Tag: Garrett Searight

"Without skipping a beat, he goes, 'I think you'd be pretty good as a talk show host.' And I thought, well, I did radio in college — I never thought about that."

Perhaps they don't see it as the platform he believes it to be. Perhaps they've weighed the risk of a combative format against the reward and decided to pass. Either way, his monologue invites a question he didn't ask himself: what does his guest list actually say about him?

Tuesday's tribute worked because it felt honest, not staged. Consequently, it's the kind of moment that reminds viewers why they tuned in beyond the headlines.

The show already draws the largest audience in cable news, and adding a proven personality only strengthens that position.

"I think we're going to try pretty hard to find the things that might not be on the national or even statewide radar and make them something that our listeners do find interest in."

The great philosopher, Seneca, put it well centuries ago: "We suffer more in our imagination than in reality." Few situations in recent media memory fit that quote as neatly as this one.

"One thing I loved about the guy — he was an upper, I call it. He was always up. Life was an adventure to him. That's one thing I hope people take away from their memories of him — not how he died, but how the guy knew how to live."

Networks that only cater to their existing base tend to shrink over time as that base ages out. Consequently, if a scrolling text chain is what it takes to pull younger eyes toward CNN's programming, that's a trade worth making.

Nobody wants an outside ownership group walking into their newsroom and announcing that everything's been done wrong. That conversation never goes well, no matter who's delivering it or how it's framed.

"We're all in the advertising and marketing business, in the small niche world that we live in, and we think, 'Oh yeah, use it to make a headline, use it to write copy or do a summary of something.' And yeah, they're using it for that. But it's a remarkably small percentage. And they're also not using it to any great extent right now for marketing and advertising recommendations."