.
Of course, discerning readers may remember that CNN started out providing much the wonderful "rolling news" public service that I describe; when Headline News premiered a year and a half later, it provided exactly that public service. Both had been extremely successful. Over time, CNN became Blitzerated and Dobbsed. In 2005, Headline News too went to a format heavy on the Showbiz news, the Glenn Beck, and the Nancy Grace, with a little of the rolling news format over the middle of the day.
My complaint here is not one of content, though I certainly could offer one, but one of form. The world's cup overfloweth with yammering reactionary blowhards; we didn't need two more basic cable channels to provide us with more. But market imperatives, following the success of Fox "News," made that more profitable -- and so we lost what was, to my eyes, a valuable public service, at least to those without internet access at a given moment. You can get just the day's headlines there.
And so, the sale of The Weather Channel leaves me thinking: how are they going to completely destroy it?
The path has already been blazed by the existing Weather Channel. What was once 24-hour rolling coverage of the weather has been rolled back a bit. If you drop in at 7 p.m., you'll have two hours of "Abrams & Bettes: Beyond the Forecast," the premise of which is
Stephanie Abrams and Mike Bettes report on top weather stories. Segments include: interviews, facts, forecasts, and analyses. Other topics like what it's like to sweat out a heat wave, dig out of a "winter wonderland," or hold one's ground against wrathful winds add to the series. Also featured is the Interactive Audience Barometer, a viewer poll about interesting topics of the day.
I understand the desire to spice up the day, but time spent informing us what it's like to survive heat and cold is time spent not telling the drop-in viewer what the weather is going to be like in a particular part of the country. (Yes, I understand that that is what the Web is for. Well, cable news largely caters to the needs of people who don't use the Web.)
If you're up at 3 a.m. weekdays, you can get the severe weather porn of "It Could Happen Tomorrow" and "Full Force Nature." And, on weekends, fully half the schedule is devoted to these shows, plus "When Weather Changed History" and the somewhat environmentalist "Forecast Earth."
All of this is fine -- it may be interesting programming -- unless you need the weather forecast.
"Screw them if they can't use the web," I can hear some of you saying, but I think that that opinion misses the point. The reason that we assume that "The Weather Channel" belongs on basic cable -- that it, indeed, is the TV station to which we think televisions in public areas can safely be tuned -- is that it provides a basic public service. It lets people easily and quickly catch up on information they need -- just as CNN Headline News did before it was paralyzed by a glare from Nancy Grace and eaten by Glenn Beck.
I will predict with some confidence that The Weather Channel is going to move away from providing that basic public service in the years to come and move in the direction of more glitz and higher ratings. (It may also tone down some of that Green tint of "Forecast Earth.") The ideas of public trust and public service be damned; if we see a Fox Weather channel with blondes in mink swimsuits assuring us that global warming is a hoax, it's almost a given that The Weather Channel would move in that direction, just as CNN did.
Everything that rises -- everything popular because it is done well -- must converge on either serving conservative corporate ideology or, by conversion into a dazzling entertainment extravaganza, the corporate bottom line. I miss being able to get a quick fix on the headlines from Headline News; I won't even go there anymore in case Nancy Grace is on. This sale makes me wonder if I will someday miss the modest -- but real -- public service that The Weather Channel has provided on basic cable. If that happens, if NBC sucks out the juice and leaves a husk bearing the same nameplate, I will wonder why it still belongs on basic cable -- and I expect to be greeted with calls of "how could you take The Weather Channel off of basic cable when people need the weather reports?"