Nisha Chittal Quoted: Sunday Shows 2.0
NMS Associate Strategist Nisha Chittal contributes to -- and leads -- the discussion surrounding the lack of new media mastery by the Sunday shows such as Meet the Press.
"We may be living in the YouTube age, but from the look of most Sunday shows you’d never know it." - Nisha Chittal, NMS Associate Strategist
January 11, 2010
Over the weekend, I wrote about some recent criticism of the Sunday shows, along with suggestions such as running a fact-check online or mixing up the regular guests. And the piece prompted a few interesting responses, with more suggestions for utilizing technology better.
The Nation's Ari Melber noted that NBC didn't respond to Jay Rosen's fact-check suggestion that he addressed to "Meet the Press" EP Betsy Fischer a couple weeks ago, but David Gregory responded in a statement for my piece.
"That's a big shift from refusing to respond at all," Melber wrote. "And while it's an improvement, it also shows how these programs tend to be more responsive to other members of the media than to their audience."
While I think it's good that big-name journalists, producers and broadcast networks jump on the Twitter bandwagon, the public will notice whether it's being used to primarily promote content rather than responding to suggestions or constructive criticism -- a "one-way medium," as Rosen put it. (Amidst my own self-promotion on Twitter, I try to push others' pieces out there and engage with users when possible).
Nisha Chittal, over on Mediaite, addresses the current use of Twitter among Sunday show hosts and provides a number of suggestsions for incorporating social media in the long-running programs.
We may be living in the YouTube age, but from the look of most Sunday shows you’d never know it. Remember the 2008 presidential election debates, where CNN and YouTube asked citizens to submit questions to ask of the candidates, and then featured selected video questions during the debate? Would it kill us to allow citizens to submit questions to the newsmakers and politicians on Meet The Press, Face The Nation, and This Week? Whether it’s via Facebook, Twitter, or YouTube videos, allowing citizens to ask questions would give them a connection to the shows, engage them, and allow them to play a role in setting the news agenda. And talk show hosts like David Gregory and Bob Schieffer should help facilitate that citizen-politician connection. Although David Gregory, Bob Schieffer, and George Stephanopoulos all have Twitter accounts, their level of engagement with fans is very low. Schieffer and Stephanopoulos’s Twitter accounts aren’t even really them, but are merely RSS feeds of updates from their websites.