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I do think that the days of gathering around a television set that functions merely as a television set, to receive a live broadcast of some networked programming, those days are probably numbered.

While I was doing 'The Newsroom,' I always had the news on on different networks on different TVs around my house and around my office.

I've anchored my share of live coverage over the years, including car chases. At MSNBC, I often prayed the 'delay switch' would actually work as promised. And, I frequently wondered what I would do or say if a violent and graphic incident accidentally aired on my broadcast.

I worked at CBS in the late '90s, and I remember sitting in meetings with both advertisers and digerati, and everyone was saying, 'Network TV is dead.'

The current wisdom now is that if the three networks are covering the news the same way the difference is the anchor people. I think that won't be true in the future.

Almost every media organization is doing something with live events now, and that's because they feel they can break through that way.

I think up until that time a lot of focus on Internet coverage was either sort of the bits and bytes aspect of it, sort of the high-tech aspect of it, and the sociological aspect of it, which is how it was transforming culture.

I know the rigors of network news. I didn't want to be jumping on an airplane twice a week. I didn't want to be tied to my pager and my cellphone.

When there's an emergency weather situation, the local broadcaster is the source of information that often makes the difference between life and death.