And you complain that we never bear good news.
After 16 years, CNN is pulling the plug on “Capital Gang,” its Saturday night lungfest created in 1989 by Robert Novak. The last show will tape tonight and air tomorrow night.
The audience for “Capital Gang” has been fading for a while now, but the show’s ratings absolutely fell off a cliff this year, as viewership plunged from around 800,000 to slightly more than 500,000, according to the Washington Post.
“Capital Gang” is the second horse shot out from under Novak in recent weeks. Earlier, CNN’s new chief honcho Jonathan Klein evaporated the weekday show “Crossfire,” on which Novak was also a regular.
But like a zombie in a George Romero movie, Novak is proving to be exceedingly hard to get rid of: CNN said he’ll begin making appearances on Wolf Blitzer’s new three-hour weekday show, “The Situation Room.”
Two steps forward, one step back. Hey, that’s about as good as it gets in the news racket.
–Steve Lovelady
Steve Lovelady was editor of CJR Daily.