GAME THEORY 2: What Comes After Kooksensus?
From Kookfighting to Kooksensus:
The Evolution of Cable News
Back in the O.J. days… Or maybe it was the Lewinsky Days, I can’t remember which… Viewed from this moment of Coronavirus Quarantine, decades later, they all blur into one long period Kookfighting on ‘news’ television. The format was simple: You had a moderator who acted like referee between different combatants who had extreme positions on an issue and argued with each other until the Ref weighed in, boldly telling the audience what they wanted to hear before they went to the next segment.
Which was more of the same on a different topic.
I called it Kookfighting at the time. A play on cockfighting. You get two kooks in there, they fight, the predictable one is declared winner and is invited back to humiliate themselves a week later.
Of course, guests with any shred of dignity, stopped showing up to be rig-rolled show after show. The ones with no dignity eventually got flushed out, because nobody wants to root for somebody who’s going to lose every time. That’s not good sports and it’s not good TV.
So what are you left with. You’re left with the Kookfighting champions who all agree with each other and the host.
The format had to evolve.
And it did.
Kookfighting became Kooksensus. In this format, all of the Kooks were on the same side against a straw-man opponent. That’s where we are now. We panels of ‘former’ somebodies or ‘professor’ somebody or ‘Dr’ somebody with a participation degree from Nowhere U. Or maybe from a real blown brand university. The game isn’t to beat a live opponent, it is to see who can top the other in the most extreme condemnation of the scarecrow.
In a larger sense, there’s no probing of an issue or anything old fashioned like ‘balance’ it is to come to Kooksensus. And to an audience of the converted, three Nobody McNothings, who agree give you a Kooksensus.
The sad thing is that right now, it is working. People actually tune in every night to watch a rigged event and come away feeling confirmed.
But the world keeps changing.
The problem is that eventually viewers get bored with predictability and drift away, so the pool of True Believers who need the confirmation bias dopamine hit gets smaller and smaller and more and more culty and sound stranger and stranger to people who aren’t in the KookKult.
When the KookKults get small enough, the networks realize they have to change formats.
And what about the hosts? They end up trapped in the Kult, too. Like type-cast actors, sooner or later, they realize they aren’t really pundits and free-thinkers, but they are Semi-scripted actors playing roles. Step out of the role and the Kult declares you a false god and contrition or banishment are your options. (This happens to Bill Maher now and again).
I mean, let’s be honest. Let’s suppose Nancy Pelosi says something that Sean Hannity actually likes, how many times does he have to think before he admits it, and if he does, it’s only after ‘a stopped clock is right twice a day’ preamble. The same goes for Rachel Maddow. She is as much captive of her Kult as Sean Hannity is.
And, eventually, even the Hosts get bored with it. Keith Olbermann’s defection back to sports was the first example. Chris Cuomo’s now retracted rant was, most likely, a deeper insight into what most of them are thinking, but not saying. This isn’t the week to jeopardize a paycheck and golden perch and an addicted and addicting fan base.
Because, as Bill O’Reilly and Megan Kelly demonstrated with their falls from grace, those perches are rare and, once lost, devolve you to a very small Kult on a Zoom chat.
And that’s a little sad, because Chris Cuomo’s rant was, perhaps, the most interesting and unpredictable thing he’s ever had to say:
“Speaking about his job as the host of CNN’s “Cuomo Prime Time,” the Queens-born anchor said he doesn’t want to spend his time “trafficking in things that I think are ridiculous. Such things include “talking to Democrats about things that I don’t really believe they mean” and “talking to Republicans about them parroting things they feel they have to say.”
It’s one thing for Cuomo to attack the Parrot Republicans, but will he ever risk his status by attacking the Democrats for not believing what they’re saying? It would lead to a more interesting show, but would it also lead to a career ending injury.
But the Bigger question of the day is, what does media evolve to when the Kooksensus stops working?
