Dear MSNBC

When the election went the way it did I was a little worried about my go to news source.  The day to day of the churn of the current administration is just too good for TV.  I remember thinking that if I were a news director for one of the primetime shows that I would need to make some rules about content to make sure the shows just didn't tip over the edge.

The other night there was wall to wall, hour after hour coverage over what one particular witness - if he becomes a witness - might say.  That's not news.  I understand that it was potentially a big story, although maybe it isn't.  But even if it is, it hasn't happened yet.  At best this is speculation.  The people you have on commentating are really just making things up.  I can make things up myself.  Four hours of primetime to hype what someone might say is bad curating.

Even if he had actually formally said something that action would have happened under seal and we still would have had an army of pundits speculating on what they thought had happened and what, if they were right, it might actually mean.

And that was replaced with exclusive coverage of whether or not the special counsel and the President's son had seen each other in the airport.  That's not really news either.

There's lots of other things happening in the world.  There are people at war.  There are places we can't drink the water.  I am 100% that the time on the shows could be filled without dedicating it all to the circus.  Would it be asking too much to see something else on the news?  Whether I mean to be or not I am already voting a little with my feet.  The time I spend with this source is dropping and the editorial decisions are the reason.

MSNBC has a full primetime slate.  How about designating one show from each night and saying they won't cover the day's churn?  What if all the shows could cover anything in the top half of the hour but had to dedicate the bottom half of the hour to something else?  Maybe no single show should ever book the same guest on consecutive days.

We'd all do better if we could separate the news from the noise.