WGA strike's influence on the US primaries

by cynthia yoo | December 20, 2007 at 03:19 pm | 410 views | 6 comments

Jon Stewart Stephen Colbert Painting Acrylic on Cardboard 2007

Here's an interesting article that posits the writer's strike is having a significant effect on the US presidential race.

It argues that many 'young' voters are left without their major source of political news and discourse--"The Daily Show" and "The Colbert Show."
And they're not going to MSM-mainstream media to compensate.

their favorite shows have gone missing at a crucial juncture in the quadrennial news cycle - the presidential race. Four years ago, "The Daily Show" was considered a key source for what social scientists like to call the "young adult cohort" - people between late teens and late 20s. It's the leading reason why "The Daily Show" and Stewart are considered so influential in political discourse, and the reason why their absence is so keenly felt on the eve of the Iowa caucuses.

In media circles, politicians who ran the gauntlet of a Stewart/Colbert grilling were said to have undergone their own version of a "late-night primary"; Republican candidate Mike Huckabee got his first "bounce" months ago, when he appeared on "Colbert."

"I don't know how you measure" the impact of the shows, says "Face the Nation" anchor Bob Schieffer. "But they did make [the process] a lot more fun."

Scott Keeter, director of Survey Research for Washington-based Pew Center for the People and the Press, which has studied these viewers' habits, insists the influence has been overstated. People such as Serrano, Appelbaum, Stillwagon and McElhone, he says, are "news omnivores," who feed their news diet from many sources.

Even so, four years ago, when Pew studied how people got their news about politics, it found that 21 percent of those between the ages 18 and 29 learned most everything they knew about the political races from "The Daily Show." Only the category of cable news - everything on MSNBC, CNN and Fox News - outranked just this one single show.

they've depended on "The Daily Show" for news, attitude and information - most often about politics and politicians. They can't abide the standard network news programs and actively disdain local news.

What Walter Cronkite was to their parents and grandparents, Comedy Central's Jon Stewart is to them.

Each admits to having been a little disjointed in recent weeks as "The Daily Show" (which airs against the local news at 11 p.m.) and its almost equally adored sidekick, "The Colbert Report" (airing at 11:30), have been in repeats due to the TV writers' strike....

Comedy Central doesn't keep count of hard-core fans like these, but there are thousands of them on the Island and millions nationwide. They watch faithfully - sometimes exclusively - and belong to virtual communities of the like-minded, such as Facebook's "I Get All My News from the Daily Show and the Colbert Report." (Facebook has 267 such groups.)

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Critter Camp Mom

at 21:49 on December 20th, 2007

Hey this is one of our rescued critters- BlondeD the bearded dragon! He lives here at Critter Camp Exotic Pet Sanctuary. Please see our website www.crittercamp.biz and support us in our care of over 200 abandoned pets! We also completely agree that without Daily Show and Colbert Report the public, especially the younger voters, are without a credible news source. They were often the only places that were willing to show the contradictions & hypocracy of many in the public eye. They have also been responsible for a huge surge in younger voters getting interested in and taking part in the presidential and other campaigns. Sadly many have now lost interest and may not return as viewers once the strike is over. We hope for a compromise to be reached soon. Both parties have legitimate concerns, however it is obvious that without the writers the top brass have nothing.

Critter Camp Mom has contributed a photo to this story.

Critter Camp Mom

at 21:52 on December 20th, 2007

we posted a whole bunch of pics of our critters supporting Colbert on Flickr, and a slide show on youtube too-

cynthia yoo

at 00:15 on December 21st, 2007

Thank you for your photos~~Well, I do hope that younger voters will still take interest in the upcoming elections. I met some young people--college students--who started up their own newspaper to follow the US election. It's called SCCOP08 and you can check them out at www.scoop08.com

Barry Artiste

at 03:41 on December 22nd, 2007

good stuff:

cynthia yoo, news for thought, young kids nowadays (Oh Crap, now I am sounding like my Dad)

want to be entertained for the most part, Daily and Colbert provide that as well as get the political message out, though satirically, just as comic books got kids to read as some disliked school texbooks, best they get it anyways they can if not through mainstream teaching I guess. Hopefully Jon Stewart and Steven Colbert will get youth interested in Politics to do research on those politicians they lambast on their show.

On a Canadian Note

As for Canadian shows which try and mirror Political comedy, Royal Canadian Air Farce, makes me barf, always has, always will, except when Dave Broadfoot was on it as a mountie (Before Tasers were invented) so with Air Farce it's time to put that unfunny ancient one trick pony to rest permanently, if it were not for CBC, they would not be given a cursory glance even by PBS, time for them to give it up to Mercer who can best it with the rest of the Stewarts and Colberts out there.