Time & Perspective Quote by Bob Schieffer

A tragedy gets translated, almost offhandedly, into a market correction. Schieffer is describing a post-9/11 media recoil: when the world ruptured, audiences retreated from the fragmented, personality-driven sprawl of cable and early digital noise back to the old broadcast networks, the places that still carried the aura of institutional steadiness. The line is calm, even managerial, which is precisely what makes it revealing. He doesn’t dwell on fear or grief; he talks about “core viewers,” “come back,” “stayed.” The vocabulary is loyalty and retention, the language of a brand that suddenly feels essential again.

The intent is partly defensive and partly triumphant. In an era when network news was already being written off as a fading mass ritual, Schieffer frames 9/11 as proof that legacy journalism still matters when the stakes feel existential. The subtext is sharper: trust is elastic until it isn’t. Under everyday conditions, people experiment; under shock, they consolidate, gravitating toward outlets that signal authority through familiarity, production polish, and a long-standing relationship with national narrative.

There’s also a quiet admission here about the power of crisis to reshape habits permanently. “They have stayed with us” isn’t just an observation; it’s a claim that catastrophe re-stabilized a hierarchy the networks were losing. The line captures a sobering feedback loop: institutions gain legitimacy by covering emergencies, and emergencies renew the public’s appetite for institutions.