CNN should aim high

Opinion: July 10, 2010 at 12:00a.m.

Dallas Morning: As CNN’s Larry King snaps his suspenders and heads into the sunset, the first 24-hour news channel faces a gaping hole in its primetime lineup. And we have ideas about what to do with that hole.

Already, the network is making a dramatic change by bringing back a political debate show that sounds a lot like “Crossfire,” circa the Clinton era. We expect a lot more, though, from Washington-based columnist Kathleen Parker and former New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer than what “Crossfire” became in its later years. The tone of our national debate is sour enough without another nightly exercise of lining up talking points and flinging them across the table, food-fight style.

The nightly menu of prime-time news show offerings includes a lot of high-pitched ranting, a lot of personal jabs, a lot of strident partisanship. Sure, there are other insightful interviews and a flood of information, but even with King’s shortcomings, his show had its place. It was a rare time when you might catch an in-depth interview with someone affected by a recent tragedy — or a chat with Kid Rock.

Possible alternatives

The 24-hour cable news menu needs that kind of variety, so we hope CNN doesn’t go all-in on the trend toward personality-driven, in-your-face political-dogma-as-sport shows. Some possible alternatives? Oprah has been mentioned. Ryan Seacrest is getting a lot of buzz. On the other end of the “serious news” spectrum, CNN might consider its own Fareed Zakaria, one of the best interviewers on TV, a journalist who makes U.S. audiences smarter almost by osmosis.