SHORT TAKES ON THE DRIFTING WRECKAGE – AT 9:55 P.M. ET: 

BIDEN READY TO ROLL? – From Fox:  Vice President Biden’s aides in recent days called Democratic donors and supporters to suggest he is more likely than not to enter the 2016 race, and their discussions have shifted toward the timing of an announcement, said people familiar with the matter, according to The Wall Street Journal.  While the Biden team is still debating the best time to jump in, the vice president met Monday with his political advisers and talked about the merits of an early entry that would assure him a place in the Democratic debate scheduled for Oct. 13. They also are honing his campaign message and moving ahead with plans to raise money and hire staff, the people said.  Biden's position is not that great.  He's a fine man personally, with a moving story, but he's never inspired much confidence as a presidential prospect.  He'll be seen mainly as an alternative to the faltering queen.  And that may be enough.

A MINOR OMISSION – From the Washington Times:   Former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton’s top aides have belatedly turned over more than 100,000 pages of emails they had kept on personal email accounts, or accounts tied to Mrs. Clinton’s server, the government told a federal judge late Friday.  Huma Abedin turned over an estimated 23,000 pages of emails, Philippe Reines gave back 70,000 pages of messages and Cheryl Mills returned somewhere in the neighborhood of 11,870 pages, the Obama administration told Judge Rudolph Contreras in a court filing.  And unlike Mrs. Clinton’s emails, the State Department does not have plans to post online all of those three aides’ messages, instead deciding to release only select messages that are requested through particular open-records demands.  Would you look at those numbers!  Did they do anything besides e-mail?  This scandal is going to drag on and on.  It's the steady drip that will, in my view, likely terminate Clinton's campaign.

CABLE COMPANIES BUCKLING – From CNBC:   It all started with a simple sentence.  "Trends among younger audiences ... will continue to put pressure on the multichannel ecosystem," said Disney CEO Bob Iger during the company's third-quarter conference call on Aug. 4. Those comments stoked fears of cord cutting and sent shares of Disney and other media companies into a tailspin.  According to a new survey, Iger's fears may be justified. The data show that the so-called "cord-cutting" phenomenon—where consumers jettison traditional cable and satellite packages in favor of streaming services—is about to get a lot worse. A new report by Magid Advisors surveyed 2,400 consumers and found that cord cutting is not only on the rise, but it's happening much more quickly than industry watchers anticipated.  According to Magid, 3.7 percent of pay TV subscribers age 18 to 64 said they were "extremely likely" to cancel their pay TV service in the next 12 months. That number is up from 2.9 percent in 2014, and represents a 95 percent increase over results from 2011.  The changes in technological preference are simply dazzling.  It seems like yesterday that cable was cutting edge.  I get the feeling that what young viewers value most is the ability to call up programs or movies at any time, at their convenience, eliminating the traditional TV schedule.  That ability is already here with many offerings. 

September 19, 2015