Crossfire is all over

It certainly took long enough for the show to get cancelled. The AP's David Bauder reports [via Taegan Goddard]:

CNN said goodbye to pundit Tucker Carlson on Wednesday, and with him likely the "Crossfire" program that has been the granddaddy of high-volume political debate shows on cable television.

CNN will probably fold "Crossfire" into its other programming, perhaps as an occasional segment on the daytime show "Inside Politics," said Jonathan Klein, who was appointed in late November as chief executive of CNN's U.S. network.

[...]

"Crossfire" began in 1982 and was once a mainstay of CNN's prime time. Pat Buchanan from the right and Michael Kinsley from the left were two of its most prominent hosts.

But as Fox News Channel perfected the format with popular hosts Bill O'Reilly and Sean Hannity, "Crossfire" lost favor among CNN executives and was moved to the afternoons in 2002. It averages 447,000 viewers each weekday, down 21 percent from the previous season, according to Nielsen Media Research. Carlson rotates as host with conservative columnist Bob Novak. Paul Begala and James Carville are the left-leaning ringleaders.

Jon Stewart was entirely correct it attacking Crossfire and its spawn on Fox News and MSNBC. These partisan hatchetmen constantly yelling at eachother does not forward the dialogue in this country, and I wholeheartedly believe that it's fine time for Crossfire and similar shows being cancelled.