Cnn

RE JENICE Armstrong's Nov. 11 column, "A Question of Color": Racism in America is on the rise. It's so bad that black people don't want to be black. We have a president who's had more death threats than any other president. This is part of the black experience that hurts, and it hurts deeply. Biracial Soledad O'Brien of CNN is absolutely beautiful, but I'm not sure how this article relates to blackness or black people. She says she's a person of color. OK, pick one, she's black.

By the millions, people who normally watch the evening news on the three major networks have moved to CNN to watch live coverage of the O.J. Simpson trial. "The O.J. trial has clearly disrupted previous news consumption patterns around the country," concludes a study released last week by the Times Mirror Center for the People and the Press. "The O.J. audience consists of persons who are much heavier consumers of all kinds of news compared to those who shun O.J. coverage. " For the week of March 28, according to Nielsen Media Research, the three network news shows were watched in about two million fewer households than in the comparable week a year ago. At the same time, CNN, normally watched in fewer than 600,000 homes at 6:30 p.m., when the national news is seen in most Eastern cities, is now being watched in more than three million homes when the trial is on. Officials responsible for news at the networks say that there's little they can do to halt those defections while America continues its fascination with the trial, but that they believe the audience will return once the trial ends.

The primary current-events source for people standing in supermarket checkout lines, of course, has long been the tabloids in the racks, which have kept America informed about Elvis' two-headed love child. Now television is moving to steal this captive audience. Cable News Network, the all-seeing global eye, is launching its Checkout Channel in 14 media markets, including the Philadelphia area. Television monitors mounted over the lanes constantly broadcast 10-minute news programs, intercut with 15- and 30-second commercials that the network says take about 40 percent of the air time.

Ratings for CNN and the network news shows this week offer the first tenuous suggestion that Americans may be starting to lose their consuming fascination with the O.J. Simpson trial. Perhaps the searing tragedy of Oklahoma City has made the Simpson trial appear trivial; perhaps the trial testimony has become too technical and tedious to keep an audience; perhaps it's all gone on too long. Or perhaps it's just a short-term anomaly with no meaning at all. But Peter Jennings, Tom Brokaw and Dan Rather/Connie Chung - all of whom have lost chunks of their audience to the live Simpson coverage on CNN, Court TV and E!

When your stepson is the former chief operating officer of CNN, chances are better than average of booking Larry King for a fund-raiser. Kris Korn, who is active in the Jewish Geriatric Home Auxiliary, a group that raises money for the elder care facility, was having dinner with retired CNN executive Steven Korn last summer and discussing her charity work when King's name came up. "Nonchalantly, he mentioned, 'How would you like Larry King?'...

Hooray! CNN has signed Larry King for five more years at the very reasonable price, according to Variety, of $35 million. That's about $135,000 a week for him to sit there an hour a day in his suspenders and ask newsmakers burning questions. Except that, frequently, they aren't newsmakers, and they don't provide answers. In the TV interview game, where the interviewer is usually the biggest star in the room, entertainment trumps news almost every single time. Hunched like a vulture over his trademark table microphone - no techie glitz for this veteran everyman - King exudes concern as he focuses attention on himself, collecting the information carrion, so frequently unenlightening, of his guests.

Dao Bog da ti vidim kucu na CNN-u! [Trans.: May God grant that I see your house on CNN!] Latest joke in Serbia, said to be in widespread use among quarreling neighbors.

9 tonight CNN Soledad O'Brien (right) hosts "Almighty Debt," a new special that examines how and why black Americans tend to lag behind their white counterparts when it comes to saving and investing.

TRUE BLOOD. 9 p.m. Sunday, HBO.   I'd like TO SAY you can't get "True Blood" from a stone, but as HBO's vampire drama enters its fifth season Sunday, I'm pretty sure that's exactly what it is doing.   Silly doesn't even begin to describe most of what goes on in the first few episodes, which include a veiled shout-out to former New Jersey Gov. Jim McGreevey, an enormous wink involving the folk standard "Turn! Turn! Turn!" and, as always, an unruly number of subplots.

The Minnesota bridge collapse two weeks ago was a banner event for citizen journalism. CNN received hundreds of "I-reports" and dramatic photos from people at the scene. Videos from eyewitnesses are nothing new. One could assert that Abraham Zapruder's film of the Kennedy assassination was the first I-report. Then there were the Rodney King video, amateur films from Sept. 11, 2001, and vacationer videos from the 2004 South Pacific tsunami. However, this last year has seen an explosion in citizen journalism.