PDB TV

Early in this administration there were stories about how difficult it was to deliver a briefing.  The tale was that exhaustive written briefings wouldn't be read.  Advisors were told that they would be more effective if they delivered materials heavy on charts rather than text and that it couldn't hurt to mention the President frequently.  Getting your information across turned out to be a previously unanticipated challenge.

At the same time we were also told, frequently that the folks that were able to get their message across were the hosts at Fox News.  We heard that the time before the start of the day in the office and the time late in the day and into the night were often spent watching political shows on television.  Early on mostly this was about Fox.  Later on it was often also OAN or sometimes even smaller outlets.  This interest would often even include calling in and contributing to various programs.

Put those two things together and it seems like more than one White House Chief of Staff might have missed an opportunity.  It is their job to put the information together in a way that it will be best received.  Why didn't they form an in house television news network?

Is it such a strange idea that in the twenty first century information could possibly be delivered in this mode?  It isn't like they had to put together 24 hours of programming.  My guess is that they would have needed 6, maybe 8 hours of content.  There is the chance that some, maybe most of the content wouldn't register (just running as background noise), but in the environment they were working in that doesn't sound much worse than we'd been told they were already doing.

They could have gone right out and hired hosts away from the various network outlets.  They could have built a couple of sets and staffed up a couple of shows.  They'd need a two hour morning show, maybe 2-3 newscasts and maybe a magazine show.  The guests on the shows would have been the people that would have been generating or delivering briefings and then a team of civilians that the producers would know would have a voice that would be heard.  Shows would run live once a day and be stored on a DVR where they could be accessed anytime.  The supervising producer would be available on the phone at any time to receive specific instructions about desired content from the audience of one.

Probably the thing should run commercial free.  Maybe station breaks could be like they are on NPR, teasing upcoming content and promoting other shows on the network.

We heard over and over how what they were doing wasn't working.  We're still hearing it now.  Someone dropped the ball here.  It was their job to figure out how to make it work not just mope indefinitely about how it wasn't working.