The Boredom Killing Business

I was taken back to my "news vagabond" days when a friend posted the following lines from the 1976 movie Network:

"Television is not the truth. Television is a goddamn amusement park! Television is a circus, a carnival, a traveling troupe of acrobats, storytellers, dancers, singers, jugglers, sideshow freaks, lion tamers, and football players. We’re in the boredom-killing business!"

I was working for the ABC affiliate in Atlanta when that movie came out. We were covering Jimmy Carter's election to the White House, the Georgia Legislature and civil rights. Yeah we had our share of homicides, fires and accidents but no dancers, singers or sideshow freaks.

Fast-forward to the 1990s. A Cincinnati politicia-turned-broadcaster was given a national talk show by his station's owners. Serious topics for a serious journalist, right? Drugs, latchkey kids, women in prison. One problem. Nobody watched. The owners, losing money, brought in a new Executive Producer who said, "I can get ratings but you might not like the show I produce." With that the Jerry Springer Show as we remember it was born. Also born was the blurring between news and entertainment. Jerry, the former news anchorman and now ring master, didn't have dancers but he had strippers. He didn't have jugglers but he had transvestite husbands. Sideshow freaks? Every day.

Fast-forward to today. The local stations aired, among other stories, a man arrested when heroin fell out of his pocket and a photographer who captured a "holy figure" on a cactus. Promoted video on one LA station was a dancing gorilla and a chair with Jesus' image for sale. We used to call those "water cooler stories." If people talked about those stories the next day at the water cooler we'd done our jobs. Did we change anyone's life? Did we give them something educational? Not really. But how were those overnight ratings last night?