Dan Rather Reports On HDNet, But Who Is Watching?

But does great reporting matter if nobody sees it? HDNet remains among the smallest outlets on television, and the show's marketing consists more or less of what Rather and Cuban do in their spare time. Rather will pen the occasional article for the Huffington Post and the Daily Beast, or he'll appear on Chris Matthews' Hardball, but "there are only so many hours in the day," he laments. Cuban tweets about upcoming episodes and promotes them on his blog. ("I am not a Twitter person myself," Rather admits, though his show does have more than 5,000 Facebook fans.) Beyond that, Cuban has made little effort to extend Rather's reach. Brian Stelter, a media reporter for the New York Times, told me he hasn't written about Rather's show since it first launched. "I can't tell you when HDNet has flagged one of his big stories for me effectively," he says, and that's a shame, since "what he is talking about, more people should be talking about."

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