Crossfired - I cut my

Crossfired - I cut my political teeth watching "Crossfire". Back about the time I was converting from liberalism, the show crackled with energy. Original hosts Tom Braden and a pre-boogeyman Pat Buchanan attacked their topics and guests with a flood of overtly-partisan but unabashedly articulate barrage of rhetoric. It was, of course, all opinion and no fact - which, in the years before Al Franken, was something we weren't used to getting overtly from the major media.

Then, I didn't watch it for about 15 years, and was shocked to hear that it's a prime candidate for the tank. I had no idea.

David Frum explains it well:

Is it possible that the brilliant original formula that made Crossfire a success in the 1990s--all opinion, no information--is out of date in a world in which Americans are threatened by dangers about which they crave information. You can learn things by listening to Rush Limbaugh or Sean Hannity, or by watching the Fox News Channel or CNN's Aaron Brown. But who has learned anything from Crossfire" recently? It may be that the show has failed by doing something that TV executives used to sneeringly insist was impossible: by underestimating its audience.