MSNBC confronts viewer frustration, changes and an identity crisis

[SpankMe]

7. It's a good proposal

And, you're right that a dead guy has more credibility than MSNBC management.

Your proposal describes what PBS news shows were intended to be back in the day, and still kind of are. But since the balance and journalistic integrity you describe doesn't induce rage, it wouldn't get the viewership it needs to sustain itself much less be profitable.

Commentators on this subject have been proposing various forms of not-for-profit news, supported philanthropically, for decades. Variations on PBS/NPR and BBC news models have been envisioned, being funded by consortia of government, billionaires, paid subscriptions and existing big TV/cable media itself (ABC/Disney, CBS/Paramount, NBC/Comcast).

Some have suggested that commercial news - news as a profit center - be abandoned by the big media companies and that they instead provide it as a public service and be allowed to write off the expense, or donate a fraction of what they would have spent on news gathering and reporting to a CSPAN-like news organization that would be a high quality service like BBC or McClatchy or AP news.