They might be looking for an American version of Ten's long-running "current affairs" show "The Project," which even though it has a panel format contains out-of-studio reports, commentaries and comedy segments and not just people yelling at each other. The show also provides one of the few homes for left-of-centre views on Australian commercial television, which probably leans more to the right than the U.S. does, particularly the competing in their timeslot "A Current Affair" on Nine Network (the original version of that tabloid title, years before the U.S. version). The fact that the pubcaster ABC's "Media Watch" show rarely takes shots at them, compared to the Murdoch newspapers, the Murdoch cable channel Sky News (essentially Fox News with an accent), the rightwing radio "talkback" hosts and the commercial TV news shops, may be the reason to recommend the format.