CNBC

The News With Shepard Smith Begins Tonight… Predictions

Clickford, Steven M.

It was Gram’s 79th birthday last year, October 11th, a Friday fall afternoon. 3:59 pm Eastern Time. I am having a late lunch. I can hear the TV in the dining room of which Gram is watching. I hear context of self-reflection. I also hear something about contracts and leaving. I literally run to the living room and saw the abnormal closing of Shepard Smith Reports on the Fox News Channel; using my ears, I knew he was gone. Both of us looked puzzled Because our box has a DVR, I rewound back 2 minutes before to see it again. This time, we see the leadup to to Neil Cauvto who went like “wola” and was felt he was thrown under the bus. In fact when you see the last jib cam shot, you see a group of people on an Avaya phone almost like coordinating his shadowed exit. 

Ironically Emily Rooney’s show on WGBH was on tape that evening because it was the upcoming Columbus Day Weekend. Did the panel follow up and made a segment the following Friday? Nope!  Not to mention in January she made a remark confused of where he was on the channel. I said he left on the week y’all off! Brian Steltzer had a tingle in his eye when the news broke at CNN.

Nevertheless Shep’s disappearance (whether you like him or not, whether or not you like his politics or whether or not you approve of his sexuality) was a huge void missing in cable, of which I am pointing to YOU COVID19 and POTUS & Friends! The news of Shep moving to CNBC was announced in mid to late summer and promos are running on CNBC’s air this week. His show begins tonight 7:00 Eastern on CNBC.

My predictions:

  • If you wanted balance and stable coverage on COVID19, Shep is the go-to guy. If you were missing better coverage, Shep being off the air didn’t help
  • There will most likely be some business and market coverage. That 7:00 ET slot had been reserved for emergent market events; and Shep can do that either on his own or help with his new CNBC team
  • Will Shep chase the storms in studio or in the field? That may not be out of the realm of possibilities.
  • This may not occur, but CNBC is due for a massive rebrand….way overdue. Because the dark blue colors of graphics and set have gone for too long. In fact in it’s 31 years, nearly half of it has been around dark blue/black; whether it’s graphics or sets and/or both. CNBC’s history has not had many years had vibrant colors. Their current studios is roughly 17 years old, and for at least 15 years, CNBC has had a lot of dark backdrops and lighting in the largest part of the building, the newsroom. You can’t tell me that it’s growing mold and other elements of sick building syndrome, which actually what SBS stands for.

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No Politics Here!

Clickford, Steven M.

I don’t like to discuss politics. My family have certain views, and some of my other extended family members have apparent views as well. From my subjective view, I see them lean to the right, but often repeating what their media they are consuming are telling them,

Not only that, we don’t talk about issues anymore. The “big picture” stuff. Stuff that politicians don’t control and bureaucrats can manipulate policy.

NOT ONE Member in my family puts their own politics in their own words. It’s often rip-and-read from whatever talking-head on cable news tells them.

This is what I also see on social media, people “sharing” content and remark with what they are instructed to do. It’s really sad.

We as Americans for over a decade are picking and choosing a side and then mock the other one, and what has been forgotten for the last decade is issues! We as Americans who were interested in politics, had a high level intelligence (meaning they were thinking on diplomatic and implicit tone). Now today it has stooped down to low level, emotional and sensational and explicitly telling people how to think, and not use original thinking.

I will not chant #MAGA like some person being directed by  dictator. I think for myself and therefore I believe in a democratic society.

Put Roger Ailes’ manipulation with Joel Cheatwood’s If it bleeds it leads mantra of 7 News and politics in the last decade evolved from the National Review type of conversations to the National Inquirer, of tabloid trash of political chatter, mixed with name-calling, and flashy political news that doesn’t have substance. I also can’t stand the current rendition of HuffPo, where they really rip the right on frivolous stuff.

I have been registered as an Independent since I was eighteen, and I have voted both parties in various offices. Also I can brag that I have voted in Town Meetings around my birthday in New Hampshire because municipal elections enable citizens to have more control on their government than voting for a congressperson and outsourcing democracy and citizenry to a D.C. Office. I noticed that the people who obsess about D.C. Politics in my family are the ones who grew up when my old town was more “rural” where rural governments were non existent and focus on the next largest government body – the Federal system.

Not only that, we don’t talk about issues anymore. The “big picture” stuff. Stuff that politicians don’t control and bureaucrats can manipulate policy.  But low calorie, same day news, mixed with the “happy moment caught on camera” is the norm. And as a result, we as Americans, both left, right and centrists have subjected to ourselves to lower class in less than a generation!

If you believe in holding ALL PEOPLE IN POWER accountable, you also have have investigative journalism. No not “consumer investigative journalism” like how an iPhone protector doesn’t work the way they claim. Go onto YouTube and search for some old News 8 Investigates from WFAA in Dallas, the station that pioneered enterprise journalism for TV, and was once a sister entity the prestigious Dallas Morning News.

I am afraid at times to share my issue- driven policy because I fear I would be painted by my loved ones as a liberal. I am sick and tired of fitting into a political cookie cutter anymore. I am sick and tired of “Liberal Democrat” to have same dirty tone as calling someone a c–t or a Republican that is cold hearted, or whatever stereotype.

Issues, Municipal Affairs, White collared crime… whatever happened to ball busting reporting? It’s been long gone and you can thank the demented POTUS Ronnie Regan who allowed deregulation of the media so you can entertain yourself to death with cable news copying the late Casey Kasem’s AT40 of Liberal Hipocracy instead of serious news.

I watch, FNC barely today, FBN is a joke, because it’s FNC2, and watch CNBC with my fingers to my nose, I barely stand the lefist Bloomberg TV, and I don’t watch the 6:30 news anymore, so after that, where do I turn? On Friday nights, since 1998 (with a few on and off years), I’ve tuned to my journalistic idol, Emily (the daughter of the late Andy) Rooney to geek out on the news media’s coverage of week events, Beat The Press the local WGBH show. Because BTP focuses on issues in the media when the other Sunday Morning shows, Reliable Sources and Media Buzz on CNN and FNC are so flipping polarized.

I will not chant #MAGA like some person being directed by  dictator. I think for myself and therefore I believe in a democratic society.

7 Years Ago This Holiday – Steve Jobs’ Attempt for a Holiday News Dump

Clickford, Steven M.

For politicians, if you don’t want to be on the news, you dump unpopular stories on a Friday in the summer. If you want to expose a story, you do it on a Monday or Tuesday morning.

If you don’t want to freak out investors, disclose your story on a bank holiday. In the U.S. Martin Luther King Day occurs on the 3rd Monday every January. Steve Jobs who was getting very ill, thought his PR folks at Apple dump the story that morning, and no one will notice since most Wall Streeters are not in the trading floor – even for a holiday.

Most of the cable business channels, CNBC and Bloomberg do not have staff who come in, except for European closes when there is major events that break. But in recent years, they just run whatever is set on the playout servers.

Fox Business Network, whether they had that year or did since the start, would be on every bank holiday. Even a holy day like Good Friday. FBN was on a regular scheduled Business Day programming with a ticker with Friday’s quotes and live bugs that were of the futures. The story was  Steve Jobs’ leave of absence, and if memory serves, he resigned from Apple in August and passed in October of that year.

The most ironic thing was CNBC and Bloomberg did not touch the story on cable. Their sites had the story, but not one reporter could do a live phoner with a still graphic or have someone come in and do a live shot or what. Since technology and business do go hand and hand, this was a major breaking news story in this realm. The established cable business news channels were MIA. No person did not want to be bothered at CNBC to go into Englewood Cliffs and do a five minute breakin, or Bloomberg for that matter. Bloomberg West I believe came on the air just before or after that time, though did some live program out west I believe by 6:00 Eastern. CNBC by late afternoon ET did ran a crawl of this earth shattering headline in the business world but had limited information prior to. Meanwhile FBN owned this story throughout the day and into the evening, and repeated that story every hour. I remember my mother was ether sick or got snowed in and we learned the news when Don Imus’ then show was on that network since FBN in those days had better news coverage in business.

You wouldn’t think that after a significant member of technology and business made news and a scrappy network on 1211 6th Ave would own the story, that they would have plans in the future. FBN was still a ratings challenged network for the time, but they made major improvements as time went on.

I would bet this story made them look really decent because of their continued business news despite a holiday. And today the tag had the annual “While CNBC is on reruns, we’re open for business!”

Steve Jobs was the winner for choosing to be low key, however he was naive that FBN was the domestic news agency that would ran with the story – the same day – making him not run away of burying a material news story, while the established CNBC was the looser.

Steve Jobs was a man who did transform the world’s technology and Apple was always a popular news story amongst the technical and business press, and on cable news. While I don’t think what he did was wrong, what was wrong was how the competing cable channels just was unable respond – on a holiday mostly for financial workers, and schools and government.

The egg was on CNBC’s face for sure!

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