News used to be 60 minutes just after prime time. Now they have whole channels with news 24/7/365. Have to fill all that air time with something
24 hour news is a blight. TBH 24 hours everything except for emergencies and medical services is a blight.
There’s plenty of interesting stuff going on in the world. Reporting on it doesn’t maximize profit.
CNN used to have shows about fashion, sports, entertainment, the arts, world affairs. They figured out that just having talking heads blab and argue with each other was cheaper.
CNN headline news used to be just a 30 minute broadcast about the day’s major headlines repeated on a loop every half hour. They didn’t really fill the entire 24 hours with different stories all day long.
Similarly ESPN used to show sports of all kinds. Rugby, Soccer, bowling, snooker/billiards. Again, it’s just taking heads now.
My dad was not right-wing, but he went from us watching The McNeil-Lehrer Newshour once a day in the 80s to being glued to CNN and MSNBC all day. Almost literally all day once he retired. They found an American addiction and learned to feed it. For my dad, and I think a lot of people, it was a combination of the first Iraq war and the OJ live chase. Suddenly you could watch something really amazing that was news in real time whenever you turned on your TV.
