Bring back Aaron!

Matthew Felling writes:

When I took the occasional hot-air balloon ride with the more blustery Sean or Joe, I always knew that at the end of the night I’d make use of “NewsNight” — and more importantly, Aaron Brown’s sense of handling the news — to tether me back to The Real World.

Yes, I confess to not having joined the “Cult Of Personality” surrounding Mr. Cooper as much as some. (“Gosh, he’s hawt!”) And yes, I know many of Aaron Brown’s negative nicknames around the newsrooms he has worked in. (That Space Shuttle golf trip debacle didn’t help.) But on camera, Brown was peerless (at least among the motley crew of night-time cable gabbers) at making sense of the world and asking the question that punctured the subtleties of spin.

Way, way back in June 2002 — a lifetime in the narrow little world of cable news — you could actually take sides in a substantive news war every weeknight at 10. On MSNBC, Brian Williams anchored an hour-long newscast as he prepared for the day that Tom Brokaw would retire. And on CNN, Aaron Brown hosted “NewsNight,” then in its pre-Klein glory. Those were the days. Here’s part of something I wrote at the time:

CNN’s NewsNight, anchored by Aaron Brown, is not perfect by any means, and much of the reason has to do with Brown himself, who alternates between refreshing candor and annoying self-absorption. But NewsNight, which debuted on October 15 (Brown himself began work at CNN on September 11, less than an hour after the first tower was hit), works as an invigorating alternative to the traditional newscast, with longer stories, some attitude and edge, and the arch presence of Brown, who, despite being 10 years older than Williams, comes across as an entire generation younger.

Not to wax too enthusiastic. NewsNight has been devoting a lot of time to the trial involving the murder of young Danielle van Dam, mainly because the lawyer for the neighbor accused of killing her is making an issue of the exotic and varied sex life indulged in by Danielle’s parents. And Brown gave an entire hour to the arrest of Robert Blake — something that he apologized for the next night. At its best, though, the show comes across as a less-boring version of The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer or the television equivalent of All Things Considered.

Harry Shearer has a worthwhile post on Brown’s demise.

Now, please think about what has happened. We have three all-news cable channels. There are three prime-time hours per night — 8 to 11 p.m. And CNN brainiac Jonathan Klein has decided to blow up the sole 60-minute segment out of those nine hours that was an actual, you know, newscast. (MSNBC’s “Countdown” definitely has its moments, but it’s more “The Daily Show” than it is Edward R. Murrow. Long live Keith Olbermann, but don’t call it a newscast.)

To his very, very slight credit, Klein is sticking to a newscast at 10, with Anderson Cooper as the new anchor. But, whether you like Cooper or not, he simply doesn’t bring the intelligent, analytical approach of Aaron Brown. Worse, the program has been expanded from one to two hours, which usually means that they’ll spend much of the first hour hyping stories that will appear in the second hour.

Klein has been destroying CNN. Brown was one of the network’s few remaining symbols of quality. The only good that could come out of this would be if Klein drives down the value of CNN so much that Ted Turner can afford to buy it back from Time Warner.