Eugene David<br>...The One-Minute Pundit

Posted 3:08 PM by Gene

3,310 WORDS ON THE PHENOMENON OF THE CENTURY, THE BIG O (or rather one of the TWO BIG O's), and it boils down to THIS:

Glenn Garvin, television writer for the Miami Herald, says most of America isn't paying attention. "Olbermann is a media cause célèbre and a popular flop," Garvin wrote in an e-mail interview. "To me, he's simply the flip side of Bill O'Reilly, a guy rewriting the wires and sprinkling it with random political rants, better gag lines, but a more predictable point of view."

Further defying the notion of a full-fledged youth revolution is the matter of the age of "Countdown's" audience. MSNBC has made much of Olbermann's pull with younger viewers. Among the ratings coups last year was "Countdown" moving past CNN into second place among the cable news networks for viewers age 25 to 54. Its own research, however, shows the median age of the "Countdown" viewer at 59. If nothing else, the numbers show just how tiny the younger audience is for even the hippest cable television news.

Will you hacks (writing for JERNALISM REVUES or otherwise) please stop wasting millions of words restating the obvious?

(Via the usual Romy, who'd have used millions of words too)