Circa 1984: Our cable system got the first “extended” cable channels, which included CNN, The Weather Channel, and MTV.

With a few exceptions, you could go to CNN, 24 hours a day, and see live news. Yes, there was an entertainment news show, a financial news show, but otherwise, if something —anything— happened, at any time of day, you could see it live.

Fast forward 2008: There are now four major cable news channels, two of which belong to CNN. Most of CNN’s programming outside of daytime consists of either “talking head” shows that deliver party-line rhetoric, or “special” pre-recorded programming. To make matters worse, the “talking head” shows are repeated for west coast prime time, meaning that when viewers are watching “live” news on CNN in California, it’s actually three hours old. If anything breaks during the time where those shows are on tape delay, which extends from 9 pm PST until the mid-morning hours the next day, coverage is extremely delayed, and typically only appear in the headline ticker at the bottom of the screen.

CNN’s competition is even worse. Both MSNBC and Fox News fill their weekend and prime time lineups with extremely biased, party line talking heads, with close to zero ‘real news’ content. Worse, they repeat programming during weeknights from 8pm onward on the west coast.

Now, to today (Sunday), where there are major fires in Southern California, and a major earthquake in Indonesia. CNN is broadcasting a show called “Your $$$$”, taped on Fridays, MSNBC is showing a recycled Dateline segment called “Who Shot the Sheriff” and Fox News is showing pre-packaged content named “Television and the President”.

Fortunately, unlike 1982, the Internet is available to go directly to the source: the local television stations and newspapers to get the absolute latest. I was able to watch live streaming video from three different TV stations from Los Angeles, where I was able to watch fire suppression efforts and hear that the tide may be turning in the firefighter’s favor. I was able to visit several newpaper sites from the South Pacific region and read that there was an initial concern about tsunamis, but that concern soon faded away, and found that the death toll, as early accounts had it, was low and there was not widespread damage. None of this came from cable news outlets.

From here on out, when I hear of something “happening”, my first impulse will no longer be cable news…it’ll be the Internet.