I sat and watched a 'painful' piece of CNN journalism in the last hour. Topic? Well...they (CNN) more or less admitted that they can't understand Joe Rogan, so they assembled some outside-of-the-box CNN discussion group to lay out the Rogan landscape.
I made it through about a dozen minutes and turned it off. Several things bothered me.
First, why this insistence to monitor and control Rogan? He doesn't present news. He just simply interviews people.
Second, is there even some Rogan-expert out there? I pondered that a good bit.
Third, even if you felt that you understood Rogan.....then what? Could you copy his successful format and 'out-Rogan' Rogan? I just doubt that.
So let me explain what makes Rogan different:
1. There are no commercial breaks, and these interviews go on....sometimes to three full hours. CNN can't produce that format.
2. From regular guests, to far extreme guests....there's this massive spectrum existing. He could bring on some gal to talk about x-diet for two entire hours. He could bring on a UFO expert to talk for three hours. CNN can't produce that type of format.
3. As much as Rogan is a comedian....he's also a common sense guy. College? He spent roughly one year in college, and then noted that the experience was "worthless", then left.
4. Does Rogan inject extreme left or right values into the questions? I would argue that he takes up the prospective of the average guy on the street, or someone you'd bump into at a farmer's market, or a retired guy from south Florida.
5. Are there Rogan interviews that are of zero value? I would say from the past 18 months that I've listened to them....around one-third of them have no interest to me (I really don't care about professional boxing, dark matter, or enchanted witchcraft chatter).
Is CNN worried? Well....here's the thing. On an average evening.....at least in the past three months....CNN's audience is crap (full up microscopic size CRAP). Rogan? On a five-star guest (Joey Diaz, Ric Flair---the wrestler, Jordan Petersen, etc)....it might go up around 10-million (that's around 20 times the audience for a prime-hour of CNN).
I suspect those numbers freak out the CNN folks.
Would CNN interview Joey Diaz? NEVER, in a thousand years.
Would CNN interview Jordan Petersen and just let him talk.....not trying to blast or antagonize Petersen? NEVER, in a thousand years.
I sat there around two weeks ago, and went back to a Dick Cavett interview from the 1970s. Cavett just plain interviewed people, and he is probably the closest thing to Rogan that has existed in fifty years.
My question to CNN.....are you going to end up having a anti-Rogan hour each week.....like you had the five hours per day in 2017/2018/2019/2020 for the anti-Trump hour? Let me remind you....all that wasted chatter helped to shape the audience that you have presently (if you were wondering about where the people left).
