24 HOUR NEWS IS NEITHER
CORI DAUBER - RANTING PROFS
We like to think that we have not one, not two, but three 24 hour cable news networks in this country.
One of the earliest things I teach my students is that this sentiment is a myth because in fact, 24 hour news is neither. Think about it: unless something really, really huge is afoot (like, say, a war) we don't get 24 hours of new programming. Come 11 pm Eastern, wham, that's it: those prime time shows (including, ironically, the news shows are re-run. If something's going on that's big enough to push new programming past that 11 pm witching hour, (say, a political convention) but not big enough to go through the night, they just run fewer re-runs.
There was a time when CNN would at least let its American viewers get CNN International overnight. That way they weren't paying for any additional programming, but insomniacs and people getting ready for early flights still saw new news programming. But now even that isn't done, unless something breaks late (in which case they do it to save having to pay for the effort of getting American reporters and producers out of bed.)
And are these networks truly "news" networks? Sometimes. But an awful lot of what goes on on those networks (especially in prime time) is people talking about the news. News analysts. Talking heads. The campaign season certainly made that clear, with the number of segments (I don't know about you, but the last week or so I've reached a threshold where I've found this literally unwatchable) that consisted of campaign surrogates yelling at one another.
And, of course, the non-news event dressed up and treated as news. You know my feeling about these.
Car chases.
Animal rescues.
And of course, salacious trials.
The mother who killed her children.
The woman who ran over her cheating husband.
And, now, Laci, Laci, Laci.
The thing to realize is that these stories, and these segments, are cheap, cheap, cheap.
Talking heads, studio set, several cameras.
Cheap, cheap, cheap.
These segments fill up air time easily, with no additional effort, no additional cost -- they don't take effort since the guests are all on speed dial. So it isn't any surprise, is it, that cable loves these stories while the networks don't need to rely on them?
The response, of course, is just more blame the victime clap-trap.
Marty Kaplan, associate dean of the University of Southern California's Annenberg School for Communication, decried the trial coverage as "pure white sugar, addictive and without nutrition."
"It's a sign of the times," Kaplan said. "There is no redeeming value. No morality play. No public policy fig leaf. It only goes to our most prurient interests. The trashiest novelists could not have come up with this. But we can't seem to help ourselves. It's our lizard brains."
You know what else is a "sign of the times?" All those election polls showing that people care more about terrorism, Iraq, and the economy than any other issues. So why do the media believe that it's simply impossible to provide hard news that won't get ratings? It may well be true that ratings are better for this kind of story. But remember, ratings measure only the people who are actually watching. It's still the case that traditional media continues to bleed audience.
In other words, pandering to the "lizard brain," giving people pure "white sugar," without nutrition may mean winning the battle and losing the war. Maybe what they ought to be doing is thinking about ways to cover serious news stories in a way that captures all those people giving up on them.
Is there any evidence there are people irritated by this approach?
[Dan] Abrams [of MSNBC's Abrams Report] added: "We get people calling in all the time asking, 'Why do we spend so much time on the Laci Peterson trial?' I get that question. I think that's a fair question. My answer to that is it is an interesting case."
And he has a few words for what he calls "intellectual snobs":
"The intellectual snobs want to blame the media for covering stories that aren't 'important.' But you just don't find many cases where a 7 1/2-month pregnant woman is killed on Christmas Eve and her husband goes to trial. People can say it happens all the time but it doesn't."
If you ignore all the people frustrated and turning away because you're wasting your time on this case (which is admittedly a tragedy but, come on) and just dismiss them as "intellectuals" because they want you to cover stories that matter, you'll end up with high ratings -- but a huge chunk of people turning you off and turning to alternative sources of the news.
One last thing: it may well be true that the networks have turned up their noses on this particular story.
Lets not applaud too loudly. It isn't even the case that they've turned away from other trials.
Remember the two brothers charged with killing their father? (Post-September 11.) I have to admit, Andrea Yates didn't make the report, which surprised me, but we all remember OJ. But any week of the year, you can surf the Tyndall reports and find all kinds of "soft news" stories that qualify as "infotainment."
The production values are just higher. |
