"Television news is about consistency and companionship."

December 4, 2022 9:30 AM

"The End of Companion Television" Former CNN host Brian Stelter on the end of live programming on the Headline News (HLN) network (SLThe Atlantic, archive.org version)
posted by box (20 comments total)

I had a much more acerbic comment written up and deleted all of it because it seemed way too aggressive to serve as the first comment on this. So I'll just note that TikTok creators, podcast hosts and Substack writers haven't had the luxury of a two-decade engagement with a steady audience. When a major social network can be taken over by a billionaire in an instant and thrown into freefall overnight, "consistency" is an impossibility. It seems brutally unfair to say TikTok creators could "learn a thing" from someone who had a gig they'll almost certainly never be able to replicate no matter how hard they try or how much they want it.
posted by chrominance at 10:29 AM on December 4, 2022 [13 favorites]

Huh. As a HUGE fan of HLN in the 80s and 90s, I was extremely disappointed when it stopped doing the 30-min "headline news" programming circa 2001. In the years since then, if I happened to stumble across HLN while channel surfing, all I ever saw was the "true crime" and "lifestyle" stuff, and assumed that it had entirely abandoned actual news.
posted by davidmsc at 10:36 AM on December 4, 2022 [8 favorites]

I can't help that as the most anodyne news channel pivots to murder stories, Newsmax and OAN are available on most American TVs next to the Bon Appetit channel. Maybe we need like, more flower boxes in windows or something.
posted by credulous at 10:41 AM on December 4, 2022 [1 favorite]

I thought Newsmax and OAN were losing market access and/or getting sued.
posted by Selena777 at 10:44 AM on December 4, 2022 [1 favorite]

I'm regularly shocked that HLN still exists.
posted by Thorzdad at 10:57 AM on December 4, 2022 [2 favorites]

"I was extremely disappointed when it stopped doing the 30-min "headline news" programming…"

Me, too. In the late 80s and early 90s it was not uncommon for it to be the only programming running on our TV. Through an oddball quirk, I discovered the audio portion of HLN was broadcast on a local FM radio frequency, commercials and all. It was the best commute programming ever.
posted by bz at 11:00 AM on December 4, 2022 [3 favorites]

This restructuring, or more succinctly, destruction of news media, really has me concerned. The primary issue is credibility. Who is reporting this? Do they know what they are talking about? Is this factual or just opinion? Being on the more agèd side, I grew up with real newspapers, real TV news, real news magazines, and there was enough context and content to be able to apply some level of credibility to the reporting. Part of that credibility was in how much it cost to produce that news. CBS News, the Washington Post, Time magazine are examples. And yes, you still had to be suspicious about a lot of reporting, but there were enough outlets to compare reportage, so you had the ability to form judgements. If it was from one of these sources, chances are it was probably worthwhile seeing.

But now, where news reporting has been reduced to platforms, such as TikTok, where literally anyone can post something, and podcasts, where anyone can claim to be an expert, the critical tools are gone, and facts are all now just opinions. What had been a choir of a few loud voices has now become a cacophony of loud voices, all claiming to know, but I can’t stand the din. And I have pretty much given up on trying to follow the news.

Except, there is Metafilter. I’ve been hanging out here for quite awhile, I have learned to trust the community here, and since before the 2016 election, Metafilter has been my news source. It’s taken awhile to get the lay of the land here, but I will say that here there is a high level of “consistency and companionship.” Thank you. I’ve gone from being a daily news junkie since around the third grade, to being reluctant and probably afraid to follow the news now given the psychic damage it presents. But, thanks to the people here and the always present MetaFILTER, I can face the world and it’s horror through a comforting blue lens.
posted by njohnson23 at 11:17 AM on December 4, 2022 [21 favorites]

It appears that Newsmax might still be on DirecTV, but that OAN isn't carried on anything but online streaming.

I spent many an hour, day, even week with Headline News back in the day. It was the perfect wallpaper television channel for me. That was easily a lifetime ago, though.
posted by hippybear at 11:41 AM on December 4, 2022

You can count me in among those who miss the 30 minute repeating CNN; my friends and I even used it as a unit of time: “What did you do this morning?” “I did a couple of laps of Headline News while I cleaned up after the party.” And it was always interesting when something new came up; it must be important if they updated the HLN feed. And you can also count me among those who appreciate MeFi as a feed for breaking news, even if newsfilter gets a tepid reception sometimes. The 9/11 thread really was one of MeFi’s best moments (and it happened a year before I joined), with updates from a variety of sources even as the major news websites were overwhelmed with traffic or other communication breakdowns. And for a time afterward FPPs were overwhelmingly related to the attacks.

But to get back to the actual topic of the post; yes, I’m sad to see HLN go, but it really hasn’t been HLN since about the same time the M in MTV stood for “music”.
posted by TedW at 11:44 AM on December 4, 2022 [1 favorite]

I haven't had cable since the late 90's, and suddenly had a wave of nostalgia for CNN headline news (and hearing James Earl Jones on regular CNN "THIS is CNN").

My memories of CNN from that era are of a channel that would pick up on more fluff that the broadcast network news (24 hours is a lot of time to fill with content) but was serious and capable when it mattered.

What little broadcast news I've seen in the last 20 years suggests they've all gone sensationalistic, even if they're not all pure BS (a la Fox, OAN, etc.).
posted by Ickster at 11:55 AM on December 4, 2022 [1 favorite]

What little broadcast news I've seen in the last 20 years suggests they've all gone sensationalistic

PBS Newshour remains a very good solid news broadcast, twice the length of other network news broadcasts.

When BBC World News America first started up, it was also an hour. I think they might still do an hour long version but it's not broadcast anywhere that I can find. That's also a pretty solid half-hour of news, though, even if it feels truncated in weird ways.
posted by hippybear at 11:58 AM on December 4, 2022 [3 favorites]

I'm also reminded that there used to be something like 2 hours of broadcast news back in the 80's (which is all I have knowledge of):

- 5:00 - "Light" local news
- 5:30 - National / International news from the network
- 6:00 - local news
- 10:00 - local news

No idea what networks do today.
posted by Ickster at 11:59 AM on December 4, 2022 [1 favorite]

Man, my dominant memory of my grandfather was him washing dishes and watching headline news on its slowly evolving repeat cycle seemingly forever.
posted by kaibutsu at 12:16 PM on December 4, 2022 [2 favorites]

thanks to the people here and the always present MetaFILTER, I can face the world and it’s horror through a comforting blue lens.

I prefer a professional white lens, but to each their own.
posted by Greg_Ace at 12:22 PM on December 4, 2022 [2 favorites]

From the linked article, "Television news, the way I see it, is about consistency and companionship."

I think this, more than anything else, explains not the demise of TV news but its fundamental flaw. Any "companionship" offered by the nonstop blare of the television is at best a hollow imitation of real companionship. (And just to anticipate the concern-troll-esque questions about what should be done for people whose ability to access real community is limited, I don't think we need to completely solve that problem to point out that the TV news cycle isn't the right answer. Just as we wouldn't say dirt is a good substitute for people who lack access to healthy food because they can still put it in their mouths and chew it.)

As to the question of why this kind of "companion TV" is in decline, I'd guess it has something to do with its primary audience getting old and dying. I can't help but think of my baby boomer parents who retired a few years ago to essentially watch TV together full time. It's only through good fortune and their previous political leanings that they have not turned into FNC/OANN junkies, although plenty of their friends have. The TV goes on first thing in the morning and it's the last thing to go off before bed. It's in their old age that the deep dysfunction of their relationship with TV as a medium becomes clearer and clearer: their dependence on its routines and rituals, their unquestioning trust of the information it provides, their blindness to its manipulations, their need to validate their reality by seeing it reflected in the screen, and ultimately their profound love for it, one-sided though that love may be.
posted by angrynerd at 12:23 PM on December 4, 2022 [9 favorites]

Any "companionship" offered by the nonstop blare of the television is at best a hollow imitation of real companionship.

A few decades ago, NBC anchor and cultural observer Edwin Newman called it "audio wallpaper". Voices talking in your house, where there would otherwise be lonely silence.
posted by gimonca at 12:34 PM on December 4, 2022 [2 favorites]

I guess I didn't know that HLN had gone away from its old format but I haven't really watched cable news since the 90s.
posted by octothorpe at 12:49 PM on December 4, 2022

I wonder if he's too invested in the medium to admit this - younger generations just aren't picking up the TV news habit.
posted by Selena777 at 12:55 PM on December 4, 2022 [2 favorites]

> In the years since then, if I happened to stumble across HLN while channel surfing, all I ever saw was the "true crime"

Unfamiliar with its history or what the initials HLN stood for, we just called it the Homicide Lovers' Network
posted by Sockin'inthefreeworld at 1:04 PM on December 4, 2022 [1 favorite]

I was around for the 'headline news period', we even watched it in school occasionally in a lazy coach's history class. It sucked back then too IMO. IMO it was a precursor to pop radio - every 30 minutes is basically a repeat. So you can step in for 30, and not check back again and not miss anything.
posted by The_Vegetables at 8:34 AM on December 5, 2022