CNN's Five Most Annoying "Personalities"

CNN, you may have read here recently, has a ratings problem.

It's slipped to fourth in cable news' prime-time rankings, passed in the Nielsens by its ugly stepsister, Headline News, ancestral home of Glen Beck and Nancy Grace.

How might CNN get more eyeballs?

One way is to go the tabloid route -- permanently place, perhaps, a Headline News-type graphic at the bottom of the screen reading "Tot Mom," "Natalee Holloway" or "Craigslist Killer."

But the most effective route? That may be to get rid of what network TV programmers call "Instant Tune-Out Factors." Eliminate the "personalities" who make so many of us grab the remote.

In other words, dump the annoying people. And CNN has quite a few of them, you may have noticed.

As Nanki-Poo sings in "The Mikado," "I've got a little list." Herewith, my nominations for...

THE FIVE MOST ANNOYING PEOPLE ON CNN

1. Lou Dobbs. A no-brainer -- literally. This Limbaugh-like Uber-Bloviator is mercifully cooling his jets right now, since most people are too busy dealing with paying their mortgages to pay much attention to "Looky" Lou's anti-immigrant posturing and race-baiting. The xenophobic shtick will return, though -- like a bent coin in a vending machine. Plus, Dobbs' posturing last year as a self-proclaimed spokesperson for the middle class was almost as laughable as his coy hints he might be persuaded to run for President. (Psst. Carrying a handful of Congressional districts near Dallas and Phoenix probably won't do the job, Big Fella.). CNN claims it's situated between MSNBC and Fox News politically, but Dobbs' incessant braying about our supposedly "broken borders" would be right at home at Fox Noise.

2. Ali Velshi. If Lex Luthor wore glasses and an IFB earpiece, it might go something like...this tiresome sight gag/human bullhorn posing as a savvy economic analyst. Velshi, the most annoying bald Canadian import since Howie Mandel, delivers staccato bursts of alleged financial wisdom that are full of sound and fury and signify nothing -- except that he's a financial poseur. This glorified radio host's main gimmick: Standing in front of CNN's huge computer screen and trying to look authoritative as he points to economic and financial jargon. (Just what the viewing public has needed to survive the financial tempests of the last few months). A guy who looks like an escapee from a minimum-security prison telling us to pay off our credit cards? That's all you got? Plus, CNN inexplicably uses this meathead on political panels. Suze Orman is only half as annoying as this well-tailored visual gimmick.

3. Rick Sanchez: Jon Stewart's always looking for an excuse to show old footage of Sanchez's attention-getting stunt of getting Tase'd. Why? Because it feels so good, and I agree with Stewart. Irksome midday anchor "Hey-Look-at-Me" Sanchez's newscasts always seem to be more about Sanchez and his outsized ego than about the news. The ever-preening Sanchez is training to be the next Geraldo.

4. T.J. Holmes: I endured this feckless CNN weekend anchor for several years on a San Francisco local TV station before he was kicked "upstairs." Holmes is shallower than a kiddie pool, something all too obvious each time he opens his mouth and makes sappy happy talk. Holmes makes Ted Baxter look like Zbigniew Brzezinski. Note to CNN news execs: This is what happens when you don't look at enough audition tapes. In Holmes' case, San Francisco TV's gain is CNN's loss.

5. Soledad O'Brien: This ousted one-time CNN morning anchor has been re-branded as a CNN "Special Correspondent." Like Holmes, she also came from an NBC affiliate in San Francisco, where calling her "unremarkable" became routine in my TV column. "I still don't get it," one of her former S.F. colleagues told me recently, shaking her head. "She's not talented." True, but it's obvious that having a catchy name, a crooked smile and an annoying glottal delivery apparently play well at CNN Central.

(Thanks to visitors to my web site, dc weasels, for your nominations).
OK, readers: Who at CNN should have been included here?

Follow Bill Mann on Twitter: www.twitter.com/newsmann

Comments

[MsYellowDog]

You left out Wolf Blitzer...he single-handedly drove me away from CNN for good.(I already had turned away from Lou Dobbs...if I wanted to hear what he says,I'd look at Faux News)

[SouthernBlueBelle]

Numero Uno: Wolf Blitzer-he has the most annoying monotone delivery ever.
Numbero Dos: Mary Matalin - nuf said.

[jonjon358]

All that might be true, but TJ Holmes is HOT. They could have him on reading the dictionary and I'd watch it.

[Northreader]

I must admit I watch a lot of CNN here in Canada, though I do find it predictable and often disappointing. I also get CNN Headline News or HLN but usually manage to avoid Nancy Grace and company. I gather she is a big ratings success but crime is not my cup of tea. When CNN recently added Mary Matalin, I groaned at the return of another usual suspect, rounded up from the standard Inside The Beltway gang.I've started watching BBC-World News after hearing an early morning Denver, Colorado radio show host say he often gives up on the U.S. news channels and switches to it. I would recommend a solid interview show called `Hard Talk.``I just wish there were more surprises on CNN. But I was truly astonished when I turned on PBS and Charlie Rose this week and found both Naomi Klein and William Greider as his guests. I enjoy both on the internet but rarely see them on tv.

[DennyHayes]

It sure is easy to see what part of the country this news media covers :) Anyway, I will agree to some extent about Lou. Yes Lou Dobbs is sometimes annoying, especially when he goes over the same stuff over and over. But at the same time I have seen that most of what he has been saying for years has come true. The job situation is a disaster. The middle class have been economically destroyed. The government, under Bush, was more like the Mafia, than a democratic government. Any time over 80 percent of the country agrees on something, and the government does the opposite, the government no longer represents the people. It is more Like Saddam or Hitler saying that what he was doing was good for the people, regardless of what the majority feel. And Like Lou, I have to laugh when people say that the illegal aliens who haven't broken any laws should be allowed to stay, when the fact that they are here illegally and are called illegals, means that they broke the law. The only support that I can give for them to stay, is that throughout our history we have allowed many groups to stay here, such as the Irish, etc, who came to the US.

[mmonarch]

Excuse me, but the Irish came here legally. On boats, across a biiiiiig ocean and had to check in either at Castle Gardens or Ellis Island. As did the Italians, Polish, Germans, Jews, and any number of other thats legally immigrated to this country. We have, throughout history, allowed many groups to stay AFTER they have met the minimum legal requirements. Big difference from sneaking across a border in the back of a coyote's truck or in dark of night across a Texan's private property, knowingly breaking the law. That is the operative word here. Knowingly and with aforethought. Premeditated. Come here legally. I welcome you. But don't set a a precedent for yourself by breaking the law as you are walking through the door. Sorry. Help the helpless, not the clueless.

[sasidechick]

How did Wolf not make the list? If you recall, the day after the swearing in Justice Roberts gave the oath again because Roberts flubbed it the first time. There was a panel discussion and Wolf was LIVID that the press was not invited. He did about three or four segments about it. The panel kept looking around like "is this all he is going to talk about" and I remember he even got a little snarky. The panel was bascially laughing saying it wasn't a big deal and you could tell he was really taking offense. I remember before going to commercial him saying something like "i know you don't think this is important but it is very important" or something like that.

That's when I realized that Wolf was more concerned with getting his point of view across than reading the news. I thought he was supposed to be the ref between participants. I can't watch him anymore.

Same goes for "AC". The only one worth watching on CNN is Jack Cafferty.

[raker]

Everyone on CNN is annoying. I don't understand why people seem to think they're required to watch CNN. They think CNN's good for them despite all evidence to the contrary. The job of these 24-hour channels is to manufacture fake conflicts and trying to engage us in caring about their contrived "crossfires." People have asked me, aghast and alarmed, what TV news I watch. None. I'm alarmed that they think CNN's worth watching. Cable news is shadows on the wall of a cave. Rachel's pretty good, though.

[sheikwil4]

I agree with him about Lou Dobbs the racist and Ali Velshi, but the rest of the people I disagree, I love T.J. and Soledad. He may want to bash CNN, but out of all the cable networks, CNN was the only one to receive a Peabody award for journalism. So if he wants to listen to garbage, turn to FOX News like the rest of the ill informed.

[raker]

Yes, CNN is slightly less toxic than Fox. But it's still toxic.

[nantucketsunset]

A. What a great article - I agree with many here! If only CNN would listen to this, really listen. The quality of news in the US is dreadful, from any provider. CNN is middle-of-the-road and is the least worst, but they are so much worse than they used to be, and I'm not sure why. I lived in Europe for the previous 10 years and was surprised to come back last year to the state of affairs in US tv news. Of British newscasts, I enjoy Newsnight on BBC2 and Channel 4 evening news on UK's Channel 4, and wish there could be even just one-half hour a day in the US of such quality.

Anderson Cooper is attractive, and reasonably intelligent, but there is just something that doesn't quite have him living up to the hopes that I had for him as an anchor. He does frown a lot, and skims the issues more than I would like. Maybe he needs another 5 years of being an investigative reporter before sitting down and becoming a newsreader of gravitas and high quality.

Rick Sanchez makes my skin crawl - can't stand 20 seconds of him. He's just big and loud and self-important and talks down to the viewer.

Lou Dobbs also is a caricature - goes on and on about the same subjects, acts holier-than-thou --- like others here, I'd put him more in the Fox sort of camp than on a place like CNN.

[nantucketsunset]

B. There is a guy on mid-day who seems as thick as a plank - can't pronounce words, grammar is poor, keeps saying, "Now I want you to pay attention to THIS," as if the viewer is just zoning out eating a jumbo pack of cheezballs, waiting for him to point out the painfully obvious and banal information that he finds fit to highlight. I think he was the one who worked himself into a tizzy when the Obamas were meeting the Queen of England. It was shockingly amateurish the way he went on and on about how he would be unable to cope with meeting the Queen.

John King is wooden and an Anderson-wannabe but strikes the wrong note entirely. I think he's an okay guy in terms of his intentions, but quite dull and hard to pay attention to.

Wolf Blitzer hasn't changed much (in my recollection, anyway) since he first began - I've always found him to be overly talky and a little bit self-important and annoying, but now he's like one of the big cheeses of the network, which I hadn't expected to come back home and find.

McCafferty is out of another era (a good one!) and I enjoy his comments - he seems to have a lot of sense and to not take the flim-flam seriously. I wish they'd give him more to do than what (at least I have noticed) they have him doing. But maybe he doesn't want to do more.

[nantucketsunset]

C. Sanjay Gupta is good - intelligent and friendly, not too full of himself, and explains things well -- not at a third-grade level, as some reporters do.

Robin Meade is barely okay, but I mostly watched when travelling for business and stuck with a small selection of hotel room tv channels - I wouldn't watch her show at home where I have more choice.

I hardly ever see Christiane Amanpour on CNN. I saw her more on television generally in London (and even just walking around in London with Jamie Rubin) than I do in the US. It seemed like she and Jamie were brought over here especially during the Obamas' trip to the UK, and she actually seemed to be embarrassed when she was a special guest of two CNN anchors who were asking asinine questions of her about protocol and the UK and the EU etc.

I'm afraid I haven't caught the names of a lot of the female newsreaders - many have shoulder-length brown hair, and seem nice but not very hard-hitting. One on the Dobbs show seems really conservative, and the one on the Cooper show seems sweet...

Jeannie Moos is still doing her special kind of segments about life's absurdities, just as she was more than a decade ago. That's okay, but kind of old hat. I have only seen a few of these in a year, though, so it looks like she's got something else to occupy most of her time.

[nantucketsunset]

D. Nancy Grace must do something with her "Caylee Anthony Prime Time Hour" that has been going on for months. The show is formulaic and repetitive and makes me want to scream.

I know that I'm conflating HLN and CNN, but they started out being sister networks - I don't know how they are related now, but I can see that Headline News changed its format dramatically from the one it had 10 years ago (when it was actually about headline news).

Larry King is mildly okay for what he does - is very well-connected – is more influential than would objectively make sense, but he is, and that's fine - at least he doesn't drone on about the same thing constantly like so many other shows do.

Sometimes in desperation I flip to CNN, then HLN, then MSNBC, then CNBC, then PBS, then land on FOX just because the other options for news are even worse. Being back in the US again for some months, I’ve now caught on that the Comedy Channel is where the insight and detachment are – what kind of state of affairs is this?

My main beef is that tv news seems to be so tolerant of people who don’t speak English well - mis-pronounce words, have poor grammar, don't know how to do a good interview, have terribly high opinions of themselves without much basis. We SHOULD be much better than this. We do have well-spoken, insightful, intelligent, analytical citizens. (Don't we? .....)

[dtghope]

Keep the following: David Gergen, Paul Begala (for his quick wit alone), Anderson Cooper, Mr. Cafferty, and Don Lemon.

[Manicsuperstar]

Lay off Soledad... She's got talent, brains and a Peabody... The snarky loser and "former colleague" in S.F. you quote sounds like he or she just has a nasty case of sour grapes... If CNN wants to bolster ratings they need to start with dumping that supreme A**HOLE Dobbs... Then they can ship poor Larry King off to a retirment villa in Boca Raton where he belongs... John King needs to go away too. I agree with your general assessment that, overall, CNN seems to have more than its fair share of annoying personalities. On the other hand, they also have Anderson Cooper, Kieran Chetry, Christiane Amanpour, Rob Marciano and a few other real winners who almost make-up for the sad excess of dross.

[Estreet1964]

Actually, Kieran Chetry needs to go back to Fox News where she came from and take Rob "What Global Warming?" Marciano with her.

[Whatashame]

I would recommend watching PBS. They are the best.

[dtghope]

Indeed, PBS is all you need. And for longer in-depth interviews of significant people, Charlie Rose, the best interviewer in the business.

[Whatashame]

WOLF and JOHN KING are the WORST.