Rather leaves his anchor chair.
Dan Rather is off the air. Courage.
But if you are reading this, as Jim Geraghty of the National Review points out, you probably haven't watched the CBS evening news in years and don't care about it all that much. People who are interested in knowing what's going on in the world and who want more than a two minute summary are going elsewhere for their information. Dan's typical audience member, on the other hand, has to turn up their hearing aid in order to get the dumbed-down, liberal version of the news right before the denture commercials come on. This is not the demographic of the future, and that explains why the network news shows are bleeding audience.
The younger generations of news enthusiasts have formed a different set of habits regarding information that revolve around the emerging new media. If you are of a certain age or younger, you are getting your news from cable, talk radio and the Internet; not from Dan the Dinosaur. And so as Dan slips into the sunset, so does The Elite Media Monoculture. Sure they still have more viewers for now than anyone else. But their numbers are on the way down, while new media is still on the way up. Eventually it will be the new media which will have larger numbers. It is only a matter of time. So say goodnight Dan.
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