News Programs place in the media today

The article "Sunday Mourning" by Liz Cox does a great job in describing how important televised news programs are today. The article depicts an average setup for one of the Sunday afternoon from the standpoint of supervising producer of Fox News Sunday Richard DiBella. The five major Sunday news shows Fox News Sunday, This Week, Face The Nation, Meet The Press, and Late Editionhave a similar format. Each week they invite an influencial political figure on the show to discuss issues facign the nation that week. There can be many problems with this format however. According to the article,

"The producers must perform a delicate dance: if they book guests early in the week, they are less flexible to react to late breaking news; if they hesitate too long, a rival show willbeat them to the booking. The producers for one show might make 100 calls in a week to a list of thirty prospective guests."

Needless to say this is not an easy task. Although all shows are similarly the same, guests seem to favor shows with the higher ratings which at this time is NBC's Meet The Press. Much like we have seen all throughout this course ratings is the most important thing in today's news media.