Television network and cable "news" in a nutshell. From The Onion today, the Wall Street Journal tomorrow:
ATLANTA—Last week, after a reported 65 million Americans learned of the bipartisan immigration bill with the breaking news report "Mexicans Stay," it became apparent that the much- ballyhooed 24-second news cycle had come into its own. [...]CNN is widely credited with initiating the acceleration of the modern news cycle with the fall 2006 debut of its spin-off channel CNN:24, which provides a breaking news story, an update on that story, and a news recap all within 24 seconds. In addition to creating its groundbreaking format, CNN:24 broke many important stories with reports such as "Ford No Money Everyone Fired," "Iraq Bomb Kill Truck," "Country Hates Bush," "Dow High Now," and "Squirrel Water Skis."
"TV news reporting has always been about breaking the story down into only the barest, most salient facts, but the breakneck pace of contemporary reportage doesn't allow for that anymore," said Professor Robert Kubey, director of the Center for Media Studies at Rutgers University. [...]
A typical [MSNBC] News Moment segment includes seven seconds of lead stories, four seconds of developing news, the "International Second," "Weather on the 00:00:13s with Bob Van Dorn," "The Fastest Four Seconds in Sports," a two-second top stories recap, and wraps with four seconds of mixed entertainment and lifestyle pieces. In larger markets such as New York and Los Angeles, this last portion may be preempted by local news.
Fire Burn...that's great.
Ooooh. I hate the news.
Just to attempt to argue in counterpoint: Maybe rushing through the news in 24 secs necessitates headlines like that. The brain doesn't have time to process very much, so these words implant the gist of the story in you, which is perhaps the only reasonable goal of the excercise.
To illustrate, while reading your article I wasn't paying attention to the image; though I must have glanced over it, it didn't strike me until I finished reading and looked at it. If this screen was on a fraction of those 24 seconds, I doubt I would have noticed at all.
I'm not defending the overall idea, but I guess I'm defending the headlines they use in it.
I didn't notice the source. Still, it seemed real for a while.
Yeah, it just seems too plausible these days.
I haven't had much interest in the "news" for years now. Any story that's going to be dashed off in 30 seconds with no analysis is just trivia, to me, no matter how important it is to the parties actually involved. I don't have to be the first on my block to know what's "breaking", I'm willing to wait awhile to see what actually sticks when the facts get digested. I would rather be the person to understand something a year later than to be the one saying "Have you heard?..."
And if all this is explained by the speed of modern culture, please tell me why Warhol's 15 minute rule has been expanded rather than condensed. ("Have you heard the latest on Paris Hilton?")
I know, it's the Onion, I should lighten up. I guess it struck a nerve. Which the Onion often does, so brilliantly.
The one problem with the Onion is that often it's titles and openings are brilliant, the joke itself wears out after the 20th paragraph.
This reminds me of the news program featured in "Robocop" (1987). Their slogan: You give us three minutes, we'll give you the world.
I guess I don't have any problem with this concept. It's just that my physical comfort graph is directly connected to what's on the screen, followed by the behavior of the people in the theater. The seating and concessions (I pretty much outgrew my need for noshing when the prices passed the tickets and now don't buy even at the cheap food theaters. Lost the habit.) are way down the list. The bottom line is: if cushy seats are going to bring in more people who care less about the movie than I vote against them. If not, then sure, what the heck, fluff me.
I'm kind of the same way about voter turn out. If they don't actually care I would just as soon they stayed home. I prefer total apathy to half-assed apathy.
Hmmm, I'm not sure how this happened. This comment was supposed to go with the "theaters try to compete" thing. I mean, I like non-sequiters and all, but cheese is tasty.