We watch... so you don't have to.
Home Shopping War
I've watched hardly any of the war coverage. There are two reasons for this, the main one being that I'm just not as interested as I ought to be. I don't know what's causing that, but I'm just not interested in getting constant information about it. Fine, so there's a war going on. Just go get on with it.
The other reason is that I'm increasingly convinced that 24-hour coverage is a terrible way to get any information about what's going on. As soon as a network commits to talking about something constantly, regardless of whether there's any new developments, they essentially turn into the Home Shopping Network.
Okay, I'll explain that analogy.
You know how on the Home Shopping Network, they have to talk about each object for a certain amount of time? So the anchors bring out, say, a tennis bracelet and then have to wax enthusiastic about its many fine properties for twenty minutes. Except they quickly run out of properties and are reduced to just vamping on how shiny it is. The desperate improvising is pretty painful to watch sometimes, because there's only so many times you can repeat the same things.
Constant news coverage is a lot like that. When something happens, they have something to talk about. And then it might be twelve hours before something new happens, so they're stuck talking about the same thing for twelve hours. Frankly, I'd rather wait until the whole thing is over and then read about it in some kind of overall context.
