Things I Hate About TV: behind the scenes of MSNBC

Perhaps you were referring to the audio of the director talking about rolling to break that used to happen on MSNBC? That was canned and not live. What Bob is referring to is the staged gimmick where the news anchor would toss to the control room or the control room would just announce what was going on. Those are live. But they're not spontaneous. They're planned.

"It's been happening at least a few days out of the week, every week since I started watching MSNBC around a year ago."

Not true. It only started when Abrams took over a few weeks ago. They never tossed to the control room before that and I've been watching MSNBC since it launched.

Forget MSNBC, lets talk about Headline News and how badly it has fallen from being a great constantly rotating capsule news channel, to it's current status as a schizophrenic catch all channel. As if Nancy Grace weren't awful enough, now there is this Glen Beck guy who may actually be the worst person on any prime-time news segment.

I am slowing nurturing a hate for Glen Beck that knows no bounds.

It's actually a convention of news networks since CNN was created 25 years ago. When CNN started, they wanted you to see the "nuts and bolts" behind the news, which is why the studio was open instead of a closed set. As you can tell, many networks still follow this and other conventions.

I usually have MSNBC on in the background during the day and this isn't new. It's been happening at least a few days out of the week, every week since I started watching MSNBC around a year ago. I think the transparency is neat; it's not like a news channel has some sort of illusion of reality or fourth wall that's being broken by showing this stuff. I s'pose you're not a fan of "behind the scenes" bonus material on DVDs? Or wouldn't enjoy a tour of a working studio? And I suppose you don't care for those corded phones from the 1980s with the see-through plastic casing?