Yep CNN deserves a lot of the blame for starting news as entertainment.

They didn't really start it. If you remember CNN from the 90s, it was very staid, very long-form debate-y, very serious people discussing and debating national and world news A couple things changed that: FoxNews's creation in '96, Clinton's impeachment, and 9/11 sensationalized 24/7 news.

I think the bigger issue was the switch to 24/7 and the need to fill the hours with content, regardless of the quality of the content. That and the elimination of time to do proper editing before content or news was released. And of course OJ and the switch to newstainment.

CNN has been 24/7 since the 80s, though.

It was literally CSPAN-esque back then, except instead of a live feed, it was more sober, staid analysis and discussion of government affairs, which is kind of what CSPAN (tries to) do(es) now with their anchors.

It was also a news bulletin. Headlines, soundbites, live reports, taped reports, sports, business and yes, national weather segments. Then in the early 2000s, they shitcanned all of it for 3 stories max involving one liveshot and then panels for the whole hour. Then repeat every hour...

Absolutely right.

Maybe talk radio, too?

AM radio laid a lot of the groundwork

Talk radio, then cable news

I would argue even further than that. There's a stage show called Best of Enemies showing the raise of using politic analytics to gain higher ratings. I think that was the name of the show.

I've long agreed with this. The need to fill 24 hours means blowing up bullshit nothingness into stories, and that makes actually newsworthy stories easier to bury.

“Dog Bites Man”, “Man Bites Dog”, “Here’s What It Means That a Man Is Going to Bite A Dog”, “How Things are Going to Change for You Now that Men Might Be Biting Dogs,” and “Inside the Conspiracy Theory that It Wasn’t Actually a Man Who Bit the Dog”

Real old heads remember talk radio

which predates cable news but coincidentally had its all-time peak in influence near the beginning of the cable news era

Yeah, I think tv borrowed heavily from talk radio in content and style

And when Republicans got rid of the Fairness Doctrine

Correct! The OJ trial + CNN was a seismic event for letting news out into the mode of permanent existence, and make it co-exist alongside daytime television

Yeah tho it’s kinda like having a sugar rush vs. mainlining cocaine

oh, for sure! but there was a time when our political system wasn't jacked up on any stimulants, relatively speaking at least

Anyone who has watched their parents or grandparents retire and get slowly radicalized can attest to this. My mom still calls it a smartphone and she can repeat Maddow talking points from memory. My grandmother couldnt even use her phone but she was dialed in on all kinds of right wing conspiracies

I forget where I heard it, but the news used to be a small segment on TV. Now it's a fucking lifestyle.

Gingrich used CSPAN to get people mad about cloture votes and other procedural obscurities. In the 80s!

before there was the online cult of popularism there was the cable tv cult of savviness, I think

If the ghost of Marshall McLuhan appeared, we’d have to tell him that a the US installed a tv reality show host into the White House. I think he’d say “it was almost inevitable, wasn — wait did you say ’reality show’?” Tell me what you think that means.