A
wacky weather guy with a plain-people-of-Ireland
accent. And a blousy entertainment ‘news’
person. Now, subtract all the repartee, sign-offs,
teasers and not-really-news elements from the
half-hour broadcast and what have you got left?
Not a whole lot. Certainly not enough to cover
meaty stories with any kind of telling analysis,
context or follow-up.
I
switched over to Sky and guess what? Remove the
logos and you really couldn’t tell the difference.
CBS and NBC later that night? Slicker graphics
and truly scary-looking reporters – every
hair mashed into place, frozen botox-rictus
grins and heavy eNUNciation as they PUNCH every
third WORD.
What
about the phone-in polls? I just love those! I
showed some of these at a lecture recently and
the audience started laughing. Not at the topics,
although some of them were deeply dippy –
no, they were laughing at the lack of a very simple,
but important piece of data at the bottom of each
slide. You will have seen this on numerous legitimate
polls; it’ll say something like “n=1050,”
referencing that there were 1050 respondents.
When
Sky sticks one of those brightly-coloured bar
charts up on screen without the little n, it means
nothing. NOTHING!
“Well,”
says the impossibly symmetrical female anchor
with a come-hither grin, “64% of you
think that nun-beating should be legalised.”
64% of who exactly? Maybe some researcher stuck
their head into the cafeteria five minutes before
airtime and shouted, “Hands up anyone
who thinks that whacking nuns should be allowed
by law?” But by mentioning the poll
twice in the broadcast and giving it some funky
graphics, the implication, of course, is that
this is a relevant and widely-held belief.
What
is the standard response of news producers to
criticism of their offering? “We merely
give the public what it wants. We’ve tried
high-brow and they just don’t tune in.”
My reaction is to point to the one model
that has been consistently profitable since the
advent of the internet: Pornography. Thus I think
we can all agree that ‘the people’
have spoken. If stations really intended giving
the public what it wants, there would be a lot
more silicone on the nine o’clock news.
So it’s clear to me that the producers have
drawn a line somewhere. It’s just that in
a dozen little ways, they didn’t draw it
in the right place.
When
did news plummet to this lowest common denominator?
Maybe it’s rose-tinted glasses, but while
I don’t remember Don Cockburn or Richard
Baker as being particularly erudite, they could
at least string coherent sentences together.
TV
news is easy. It is easy on the eye (very easy,
with all the chiselled jawlines and doe-eyed supermodel
types), easy on the ear and increasingly anaesthetic
on the brain. Is there a solution to this banality
and mediocrity? Probably not as long as the advertisers
have the influence they do. So for now, when I
am looking for bona fide analysis and context
to the stories of the day, I am forced to rely
on my broadsheet and the internet.
"...
a tale, told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
signifying nothing"
(William
Shakespeare)
Rowan
Manahan is MD of Fortify Services and author of
Where’s My Oasis
Original
article here
