Polishing the brass on the Titanic

I had a column ready this week about the fall of the music industry, but decided to postpone it to write an obituary for another kind of beast — network news.
It all looks the same to me, so I have no real idea when I’m watching ABC, CBS or NBC. Network news plays like idle chatter at a country club — a cabal of rich folks with too much money, no motivation and a sense of entitlement worthy of comic strip villains.
This is my question whenever I watch network news: Who do they think their audience is?
About a month ago, I saw a story on the evening news about the rising cost of lobster. The gist of the story was that high prices might force some people to (gasp!) eat something besides lobster.
Not too many weeks later I saw a similar story, this time about how high beef prices would keep “many” people from cooking steaks on the grill the summer.
I guess I should have felt lucky they didn’t fill the spot with more news about Anna Nicole, Paris Hilton or the latest bimbo of the hour, but that’s defeatist thinking. Worse, it’s the mentality of an abuse victim.
Over at our blog, I made a point that you’d never be disappointed if you assumed every newspaper was run by idiots. Every once in a while you might even be pleasantly surprised. But “let them eat cake” is hardly a jutifiable editorial maxim.
By the time I was 12, I knew never to trust someone who asked for my trust. I’ve come to think of “Trust Me” as being the most corrupt thing a person can say, because it is always an invitation to betrayal. Like love, trust can be earned — but it’s not a form of currency to be bartered for whatever suits you.
I’ve taken that belief a few steps further during the last decade. Television news has found a way to make “Trust Me” into a full-fledged fetish. There’s no real reason for every news program to have a “news room” in the background, or for their anchors all to be in the same age groups, share the same sense of fashion, talk in the same monotone, etc. Television news is drama, complete with costumes, theme music and a cast of actors that are better suited to hosting game shows than refereeing national debates.
Television news is exclusive and insular — and its desperation is beginning to show. I can’t even imagine the mindset that believes viewers have a vested interest in the high price of lobster. If you’re watching network news, it probably means you can’t afford cable or satellite. If this is the case, there’s a pretty good chance you’ve never tasted lobster, and the word “steak” a word that usually follows “salisbury.” (For the record, I don’t have cable or satellite.)
Like the music industry (not to mention big oil) I don’t expect things to change. The course is set, destruction is a forgone conclusion and network news people aren’t willing to do anything besides polish the brass as the ship sinks.
Gloomy? Not really. As it stands, network news serves no other purpose than to supports its advertisers, who will probably be more than happy to advertise in any program in that same time slot. Life will go on, and these game show hosts who think they’re news people will find their former jobs have all been filled by Howie Mandel and Jeff Foxworthy.

Wallace McBride,
editor

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