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FOX News

kEiThZ said:
I think its just numbers. There are 330 million yanks, which means that there will be millions of not-so-bright bulbs over there. Proportionally, though I don't think Americans are significantly better or worse than most other countries. Even the media aren't as bad as people think. I find most news outlets only marginally worse than say the CBC at coveing international news. None of them compare to say the BBC but in general they aren't as bad as people think. They certainly have a better distribution of reporters globally than any Canadian network. What's often missed too though, is that the US is generally a newsmaker globally, so it shouldn't be surprising for so much of that news to be aired at home.
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Proportionally Americans are less educated than western peers, including Canada.

Just look at polling on simple things like intelligent design and geography to make the point. Although compared to truly 3rd world nations without proper systems of education and etc. the US is far, far better.
 
I work with americans every day, I Am a support tech for At$t. I do server support. IT's reduclious the stupidity i work with on a day to day basis.
 
kEiThZ said:
I think its just numbers. There are 330 million yanks, which means that there will be millions of not-so-bright bulbs over there. Proportionally, though I don't think Americans are significantly better or worse than most other countries. Even the media aren't as bad as people think. I find most news outlets only marginally worse than say the CBC at coveing international news. None of them compare to say the BBC but in general they aren't as bad as people think. They certainly have a better distribution of reporters globally than any Canadian network. What's often missed too though, is that the US is generally a newsmaker globally, so it shouldn't be surprising for so much of that news to be aired at home.
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I presume your referring to the US networks, not the cable news networks.
 
Yes, I'd agree with the point that I think dt toronto geek was trying to make. The US terrestrial networks still offer much better journalism than the cable nets do. They may not have the global reach they once did and they might eventually be victims of death by a thousand cuts, but I'd still rather watch ABC World News Tonight, the CBS Evening News or NBC Nightly News than any newscast on CNN, Fox News or MSNBC.

BTW, Fox "News" continues on its ratings tear...

http://www.mediabistro.com/tvnewser/ratings/july_ratings_fox_news_beats_msnbc_cnn_combined_in_total_day_and_prime_122858.asp
 
One of the biggest things that absolutely drive me insane in the States is the complete impossibility of getting real news. I remember a few years ago realizing it while sitting in a hotel room in the evening around 11pm and wanting to watch the news before I went to bed. In Canada, of course, we have a wide variety of national late night full news broadcasts, as well as Newsworld with its hourly short headline updates. When I turned on CNN, it was just Larry King interviewing some celebrity. Fox "News" had some psychopath on. I remembered that the only serious world news broadcasts in the States are the half-hours when most people are eating dinner. I finally settled on Headline News. It may not be detailed, but at least I'll get the headlines. Right? Right? Uh, no. Just Nancy Grace with wild paranoia about criminals hiding under every bed.

Another thing that strikes me about Canadians is how much more well-traveled they are. I'm young and yet still most of my friends, even those who are middle or even lower-middle class, have been overseas at least once. I know many Americans who are quite successful and who come from fairly well-off families who have never been overseas. It's pretty obvious when you look at airports. Halifax, a city of 300,000 has multiple non-stop flights to Europe. Indianapolis, Columbus, Kansas City, San Antonio, Nashville, New Orleans, St. Louis, and San Diego are all cities of millions with not a single overseas flight.
 
^^I notice that when visiting Canada and its overtly true when you go into most of the non-coastal US compared with Canada in general. Its most interesting that Halifax has that much international travel.
 
unimaginative2 said:
Indianapolis, Columbus, Kansas City, San Antonio, Nashville, New Orleans, St. Louis, and San Diego are all cities of millions with not a single overseas flight.
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Hmm, interesting. And I'd be interested in knowing whether it was otherwise with those cities 20 or 30 years ago, i.e. whether, due to "market demand" together with sociology, air travel in much of the US heartland has become more explicitly "ingrown" over the past generation...
 
It may also have to do with the emphasis on the "hub and spoke" organization of air travel.
 
It may also have to do with the emphasis on the "hub and spoke" organization of air travel.
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I would agree. Halifax is sitting on the coast and is a logical point of entry for international flights. Most flights over the pacific go through San Fran, LA or Vancouver as those are the hubs for the major airlines in North America. My co-worked who traveled to Seoul from Minnesota had to fly from there to Denver, then to San Fran to connect to his overseas flight. It would probably be too costly for all the airlines to be flying all over the world from every major airport in the US.
 
adma, some of those airports definitely did have international flights in the past--St. Louis and earlier Kansas City were TWA hubs, New Orleans was a fairly significant hub for Latin America--but others never did. In general, though, there was much more international air service from the "heartland" two or three decades ago than today. That can only be a statement about demand. There are also a whole bunch of even bigger cities that have only seasonal service or only one flight (Cleveland, Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, Memphis, Denver, Portland).

Hydrogen: Sure, hubs play a role, but Canada has hubs as well. If there weren't demand for a 767 from Halifax to London every day (or Edmonton to London, for that matter) it wouldn't fly. Some of those cities I listed are also airline hubs, but they still don't have international service. Halifax doesn't serve as a hub beyond the Maritimes for Air Canada, and there are more people in St. Louis than in all of Atlantic Canada. It also doesn't explain the distinct lack of charters from any of these American cities.

Wonderboy: That doesn't explain cities like Edmonton which also has non-stop service to Europe even though it's not a hub, it has barely a million people, and it's far from any coast. Calgary has multiple flights every day year-round to Europe, even using larger aircraft like the 330s.

Another example: In 2008, Montreal had 4,466,400 passengers flying to international destinations not including the United States. By contrast, Philadelphia--a major hub and larger city--had 3,611,000, including Mexico and Canada. Even Boston, a larger city than Montreal that's usually considered a pretty worldly place, had only 3,808,000. More international passengers flew out of the Guam airport than out of Seattle.
 
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unimaginative2 said:
adma, some of those airports definitely did have international flights in the past--St. Louis and earlier Kansas City were TWA hubs, New Orleans was a fairly significant hub for Latin America--but others never did. In general, though, there was much more international air service from the "heartland" two or three decades ago than today. That can only be a statement about demand. There are also a whole bunch of even bigger cities that have only seasonal service or only one flight (Cleveland, Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, Memphis, Denver, Portland).

Hydrogen: Sure, hubs play a role, but Canada has hubs as well. If there weren't demand for a 767 from Halifax to London every day (or Edmonton to London, for that matter) it wouldn't fly. Some of those cities I listed are also airline hubs, but they still don't have international service. Halifax doesn't serve as a hub beyond the Maritimes for Air Canada, and there are more people in St. Louis than in all of Atlantic Canada. It also doesn't explain the distinct lack of charters from any of these American cities.

Wonderboy: That doesn't explain cities like Edmonton which also has non-stop service to Europe even though it's not a hub, it has barely a million people, and it's far from any coast. Calgary has multiple flights every day year-round to Europe, even using larger aircraft like the 330s.

Another example: In 2008, Montreal had 4,466,400 passengers flying to international destinations not including the United States. By contrast, Philadelphia--a major hub and larger city--had 3,611,000, including Mexico and Canada. Even Boston, a larger city than Montreal that's usually considered a pretty worldly place, had only 3,808,000. More international passengers flew out of the Guam airport than out of Seattle.
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U2, Some good points but i don't think that reflects the whole picture. Canada has only two major airlines and only one that really caters to international travelers. This means that Air Canada can follow less than optimal service models and still make money. It does not have to route every traveler through a hub. That's not the case in the US where US majors probably can find economies of scale by only operating through their hubs.That also leads to really peculiar travel patterns. Cincinatti should not be that important to the US aviation industry, but it's a hub for Delta.

It's probably not fair to compare by city size either. Toronto and Montreal are fair more important cities on our national stage than Boston or Philadelphia is for the US. And Calgary and Edmonton need strong connections with cities that deal with oil and other resource trading. Hence the connections to Europe (with London being the most important among the destinations for Albertans...for obvious reasons).

That being said, I'd agree with the general contention that Americans travel less outside their country. But I have always felt that a lot of that has to do with the fact that there's a lot to see in the US and its far cheaper to do so than to travel abroad. By comparison how many Canadians really want to vacation in Saskatchewan or Manitoba?
 
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