ABC Evening News

Of the "big three" anchors of the '80s and '90s, it always seemed like Peter Jennings was the most intellectual. Hard to believe that in his 22 years as anchor, he covered the collapse of the Soviet bloc and later September 11. As I understand it, early criticism of him came because of his more circumspect approach to certain topics than other anchors (or maybe it was just because he was Canadian).

Still, from what I've heard, it would have been good to see "ABC Evening News" during the Vietnam War and hear John Chancellor's indictment of that war. I remember when Peter Jennings showed the 25th anniversary of the modern broadcast's first airing (they reported on the trial of some Soviet Jews): John Chancellor correctly identified that the USSR was dooming itself to failure.

But no matter. Had Peter Jennings survived a few more weeks, he could have covered Hurricane Katrina. I had never known that he smoked. But a radio station noted that he reported on anti-war protests when the US invaded Iraq, so you gotta give him credit for that.

So, for all it's flaws, I recommend this news show.

Since David Muir has taken over, you can chart how things have shifted, seeming narcissistically to feature more and more of Muir.

He eats up the first two or three minutes doing nothing but summarizing -- sometimes more than once -- news stories you're going to watch, to the degree that he often literally reports the same thing. (You can switch channels and they're already actually reporting.) Then he's got to interject himself into the news story again by interviewing the correspondent.

If you break down the 18 or 19 minutes of news in between the insufferable and repetitious commercials for pharmaceuticals and home products, there's very little content here anymore. They hit a couple of major events, then do a long segment on the weather, and then wrap it up with some saccharine feel good story about some suburban white kid who had a lemonade stand or something.

And Muir himself is harder to follow, from his weird haircut (I thought Jimmy Fallon was the goofiest on TV in this regard) to his sticky lips that the microphone picks up and makes disgusting.

The glory days where the news was done by thoughtful anchors and the content was rich are long gone. This is more like Muir's blog come to life.

"ABC News" was always highly informative in the evening with the now late and great Peter Jennings. The network was always on top of things in events, though from time to time the network would focus much on international and foreign affair issues. The reporting and interviewing was always top notch from people like Charles Gibson, John Stossel, and Elizabeth Vargas, and the legendary Barbara Walters and Hugh Downs were unbeatable. Yet the most traditional and best was Peter Jennings it was sad he passed so young, Peter always told the news in a traditional manner with such a smooth and calm voice and he was always a hard working newsman and anchor. And ABC is probably the most conservative of the big three certainly more to the right than NBC or CBS.

We will NOT stop celebrating Christmas. As the Government wants us too. We don't care about the fear you try to put in us with your scary predictions. We are FREE AMERICANS AND WILL MAKE OUR OWN DECISIONS. NOT THE GOVERNMENT.

A few days ago I was watching David Muir and the ABC evening news. One story he was reporting on it was that it was the hottest day on earth. He reported the temperature is 62°F. Yes Fahrenheit. Of course the correct reading was in centigrade which is 143°F. I can't believe David Muir, the script writers, and producers can be so dumb as to not catch this error. Any high school student would know the difference and know that what he is reading is wrong. For this he gets paid millions of dollars a year. I also agree that there are way too many commercials. Between the weather which is always catastrophic, and the fluff story at the end there is not much news. I also don't like the little snippets of bias.