It was not too surprising to read the ratings news this morning that CNN has finished fourth among cable news networks. Bad enough to lose to the partisan voices of the right and left on Fox and MSNBC, respectively, but to have your lunch eaten by Nancy Grace and her ilk at HLN must really hurt. (To read that the latter two were running repeats in the ten o’clock slot when CNN poster boy Anderson Cooper bares his blue-eyed soul is just salt in the wounds.)

I’m sure there will be lots of opining about the polarized nature of our national blah blah, and I bet you anything that someone at CNN is quoting Yeats to his colleagues this morning: “The best lack all conviction, while the worst/Are full of passionate intensity.” But CNN, which invented the idea of nonstop cable news, doesn’t seem to know what it’s about anymore. 

If you dip into the network throughout the day, as I do, you see something akin to schizophrenia: too many of the daytime anchors seem to revel in knowing next to nothing (don’t you get the impression Heidi Collins would always rather be somewhere else?), while later in the day you get the stentorian and stiff Wolf Blitzer, followed by the lamentable Lou Dobbs. (Would you just go to Fox now, please?) No wonder people have tuned out by ten. 

CNN doesn’t need to choose sides; it just needs to report the news as if it were a serious calling, without taking itself too seriously. The multi-part series like Latino in America may win the network awards, but they make for lousy television. (Don Lemon’s interview with Alberto Gonzalez redefined the term “softball”). Rather than looking to the competition the network should look to the past — its own and others.

Before Brian Williams moved to NBC he hosted a 10 pm newscast on MSNBC that was the very model of an evening news program. The top stories were covered in relative depth, the guests were well informed and viewpoints were balanced, and Williams himself was a most agreeable and intelligent host. His talents are lost at the Metamucil hour of 6:30 though hearing him on NPR’s Wait, Wait Don’t Tell Me this weekend I was reminded of his sly and funny presence.  Most importantly he seems to know what he’s about. 

As Porter Bibb entitled his book about the early days of CNN, It Ain’t As Easy As It Looks.