Wak­ing up at 4 a.m. is rarely enjoy­able, and aris­ing at that unspeak­able hour to appear on a cable news show is par­tic­u­lar­ly painful. In such sit­u­a­tions, you feel as if you’re drag­ging your­self out of bed only to be treat­ed like a canine in a dog­fight, with the typ­i­cal show pit­ting you in a con­trived death match against anoth­er guest who is your equal­ly angry, equal­ly mangy oppo­site. That, or you’re sim­ply asked to play the yes-man – the Ed McMa­hon to the host’s John­ny Carson.

The fact that "Up" is groundbreaking is something of a sad commentary on the larger media.

Need­less to say, I’m not a fan of most cable news because I find this for­mat mind-numb­ing, unin­for­ma­tive and tedious (and cable news’ declin­ing rat­ings over the last year prove I’m not alone). So when I was asked to appear on MSNBC last Sat­ur­day morn­ing, my ini­tial thought was, ​“Thanks, but no thanks.”

But then I real­ized it was a new show host­ed by Chris Hayes, a jour­nal­ist whose work I’ve long admired. (He’s a for­mer senior edi­tor at In These Times, which basi­cal­ly launched his career in polit­i­cal jour­nal­ism.) So I said yes. And crack-of-dawn fatigue aside, I’m glad I did, because to my sur­prise, I end­ed up get­ting the chance to par­tic­i­pate in one of the best tele­vi­sion pro­grams on the air.

“Up With Chris Hayes,” which broad­casts Sat­ur­day and Sun­day morn­ings, pur­pose­ly rejects the man­u­fac­tured red-ver­sus-blue mal­let that blud­geons every issue into par­ti­san terms. Instead, the program’s host is cre­at­ing a space for more expan­sive dis­cus­sions with voic­es typ­i­cal­ly deemed too uncon­ven­tion­al, provoca­tive or dan­ger­ous to be allowed any­where near a tele­vi­sion set.

The pan­el I appeared on exem­pli­fied Hayes’ effort. Out of five in-stu­dio guests appear­ing to dis­cuss the death of Moam­mar Gad­hafi, the Iraq War and the Arab Spring, one was Iraqi author Zainab Sal­bi, one was Libyan author Hisham Matar and one was Pales­tin­ian-Amer­i­can come­di­an Dean Obei­dal­lah. (Arabs being asked for their opin­ion on events in the Arab world – what a con­cept!) Amaz­ing­ly (and refresh­ing­ly), in a cable world dom­i­nat­ed by crotch­ety Cau­casians, NBC News’ for­eign cor­re­spon­dent Richard Engel and I were the only white dudes on the panel.

Even more incred­i­ble was the show’s ide­o­log­i­cal open­ness. Just one exam­ple: We had a dis­cus­sion about the notion of Amer­i­ca as an empire – a con­cept per­va­sive through­out the globe that Engel nonethe­less couldn’t believe was being dis­cussed on Amer­i­can tele­vi­sion. He was right to be sur­prised. Though it should be stan­dard, a cable pro­gram that both explores huge­ly taboo ques­tions and includes a diverse set of voic­es is some­thing you rarely see in this country.

For Amer­i­can news con­sumers, Hayes’ show is a ter­rif­ic, bet­ter-late-than-nev­er devel­op­ment. But the fact that ​“Up” is ground­break­ing is also some­thing of a sad com­men­tary on the larg­er media.

For the most part, TV remains exact­ly as Hunter S. Thomp­son once described it: a ​“cru­el and shal­low mon­ey trench through the heart of the jour­nal­ism indus­try, a long plas­tic hall­way where thieves and pimps run free …” In that hallway’s cur­rent cable form, ​“nation­al news” is a euphemism for New York- and DC-focused con­tent engi­neered pri­mar­i­ly by a closed ecosys­tem of East Coast elites who believe the only things that mat­ter are Man­hat­tan gos­sip and Belt­way games. This is why you almost always see the same vapid pun­dits and the same homog­e­nized top­ics on TV – because this clique is hos­tile to diverse view­points and uses its priv­i­lege to make sure media debates rep­re­sent only the elites’ myopic perspective.

By con­trast, Hayes’ show joins a vari­ety of pro­grams, from Amy Goodman’s ​“Democ­ra­cy Now!” to Jon Stewart’s ​“The Dai­ly Show” to Thom Hartmann’s ​“The Big Pic­ture,” in reject­ing this suf­fo­cat­ing mod­el. If ​“Up” suc­ceeds, it’ll play a huge role in cre­at­ing a new mod­el of tele­vi­sion that will serve jour­nal­ism and the cit­i­zen­ry far bet­ter than today’s vast tele­vi­sion wasteland.