shakran

You're almost right, but it needs some tweaking.

You are absolutely, 100% correct that deregulation of the broadcast industry has had an appalling effect on the quality of TV news. Largely gone are the days when we could count on people like Murrow to have the real story.

And you're absolutely correct that there are mega industries controlling our media, but you're not broad enough in the scope. With the exception of PBS/NPR, a few college stations, and some stuff on local cable-access channels, mega industries control ALL of our broadcast media. Every last bit of it. This is one reason the myth of the liberal media is so idiotic. Megacorporations do better under republicans than democrats. Why would these megacorporations have as the most visible part of their company a bunch of people shouting messages that are against the republicans?

Where you're wrong is when you say the media is designed to appeal to the people. Nope, it's not. The people have been trained to be appealed to by the drivel that's on television these days. As these megacorporations have bought up the media, the variety of programs on television has shrunk markedly. This explains why there are 70 billion reality shows out there. It's not good television, but there really isn't much else to watch so if you want to watch television at certain times, it's gonna be reality shows. Then the consultants come in and say "hey look, at 7pm everyone's watching reality shows!" (they fail to mention that's because nothing else is on) "Let's make more of them! That's what the people want!"

And pretty soon you see crap from reality shows trickle down into the serious programming such as news. And I'm not just talking about a package about the latest guy to be kicked off the island, I'm talking techniques from those reality shows.

The first reality show was not survivor. It was Cops. One of the big draws in Cops is watching the police chases. Now every time there's a police chase near a station that has a helicopter, it's fed up to the network live and stations break in with it. So you could be sitting in East Jesus Iowa, watching a car chase in Miami, and wondering what in hell it has to do with you. But it's REALITY TELEVISION and the consultants say the viewers love it because dumbed-down news is all they understand.

Actually in my overly-long career I've talked with a lot of viewers and not ONE has EVER said "Ya know big guy, you guys really need to dumb down that news cast for me."

Far more often I hear "the paper had this and that angle, why the hell didn't you?"

That tells me that the viewers are a lot smarter than news managers and consultants give them credit for. But since smart viewers are more expensive to serve (it costs money to dig on a story and smart viewers insist that you dig) and since the television industry is one of the most profit-greedy industries out there (where else can you find an industry that has situations like a station in a low-population area that's clearing 7 MILLION a year after taxes, yet only pays their photographers $17,000 a year if that) they're sure as hell not gonna waste money programming for the smart viewers if they can just pretend you're all dumbasses who want to see random car wrecks and segments on how to keep your toothbrush clean.

So it's not that the viewers want crap news - they don't and they're proving it by watching the news less and less - -- the viewers want smart news and the industry simply isn't giving it to them.

In fact it's almost amusing to watch, if my livelihood didn't depend on it - because viewers are going away in reaction to these circus tactics that newscasts have been trying to use to snare them. And the more viewers leave, the louder and more insane the circus becomes. Suddenly everything is breaking news, even if it happened yesterday, everything is "shocking" we have Reporter X "LIVE" from somewhere that absolutely nothing is happening, but by-God he's LIVE so it must be URGENT. .. . and yet all this screaming and posturing for attention is failing to attract the viewers.

Those of us on the inside of this industry have been predicting its death for years, and sadly we're not seeing much hope that those predictions will be proven wrong.