Here’s an interesting email comment from a regular reader.
Ian, let me draw your attention to a recent article in the WSJ, “Cutting the Cord on Cable“, about foregoing cable TV.
The author writes ironically about how he will miss the experience of watching TV.
“I know this sounds silly, but I’ll miss channel surfing. Catching the odd showing of “Ocean’s Twelve” on TBS. (You have to admit, that Capoeira laser scene is still pretty bonkers.) Stumbling upon “The Simpsons” reruns with Phil Hartman as Troy McClure. Asking myself, “Who watches local news anymore?” as I’m watching local news.”
This last sentence is something I never thought about. Local newspapers are imploding thanks to things like Craigslist, with its free advertising. Elite newspapers might be under pressure because of Google News. These markets, however, might also be losing their overlapping readership as “elite” readers and viewers simply lose interest in local news.
Rich people and educated people are becoming more detached from their local surroundings. So the local news might be morphing into … entertainment and sports, especially football. This might go hand-in-hand with a change in the leadership of local newspapers, away from the old local elite (e.g., Thurston Twigg-Smith), who might have been conservative but who did have a sense of nobless oblige….
The adage that “All politics is local” implies that all politics is self-interest of the most parochial sort, but it also implies that all democracy is local democracy. But what happens when people are less interested in that?
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There is little interest in providing local news that deals adequately or incisively with local government. Critical news of government, local, state or federal is usually brief, incomplete and lacking in facts.
What incentive is their for the news media, especially television news to provide information necessary for an effective democracy? The profit motive usually mitigates against investigations. It is truly ironic that our air waves are called public because there is so little “public “about it. Who actually gets on television but apparatchiks (reminiscent of dictatorships) of the republican or democrat party or news people that rarely not challenge already formed public policy in foreign and domestic arenas. Who challenged the Iraq War on national television? One person was Phil Donahue whose program was canceled at the onset of the Iraq invasion and occupation!
Starbulletin.com’s front page is always good if you want to see what all the skanks did over the weekend. “Go to generic club, pose, pout, stick out fake boobs, make V-sign with one hand while holding a drink with the other, rinse, repeat.”
Day after day after day. Blaaargh.
It used to be a pretty good newspaper.
I wonder if you are not going too far?
I rarely watch the local television news, unless I am looking to see how they cover a story in which I have an interest.
While I am scarcely “elite,” my unwillingness to watch the television news not mean I have lost interest in local political events. The level of political reporting on the TV news is so superficial, so “hit-or-miss,” that it is not worth devoting the half-hour to it when I can get better coverage reading your blog, Civil Beat, Disappeared News or the online edition of the daily “paper.”
But neither do I watch the national television news, except when there is something on the commercial media’s agenda which also interests me.
Part of this may be the evolution from “broadcasting” to “narrowcasting.” When there were only three networks broadcasting over the air, they had content aimed at a broad swath of the public. With the development of cable television, it allowed for the possibility of niche marketing of “news” programs, or “narrowcasting.”
Today, reactionaries tune into Fox News, conservatives have CNN and the non-Fox networks, centrists have PBS, liberals MSNBC and progressives have Democracy Now. And the kids have Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert.
I am a news hound, and spend way to much time keeping up each day. However, local news is so tepid that I’m ashamed to admit that I skip it altogether. That’s right–no more cable TV in our abode, and HPR? Like I have time for all their fluff pieces. We had a petition going a few years ago for HPR to include Democracy Now and we were told they were too unprofessional. I don’t know if elite is the right word, but if that works for you, so be it.
For more relevant radio, may I suggest the Pacifica stations, WBAI, KPFA, and KPFK? Their programs are available for download into your MP3 or i-player.
Trying to get Democracy Now onto HPR was a long and ultimately futile endeavor. Fortunately, in the meantime, the radio program moved to TV, and after a bit we found `Olelo to be sympathetic. I have been able to present Democracy Now for several years on `Olelo, although at present it is plagued by technical problems and a pathetic broadcast schedule.
One difference between the Pacifica stations and HPR or Hawaii’s PBS is that listeners have a voice in the content. Any contributing member can vote for the local board of directors, and members can communicate with their boards on any matter, including programming.
Here in Hawaii we are asked to contribute to public radio and TV but we have no say in what is broadcast. Perhaps one day the Occupy movement will focus on occupying our broadcast media. As to influencing commercial TV… no way.
Yes, WBAI has a program run by Occupy Wall Street. Check them out on the WBAI archives page at 6:30 p.m. NY time each weekday night.
Even if newspapers reformed in some way, they may still become extinct as the older demographic of die-hard readers passes on. As to radio, fewer people spend time sitting around the radio set at a given time listening to a program unless they are trapped in their cars, although radio is far from dead.
In fact, it has a new life on the Internet, as does video. No, that life isn’t local, which is the point Ian is trying to make, I think. The chance to tune in to real news is not just for elites, though.
when i was growing up, watching the local news and national news on television was part of our evening ritual, as well as reading the local newspaper, which had an evening delivery. once i was on my own, i couldn’t justify the cost of the local paper, because i could just go online. when we had cable, i would watch the local news occasionally, if it happened to be on and i was flipping channels. now we no longer have cable, and i don’t watch the local news at all. once, late last year, i was at the hospital and they were showing the local news (i’m currently in los angeles) and these were the topics covered (i’m not making this up): a viral video of someone beating a guy dressed up in a spongebob costume in hollywood, a story about a local plastic surgeon promoting the removal of fat around the ankles (getting rid of “cankles”), a “reporter” interviewing simon cowell to promote his new show, and another “reporter” visiting a local spa to show what special celebrity treatments were being given prior to a big awards show. this was the local evening news. not an entertainment news show but the real evening news.
Interesting. In the midwest, football is a religion, in southern California, Hollywood is a cult. Each to his own escapism. And here we are on this blog, criticizing UH football as unrealistic and doomed (which it is). But life revolves around escapism, doesn’t it? In Hemingway’s short story “The Gambler, the Nun, and the Radio”, there is the observation that the “newspaper is the great narcotic of the twentieth century”. Hemingway was a newspaper man, and he wasn’t criticizing newspapers, he was celebrating escapism in that story. Viva escapism! But it would be nice to have forms of escapism that are economically sustainable and viable (unlike UH football) and that actually had some social benefit (unlike contemporary local “news”). Anyway, let us thank Ian and Pierre Omidyar for our daily doses of high-quality smack that also benefits society, hopefully.