“Oh come on!” I hear you say. “It’s just a harmless convention. Let them have their 5 minutes in the spotlight” No. NO. NO! It’s not harmless. It’s an utter waste of time; time that could be spent on real news.

The other night, I was looking at an early evening news broadcast on a station that shall remain … TV3. Five of these yahoos! One confidence-boosting baritone. One achingly beautiful female co-anchor. Another baritone for the sport. 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" (Shakespeare)

Rowan Manahan is MD of Fortify Services and author of Where’s My Oasis

 

Original article here