Friday, August 15, 2008

Today on Today

Following comments from the lovely Lemmonex yesterday about her morning TV preferences I broke my normal routine of CNBC and CNN (and loathing Fox) today and switched on Today for part of my morning news fix.

Impressions:

First of all, I also figured out why Today doesn't really fit with my morning schedule: It doesn't come on until 7 a.m., and I'm normally hustling out the door to work between 7:15 and 7:30. Doesn't leave me much time to enjoy the antics of Matt, Meredith, Ann and Al. Also, choosing to watch while they're working from Beijing has built in advantages and disadvantages.

The major advantage being near exclusive access to the low-hanging fruit of the American winners; the big prize Today was gymnasts Nastia Liukin (gold, all around) and Shawn Johnson (silver, all around). Nice interview by Ann Curry, none the less.

The biggest disadvantage is it's a bit difficult to go from the happy, feel good news of the Olympics to a story about the Russians invading Georgia. Just doesn't work, and it's kind of like an early morning two-by-four to the head.

Like I said earlier, it's been a long, long time since I've tuned into Today. The biggest thing I took away from my brief viewing was this: I miss Katie in the morning. Meredith Vieira does a good job, but she's no Katie. Maybe it's a knee-jerk reaction resulting from years of conditioning, and while I think she's doing a decent job on the evening news, it was always nice to wake up with Katie.

6 comments:

Lemmonex said...

I also leave at about 720 and I do admit the 7 start time is a disadvantage. I think it is just my routine; it would never cross my mine to change. I should onsider it, but I would miss Matt so.

FoggyDew said...

I think another reason I've hesitated to watch Today or GMA is because I usually switch the news on around 6:30 and miss the stories at the top of the hour. Because of this I'll just let whatever channel I'm watching wrap around so I can see what I missed.

On the Matt-ster, he's a good looking guy and I could see how it'd be tough giving up on him.

Shannon said...

I'm just impressed that the two of you are functional enough to operate televisions in the morning.

Also, I'm not even UP by 7:30, let alone out of the house.

Capitol Hill 20210 said...

Foxnews isn't that bad come on - its a little entertaining.

FoggyDew said...

Shannon, I set the channel the night before so all I have to do is allow my X chromosome to follow its instinct and hit the "all on" button.

Zip, if it billed its morning show as entertainment, that'd be one thing. Unfortunately, they pass it off as news.

Capitol Hill 20210 said...

I just have issues with CNN - come to the FOX news side - we have cookies haha sorry I had to throw that in there.

I chuckled a little bit this morning when I walked into the office and CNN was on one tv and FOX on the other.