Do you watch TV in the morning? If so, what do you watch? I'm looking for recommendations.
Ever since I was a kid, the kitchen TV has been on in the morning while we eat breakfast and get ready for school. I remember Flipper and Rocky and Bullwinkle being on when we were younger and then Katie Couric and Matt Lauer on The Today Show later on.
As an adult, I've been looking for something linear to watch in the morning while I eat breakfast to put a stop to my bad habit of doom scrolling. I have about 30-45 minutes between walking my dog and logging onto my work computer where I eat breakfast and sit at the kitchen table. This is kind of "me time" to get ready for the day and try to get my brain to ramp up into work mode that has taken the place of my morning commute ever since COVID now that I work remote. Here's what I've tried and why I don't like them:
- The Today Show (and other mass-market morning news): honestly these have some "real" news in them but I feel like there's too much time wasted on filler & fluff & pop culture that I don't really care about.
- CNBC, usually Squawk on the Street: I like that this is more straight to the point but it's more heavily financial than I really need it to be. I'm not an active investor so, while I like getting business/market news, I don't need 45 minutes dedicated to it.
- Bloomberg's Bloomberg Brief on YT: this is a bit broader than the previous option, but still more heavily focused on financial markets than I really need to be.
I'm mostly interested in major world events, economics, tech, and business. I specifically do not care to hear about pop culture and sports (that's for after work) and I'm so tired of hearing about American political theater (although I'd like to know when something concrete happens).
So yeah. What do you watch in the morning? Do you have any suggestions?
I've been watching Battlebots lately in the mornings. It keeps me captivated while still being something I can have while my brain wakes up doing Wordle and catching up on the news via apps. It also has good enough stopping points where I can call it quits but there's so many seasons of it that's there's enough to watch for a long time.
But you're probably asking more about like current events tv, and for that I'll occasionally watch The Daily Show, especially on Tuesdays, but lately world events are just so depressing that I'd rather not, and rather read news articles instead.
I didn't usually have the bandwidth for watching things in the morning, but if I'm driving, I'm quite happy to listen to CBC radio morning programs. Sometimes it's news which will cover the major world and local events, econ tech biz highlights.
But sometimes, even better, it's human interest like interviews with an author, or quirky Canadian who did a notable thing, or a new episode of their science program Quirks and Quarks, or comedy news quiz Because News.
I do have another couple YouTube channels that catch me up to speed on current events. One is parody songwriter, Sunny Lam, who updates when something (not directly political) ridiculous happens in Hong Kong. The other is conservative leaning diaspora channel which covers econ/biz/financial, military, geopolitical takes on current events. (They're HKer conservative, not rabid American conservative. It's still too conservative for me, so I find myself rolling my eyes a bit, but it's an acceptable dosage for me to hear about things my liberal echo chamber doesn't cover,
eg, American thing
such as California's billion dollar capitol annex projecthttps://www.thedesertreview.com/news/state/capitol-annex-secrecy-deepens-as-public-still-blocked-from-cost-details/article_efb28f2c-55ee-45d5-8b51-0248a01a5de7.html
https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/sacramento-bee/
YouTube and podcasts mostly, much to the detriment of my productivity.
If you're down for Saturday Morning Cartoons, a number of FAST streamers have an all cartoon channel, or for the legitimate Saturday Morning experience if you're in the States, there's MeTV Toons if you want an OTA experience.
Specific episodes of internet today on YouTube might fit the bill. Its a couple guys from america so the focus is on that shit show but they do have different themed episodes during the week and when they do news there usually a world news story in there.
If you’ve got $5 to spare, and are in the US, PBS Passport usually has a few options for streaming live stations but what’s on those stations varies based on your local. If your local doesn’t have news-y programming on one of them, or news-y programming that quite fits what your looking for, you can VPN to a different market and see if a different local has something better.
I know at least one market has NHK world and I used to throw that on in the mornings.
If podcasts are an option, then my two recommendations are: the BBC Global News Podcast, which I listen to in the morning, and The Intelligence from The Economist for the evening. The latter always covers a variety of news and interesting events (so not just financial news), and the discussions & interviews are captivating more often than not.
Seconding BBCs global news podcast. If you were a fellow Canadian, CBC has excellent live shows in all major markets that keep you up to date on local happenings with news, interviews and special topics.
If the suggestion was aimed at me, thanks. I’ve been thinking about replacing the BBC podcast, because these past two days I’ve heard coverage of the Trump speech BBC fiasco from both of these sources (BBC and The Economist). I was surprised to get more information, including an excerpt from Trump’s edited speech, from The Economist & not BBC.
It struck me as if BBC is covering its ass instead of informing their listeners properly. So I’d try to branch out.
Well, I could vouch for the CBC probably being similar in many ways to the BBC. Also, I'm betting that any institution having its bottom line/security threatened won't report on specific topics. Just look at Al Jazeera and Katari domestic affairs.