Jay Weber transcript 1-25-24 6:43 am
Let’s talk about failing news and entertainment outlets-shall we?
They all have one thing in common: they ‘went woke’. They followed their baser instincts and let themselves get caught up in leftist dogma and trump derangement syndrome, and they ruined their own products, and companies, and many of them cost themselves their own jobs, in the process.
Let’s start with CNN- which destroyed its own ratings, starting in 2015, when their entire operation-top to bottom-became the ‘trump derangement network’.
It started with those famous snippets of CNN’s anchors and pundits sitting on-set on election night...ashen-faced and shocked...that Trump had won, and Hillary had lost.
Remember those images?
They’re still fun to watch on YouTube: Wolf, and Jake Tapper, and Dana Bash, and the entire CNN gaggle of lefty pundits...seeing their party’s hopes for a permanent control of this country-dashed on the rocks of trump’s ‘out of nowhere’ popularity.
That shock transitioned into four years of relentless, relentless, never-ending, daily, hourly, quarterly, Trump bashing that drove nearly all their listeners away.
I remember being in New Zealand, having dinner with a host couple, and having them ask me: why do these people hate Donald trump so much? Explain it to us? Because he seems like a good change and should at least be given a chance.
These are New Zealanders- looking thru a prism in which- all they got in the way of American cable news was CNN-and couldn’t figure out why everyone on this alleged ‘news’ station was suddenly -to a person and two a show- obsessed with hating trump.
Even when it became clear that their trump obsession was killing their ratings on CNN, MSNBC, the network shows... They kept going. Especially CNN.
And now- four years later and with another chance to either cover him fairly or just continue to make the same mistakes and continue to kill off their audience-they’re right back at it.
Last week- CNN primetime literally lost out in the ratings to repeats of gun smoke and old Jim and Tammy Fay Baker TV revivals.
It’s hard to explain how tragically pathetic that number of viewers is-for any-cable station, much less CNN. Ugandan cooking shows would be disappointed with these ratings.
Jersey shore goombah shows...would be disappointed with these ratings.
The bluegrass music video network...would be disappointed with these ratings.
Folks- just for comparison-over the last few years- after CNN’s great fall and after Trump left office- a prime time CNN show has probably been getting between 800-thousand and a million viewers-on average.
Last week only half of that pathetic number tuned in. They cannot pay their bills and pay their staffers- CNN cannot sell ads-with this level of ratings.
CNN is now the equivalent of liberal talk radio in Wisconsin...whose hosts openly beg for advertisers and for people to pay attention to them.
What do they call themselves? The devil’s underwear?
What does Mike Crute call his network as he begs for ads? Silent radio?
Well, CNN is now the equivalent of liberal talk radio: no one’s listening to it, but it was left on for the dog when its owner left the house.
This is how bad CNN’s ratings are now. And these nights reflect Iowa and New Hampshire caucus and primary night coverage.
Then there’s the news that the LA Times is laying off one fourth of its staff- due to falling subscriptions and a lack of revenue. This is the fifth-largest newspaper in the country. Tech billionaire bought it six years ago to revive it.... but not even California liberals want to read this paper anymore, apparently.
Folks-the tech billionaire who owns it is Asian. People of all colors were let go.
And yes, this came after some employees staged a union walk out on Monday-which I talked about being particularly stupid when you know the company you work for is failing and management has more than enough reason to start firing people.
Folks-of the 115 people laid off, 94- were members of the union guild. Oops.
The paper is losing 30 to 40-million dollars a year. Even a billionaire isn’t going to put up with year after year of never-ending losses.
So, that played out as expected.
Then there’s the news that Jon Stewart is going to return to the craptacular daily show on comedy central-which also tanked because its producers and writers ‘went woke’.
And yes, it was always a product being made for comedy central by a left-wing staff that catered to a liberal audience...but under John Stewart it became more of an equal-opportunity comedy show. They’d go after democrats and nutty liberals nearly as hard as they went after republicans and conservatives.
There was some balance under Stewart, as well as more of an interest in ‘making this funny’ instead of making it nasty and biting...so we can ‘own’ the right.
It was left wing and preacher even before Stewart left, but after he did, the producers and staffers decided that they needed to go ‘all in’ on the America-hating and conservative bashing.
Comedy central decided to hire a battery of foreign comedians to come in and bash America from a distance- like John Oliver-
And they went with a rather unfunny, untalented south African comedian named Trevor Noah to replace Stewart.
They clearly didn’t choose him based on talent, so the choice had to be solely on skin color. Moreover, they moved to that standard for hiring all the other comedians that they’ put around him-as fake reporters. Suddenly, there had to be a an Asian one, and a loud black lady, etc. etc.
The daily show producers hired by checking ethnic boxes instead of hiring based on who was funny. They had to be ethnic and woke-or they weren’t getting the gig.
And so, of course the daily show has been a failed product ever since.
Well, now comedy central is so desperate that they are bringing John Stewart back to try to revive the show in an election year.
I never saw that show-but it was a show that had a much more strident, left-wing, arrogant John Stewart tone to it.
He wasn’t as jovial or fair on that apple product as he was on the daily show. Trump derangement syndrome has ruined him, too.
So, we’ll see if he can be funny himself and can ‘right the ship’ behind the scenes of this show over the next year-and make the product more about ‘being funny’ than ‘trashing the right’.
I’m going to predict right away that neither he, nor anyone else affiliated with that show, wants to see that happen-or is willing to move away from the strident trump and GOP bashing-
And so, i don’t see a great ‘daily show’ renaissance coming. But we’ll see. But comedy central exes say he will be the executive producer for the next year and will quote shape the show for the future’.
Yeah. Okay.
It will continue to fail if it’s about a rainbow of colors of unfunny people....talking ‘woke’.
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