by Jeff Zucker, president of CNN Worldwide
Thanks, everyone, for coming to this emergency brainstorming. I suppose you’re aware of the bad news coming from ol’ Ratingsville. Yeah, we’re down again. Small bump.
Does anyone happen to know of another large plane disappearing? Just checking.
We’ve fallen way behind those wingnuts at Fox, as well as those lesbos at MSNBC. This is our fucking game, people. CNN invented 24-hour news. Think people, think. What can we do to draw back viewers? More breaking news? What about 1000 extra correspondents, in every city from Tomsk to Timbuktu. Oh, we already have correspondents in Tomsk and Timbuktu?
Do we have anyone in Antarctica? That could be something.
“Breaking story coming to you live from the McMurdo research station.”
You’re right, Beverly. That’s gimmicky.
I mean, have you all checked Twitter this morning? Nothing about, say, a 747 going down over the Atlantic, or something? It doesn’t have to be a 747, or the Atlantic for that matter. Airbus A380 crashing into the Andes? Alright, I’ll stop.
What about we get a bunch of blond bimbos, like over at Fox. Instead of two or three, we could get six: a half-dozen chicks, all sitting in a row like ducks, quippin’ and quibblin’ about the top story. Quack quack. They could all have different hairstyles and clashing personalities.
No, no Beverly. You’re right. We’re a serious news network.
What about a show with a blonde, a redhead, a brunette and a black woman, with a clever name like ‘Four Smart Chicks’? Okay, okay.
Come on people, are you sure you haven’t heard something about another jumbo jet mysteriously vanishing? It doesn’t even have to be a passenger plane. It could very well be a cargo plane.
No, Gareth, that was a Cessna, and it went down in Kansas like, two days ago. And anyway, who cares?
Come on, I thought you were supposed to be the best and the brightest. Oh, that’s just me? Haha.
Kidnappings, large fires, rapes, murders, rapes and murders? Nothing? What about a famous person tweeting something racist? No? Okay, a famous person thinking something racist?
I don’t want to dwell on airplane crashes when there are so many other types of disasters that give our ratings a boost, but why haven’t any big planes gone down in the last couple months? I’m just saying, it’s kinda weird, that’s all. You’d think that with so many people flying here and there, we’d have more large-scale aviation accidents. Do you know how heavy those things are, and how many thousands of mechanical parts they have that must be in perfect working order to make them stay aloft?
I mean, think about it: tens of thousands of jets magically circumventing the globe, crisscrossing paths, circling above airports with fierce winds pummeling them, all struggling to communicate with air traffic controllers who are barely intelligible, many of whom are overworked and alcoholic, maybe even struggling with depression or debt, fighting to stay focused long enough to keep track of tiny, barely decipherable blips on a screen to determine which plane can land and when, seconds apart, in order to avoid two of them crashing into each other in a massive fireball that we can replay for days on end.
One can always hope.
What about that chick who murdered her boyfriend? What’s her name? That’s it. When is she due to be released?
Oh, crud.