Chris Wallace, the CNN anchor and presenter of Who is talking to Chris Wallace? on HBO Max, had a chilling confession during his segment on Friday realtime with Bill Maher.
During a call between Maher and Wallace bemoaning today’s Conservative/Liberal polarization of news, Wallace traced the issue back to the golden days of the big three networks and the world tuned in at 6:30 p.m. to hear Walter Cronkite or Huntley to hear about the world -Brinkley.
These programs attracted up to 29 million viewers, but they were not profit centers. But the men who ran the stations at the time saw news as a public service, and unless they were losing enormous amounts of money, they were fine with it.
But as Chris Wallace’s father, Mike Wallace, and his 60 minutes Team started in 1968, things changed. That show started making money, “and all of a sudden the executives on TV said, ‘There’s money to be made from this.'” Then “they started chasing an audience.”
Maher was stunned. “Aren’t you a bigger fan of 60 minutes than me?” Maher joked that the negative attitude might be because the show took Chris’ dad too far from home.
Wallace said his point was that “60 minutes opened Pandora’s box of making money from news.” That led to today’s rift between conservative and liberal media, with straight news becoming a golden memory.
Maher couldn’t resist blowing his own horn on this one. The audience now only hears what doesn’t upset us, because “They don’t want to make people turn the dial the wrong way — except on this show. I paid for it. There’s a lot of woke people who used to watch who don’t anymore.” So why does he keep spitting into this wind? “It’s just that the left has gone mad, so I need to do it more.”
Wallace blocked an attempt by Maher to get him to knock on his former Fox News home. Wallace claimed he now has “news discipline.” Maher fired back, “This is for politicians, not us.”
Maher then switched and said he had one last question. Wallace joked that the section passed quickly. “It’s quick if you avoid questions,” Maher replied.
Wallace, who moderated presidential debates in 2016 and 2020, had one last grain of wisdom. During debates in 2020, during which President Donald Trump “went nuts,” Wallace said, someone counted the interruptions. Trump stepped in 145 times, Wallace claimed.
This week’s panel discussion included BBC News special correspondent and presenter of the new documentary, Trump: The comeback? Katty Kay and former Republican governor of New Jersey; and Chris Christie, political and legal contributor for ABC News.
Their conversation ranged from comparing Christie’s infamous beach date with President Obama versus Ron DeSantis’ date this week with Joe Biden, to why Christie is a staunch opponent of marijuana versus Maher’s notorious affinity for the drug .
The anti-marijuana attitude is especially odd when the country is being bombarded with fentanyl, a much more dangerous drug. Christie dodged the defense that he was defending the laws of the time and suggested that the way to reform was to change the laws.