The usually sane Verne Gay, TV critic/reporter of New York's Newsday writes a column in which he advises CNN to pluck my old friend Dan Rather out of obscurity and give him a cable show. Verne hopes that a Rather removal to the lagging second-place network will cause them to stop obsessing over missing young white girls.
I've got news for you, Verne, CNN hiring Dan Rather (which will eventually happen I've long believed) will do nothing to stem the tide of such trivial news especially since during the 1980s media frenzy of missing white boys, Rather toyed with the idea of having a daily segment on the "CBS Evening News" missing children's pictures were put on the air.
Hiring Rather probably would boost CNN's ratings temporarily but wouldn't do anything to solve CNN's real problems which involve a fundamental misunderstanding of why people watch television: to see people they like talk about stuff that interests them in a manner that's relaxing.
Elsewhere on the web, Garret Graf of FishbowlDC profiles the enigmatic yet ubiquitous Washington Post media reporter Howard Kurtz.
