My take on Crossfire

While Jon Stewart is the one to have very publicly stated that the Emperor has no clothes, so far as CrossFire is concerned, it is my opinion that the Internet and the bottom line are the two factors that truly spelled an end for the show and for Tucker Carlson on CNN.

In the old days, the appearance would have come and gone. People may have chatted about it around the water cooler for a day or two, but then the story would have disappeared. It would have been a funny story that the people at CrossFire would tell at parties.

But in our broadband world, people who missed the episode were able to find copies on the various peer to peer networks. They were able to download it from sites such as iFilm. The clip just kept bobbing around out there. What's more - the execs at CNN were able to keep tabs on the distribution of that clip. They were able to take a good hard look at the numbers.

The latest Wired has an interview with the designer of BitTorrent, in which they discuss how the program was used to share the clip. According to the article, the number of people who downloaded that one episode amounts to three times the audience size of CrossFire. For every one who watched CrossFire, there were three people who were cheering on Jon's appeal for an end to the charade.

If you were the president of a network and you saw there were three people who wanted a different approach to every one who liked your current approach - what choice would you make?