CNN Keeps Pressing “Rewind” & “Repeat”

This morning, I noted that CNN has reaired a sensational piece about car chases at least seven times in the last few weeks. An e-mailer says the trend is widespread:

“It’s not just that car chase package that’s aired over and over during a stretch of weeks, it’s a lot of other stuff, too. Most notably, big chunks of Anderson Cooper‘s first hour get another airing right away on his second hour. Last night, I noticed both the car chase package, a package on the sentencing of Carlie Brucia’s murderer, and the identical excerpt of a Cooper interview with her grandmother.

Couldn’t they at least re-edit some of this stuff so they have two somewhat different packages on the same subject? I’m at the point with the car chase package that, like Harvard students at a showing of ‘Casablanca,’ I find myself saying the words along with it.

Jon Klein has his head where the sun don’t shine, in my opinion. He simply cannot afford to turn off any more of the dwindling number of viewers his channel still has with this kind of stupid money-saving trick. If the “average viewer” only watches 4 to 6 minutes at a time, how long does he think they’re going to watch when they keep seeing the same stuff over and over again every time they turn on CNN? And he’s turning those of us who used to watch for longer stretches into 4-minute
watchers when we see YET ANOTHER rerun of the car chase package or the Gupta Sufi package or the Koch hurricane package coming up.”