The lab is extremely quiet this week, at least for me. So I watched a lot of news, and you know what I learned? That Taylor Hicks won American Idol Season 5. I have watched a grand total of one (1) epsiode of American Idol in those entire 5 seasons, and it was coercion by my mom. But over the past month, the news has told me more than I need to know about that parasitic program.
Now, let's think about this out loud: American Idol is the most popular program on television. It's been bigger than like the Super Bowl for 5 years now. So, doesn't everyone who want to know what happened on the show already watch it? Do these people have such a fixation on American Idol that the local news that comes on afterwards needs to cover the results for the first 15 minutes? What sort of person missed the entirety of that show, tunes into local Fox news at 10, and hoping to see what happened? I guess there are people out there who watch Sports Center immediately after a 4 hour football game, but they're just as crazy.
So mostly, I have a short summer reprieve from hearing about American Idol on cable news or local news or from people who think I might actually care. Now, I just have to outlast the buzz around the Da Vinci movie, and I should be ok.
2 comments:
Yeah, I dont understand why the local stations feel to cover tv shows on the news. I guess it just further dillutes the tv news and why I refuse to watch any of it. I read the local paper online and subscribe to the tech (and some other) news sites im interested in.
I know there's probably earlier examples of this, but survivor was/is just as bad - its just on during a different season.
Why bother covering real news when you get handed wire stories from your network? They probably even get benefits (cash) if they cover it ( at least for covering their own shows )
I forgot about the self-promotion angle that probably does feed some of these small market newsrooms that really need to money. Still, it seems like by co-opting the news for promotion like that decreases the value of the news, hurting its credibility as news. But hey, it gets viewers, right, so what do they care? I think that attitude hurts America more than Jon Stewart's beef with Crossfire.
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