Memorial Day weekend must produce very low rating numbers for the Sunday talk shows. Perhaps today when Face the Nation waited until the show is no longer a national broadcast and started the second half off with a surprisingly honest and engaging look at climate change, it was a means of testing the water.
In the markets where people do get the full hour of Face the Nation the second half hour kicked off with an interview between Bob Schieffer, David Bernard, Heidi Cullen, Jeffrey Kluger and J. Marshall Shepherd. The discussion begins on page five of today's transcript or you can watch the interview below.
Tame compared with reality based blogs but honest by network media standards, I saw a pretty good discussion that touches upon some of the issues that don't get repeated enough. It is really sad what the comment page looks like right now. I guess whatever associate producer or production assistant who has the assignment of reading that page will attend the next Face the Nation production meeting and announce that "Viewers don't want to hear anything about that."
When I search for the quote from the last time that Jeffrey Kluger raised ratings at CBS "Well, I think of the folks who are the climate deniers as the flat earthers and the people who say the moon landings never happened," Google is overrun with links from climate denying flat earthers. Why do empty barrels have such staying power?
So if anyone is interested, go to that Face the Nation comment page and relate to that discussion. Perhaps we can change the mainstream media just a little bit. Send that CBS associate producer or production assistant to the next production meeting with the report that the viewers found the discussion to be "informative and engaging."