Some years ago, I spent a good chunk of my career working on the concept of moving the 24-hour News Channel concept pioneered by Ted Turner’s CNN, back in 1980, to the local television level. It was a pretty cool gig, and we built a half-dozen amazing newsrooms around the country, before the usual kind of business politics got in the way and it was time to move on to the next chapter of my career.

So I present that credential as a small token to support my claim that I know just a little bit about the idea of turning out television news on a 24/7/365 formula.

And let’s face facts, the All-Day, All-The-Time news and information stream business…is a mess.

CNN, which had the genre pretty much all to itself for about 15 years, before it was eclipsed by…. well, everybody it seems. There are 24-Hour “news” channels for the right (Fox), for the left (MSNBC), for the capitalists (CNBC), for the scores (ESPNews), for the shoppers (HSN, QVC, ShopNBC, etc).

Hell, even CNN’s own sibling network–the once completely serviceable and utilitarian “Headline News” has morphed into “HLN”, which has surpassed the mothership by being apparently willing to give everyone who can talk in a loud, shrill and annoying voice their own chance to imitate Larry King on a nightly basis. (See Nancy Grace, Joy Behar, etc.)

It’s just all too much, all the damn time.

As a defense against this overload of drive-thru information and opinions that never closes, I have developed a ritual of recording Comedy Central’s “The Daily Show with Jon Stewart” each weeknight and then playing the weeks episodes all back on Saturday morning’s while I have some breakfast. It makes the weekend soooo much more tolerable from that point forward.

So this morning, I’m finishing up the four episodes from the week gone by (and by the way, Stewart–would it kill you guys to tape a show for Friday nights? What, your team is on the Johnny Carson plan of only working four damn days a week?)

And as I’m wiping the crumbs of a delicious bagel from my face it hit me like the flashing red graphics of a Breaking News Alert, just in from wherever the hell Breaking News alerts come from.

We need the Daily Show to become the Hourly Show. As in every hour of every day.

Comedy Central, or its corporate parent Viacom should start working on this immediately. Hell, CBS doesn’t even have its own 24-hour news network–it borrows people from CNN to fill out the 60 Minutes talent roster. This could be the answer to their need to amortize off the expense of running a network news division (which is considerable) and to figure out some kind of niche other than the current thinking of “We’ll be the sober, hard news guys in the tradition of Murrow, Cronkite, Wallace, and Rooney. (With that brief interruption from when Rather may have gone off the rails a bit.)

Tell me that you wouldn’t watch The Hourly Show for a reality check and some high quality tongue-in-cheek journalism on the news of the day, anytime of the day or night? Where else would you go for instant analysis of Sarah Palin deciding to end the biggest tease-fest ever by deciding not to run for the White House?

Aside from being a full-employment act for struggling comedians and comedy writers.. This idea could be nothing less than the salvation of our democracy.

It’s been a crazy few weeks in my life.  All of which has culminated in a pretty big life change on this Monday.

After nearly nine years of leading the newsroom at News 8 here in Connecticut, I have announced that I will be stepping down from that post on December 17th of this year.  It has not been an easy decision to do so–or one that I have made lightly.  I truly like and respect my colleagues at WTNH and sister station WCTX aka “MyTV9″.  They are a great bunch of people to have spent the longest time I have ever spent in any one job, in my now over 35 years in broadcasting.

I cannot believe I just typed the number 35, followed by the word “years”.  I may need to lie down before the end of this post.

My decision to leave the halls of 8 Elm Street in New Haven, comes because I have accepted an exciting new challenge to become the News Director for WKRC-TV in Cincinnati, Ohio.  Local 12, as WKRC-TV is known in the area, is also a great station with an amazing staff that I am very honored to be joining.  The station signed on the air in 1949, less than a year after WTNH became the second station to sign on here in New England.

As you can imagine, both stations have amazing history.  I was fortunate enough to watch both station’s 50th anniversary specials over the weekend.  For a guy who is a certifiable nut about the history of the broadcasting industry, it is just great to work in places with rich traditions for being innovative and leaders in their communities.

Of course, something like this just doesn’t happen.  The process of applying, interviewing, considering, deciding, and announcing a decision like this takes some time.  And frankly, it also takes some stealthy work.

Because you can’t really talk too much about this sort of thing, at least not while its going on.  So you have to be a little clandestine about things which you normally would like to talk about with friends and colleagues.  Both to get their opinion and the benefit of their knowledge.

But when your friends are colleagues who happen to be journalists, and they are used to trying to find out all the details that some people would prefer to keep out of the headlines, your life becomes a little more dramatic.  It takes on a certain sense of behavior that the CIA might be proud of–but not so much when it comes to having to be secretive with people that you are used to telling most everything to.

So I had to observe what I dubbed as “radio silence” during the days and weeks leading up to this particular Monday in November.

And as anyone who knows me would tell you, that kind of discipline is not necessarily my strong suit.

Now that the lid is finally off, and the details have come forth, I have to give thanks to the people I’ve met already in Cincinnati who have been great and were great ambassadors for what I think will be an amazing place to be a part of.  I can’t wait to meet even more of you.

But the hardest part of this whole transition is yet to come, and that will be having to say goodbye to my colleagues and friends at News 8 who have been nothing short of amazing over the past nine years.  Then there are our friends and neighbors here in Avon, one of the true gems for a town to live in here in Connecticut.  Avon has been a wonderful place to raise our two daughters, who are now away from home most of the time in school.  (By the way that reminds me, if anyone is looking for a wonderful and unique 3-br house in Avon that will be unbelievably reasonable in terms of price–have we got a place for you to look at.)

So today was about “breaking radio silence” for the first time about this amazing new adventure that we are embarking on.  Many thanks for your patience and support as we get back to writing about all the other stuff that interests us–as well as sharing some thoughts on whether the journey really is the reward.

Stay tuned.