Our emphasis on political coverage from the day we were born here was well-founded, and we believe there were opportunities there that we could do it in a more interesting, appealing and balanced way.
Nobody's profitable at this moment, because recession is on; advertising dollars are down, and expenses are way up. So that kind of belies the situation that you would expect, because the ratings are way up everywhere.
My sense about Greta is that people ought to wait and see and see if she doesn't indeed turn out to be as balanced as we hope and expect she will. But there you are.
MSNBC got some very good people. They've got a good-looking set. All They're first-class. Somewhere along the way, they kind of lost their identity as a news channel, and they started doing a lot of other sort of magazine-type programming.
We get a ton of email; everybody does now. It gives us a kind of a pulse that you can feel.We hear people saying, thank you for being fair, for being balanced.
There have been two Geraldo Riveras through his long career. One of them was a reporter who has done some remarkable work. The other was a television show host who did what it took to get an audience.
What played to what had been a relative weakness for us-this was exploding overseas as well, and we had to scramble to mount some reach and get into places and be competitive on the ground.
There's a certain elitism that has crept into the attitudes of some in journalism, and it played out perfectly over the issue of these little American flag lapel pins.
You have to have pace, you have to have high production values, you have to have interesting graphics, and you have to have attractive people. CNN could afford not to be so obedient to those commands, and for a long time, it wasn't.
When you're five years old, and you're running a business that people did not think there was room for, getting attention is not a bad thing. Letting it be known by whatever colorful language is necessary is not a bad thing.
We've had a series of major news stories that have brought in viewers who either were sampling to see what else was available or were normal news watchers. The Florida recount and the end of the election was a huge development. And then 9/11 came along.
We need more foreign reach; no question about that. And we're working on getting that. We need more people abroad; we need some more bureaus. That is really an important job.
