That's News?
 

About a year or so ago I noticed something odd on my news. No, not the left wing nut jobs or the right wing whacks, they've been with us for decades. No, I'm talking about how they intermix show promos into the news cast as if it's news. This morning immediately after hearing about a Delta plane landing on the taxi way at Atlanta (WTF!) the next story was about what a great show Joy Behar had last night, complete with clip of her talking it up with Garry Shandling. Apparently he thinks Jesus' return is over due, he might have been kidding. Next story? Missing seven year old girl. So, news, crap, news... seems to be the pattern. There was several of these over the course of an hour, I should have counted them. One was for what's going to be on Nancy Grace tonight, it's gonna be great you don't want to miss it! Only time I want to know what's happening on Nancy Grace tonight is if someone's going to shoot her in the face... Ok I'd accept an upper body chest shot too. If that's going to happen please let me know, other wise stick to real news. Leave the promos for the commercials.

When did this become the norm? Anyone else dislike this trend?

I have found that the best way to stop being annoyed by the news is to stop watching the news.

They should have to call network news coverage 'news-like.' It should be a law.

Well, when you consider the various types of media to choose from to get your news--television, radio, newspapers, magazines, various Internet sources--and then you throw in the means of obtaining information about virtually any topic after it's no longer "news"--books, films, plus the aforementioned types of media--you will notice certain patterns and differences between each.

The thing to realize is that each of these competes amongst themselves in addition to indirect competition such as more pure forms of entertainment or virtually anything that takes time away from ingesting news.

With all these factors combined, you still have the eternal problem of maintaining audiences and making money. The evolution of television is what this is all about, and the news component of that is of no exception. It's just like the "consumer news" segments you see, where all it is, is a promo for various consumer goods.

Television was always a highly commercial medium. Wasn't it invented with that in mind? Television is a medium for delivering commercial messages, and the programming is used to attract viewers to that. You could argue that it's the other way around, but either way, the two are necessarily interconnected more so, I would argue, than any other medium.

This is actually pretty telling of our times---a time where newspapers are "dying" and magazines seem to be following suit--where it's hard to tell if anyone reads books anymore, or if they're merely accessories.

We live in the information age of the Internet and reality television, and we have the attention span of fleas. Tully, this is an interesting observation you've made, but are you surprised about it?