Tornado Alley (PROG)

[janice shell]

One thing omitted in all that is the difference cable news has made. Until the mid-'80s, when CNN was born, most people's chief source of televised news were the broadcast networks. While their anchors and reporters had their own political views, they kept them off the air.

And the national news didn't get much time. In the early '60s, the shows were only 15 minutes long. By the end of the decade, they'd expanded to half an hour. Around the same time, they began doing their own investigative shows: 60 Minutes debuted in 1968.

Still, the evening news was largely nonpartisan. When CNN first appeared, it followed that example. But CNN quickly found it had to fill 24 hours a day with something. Opinion gradually came to play a larger role. And then Fox and MSNBC joined in the fun...