You know, with my mom’s surgery the other day, I spent several hours in a hospital waiting room, mainly staring blindly at the TV. I do the same thing whenever I have work done on my car, or even when I’m at some gas pumps these days.
As usual, most of these TVs are tuned to that time-old classic: CNN (ok, sometimes it’s MSNBC, and occasionally Fox News). I have to say, this is one reason I think I miss having cable at home (no, we’re still living in the stone age… hence the HUGE pile of DVDs we own, which would probably more than pay for cable for 20 years or so). I like to think that if we had cable, I’d not only watch some of the HBO specials (can you say Sopranos?), but I’d also really enjoy some of the specials that are on CNN, the Discovery Channel, the History channel, etc.
Unfortunately, while some of those still hold true (like the Sopranos, of course…), after spending more than an hour in any waiting room watching one of the news programs (really regardless of what station it is), you realize one thing above all others:
There isn’t SHIT happening 99% of the time.
That’s right, NOT A DAMN THING! Hour after hour, they report and recap on the exact same stories, usually adding absolutely no new data or information. Now, I suppose in my waiting room situation, that tends not to be a big issue, since most people (hopefully) aren’t there for more than 1 recap of every story, but there’s no way any sane person could sit down and watch CNN for multiple hours at a time and remain in any state resembling sanity.
So how can CNN survive? Are they thriving on this waiting room market? I mean, every other television network has to actually entertain viewers, why are these networks dedicated to news not held to the same standard, and how can I cash in on this market?
Redundancy in the Newsroom
You know, with my mom’s surgery the other day, I spent several hours in a hospital waiting room, mainly staring blindly at the TV. I do the same thing whenever I have work done on my car, or even when I’m at some gas pumps these days.
As usual, most of these TVs are tuned to that time-old classic: CNN (ok, sometimes it’s MSNBC, and occasionally Fox News). I have to say, this is one reason I think I miss having cable at home (no, we’re still living in the stone age… hence the HUGE pile of DVDs we own, which would probably more than pay for cable for 20 years or so). I like to think that if we had cable, I’d not only watch some of the HBO specials (can you say Sopranos?), but I’d also really enjoy some of the specials that are on CNN, the Discovery Channel, the History channel, etc.
Unfortunately, while some of those still hold true (like the Sopranos, of course…), after spending more than an hour in any waiting room watching one of the news programs (really regardless of what station it is), you realize one thing above all others:
There isn’t SHIT happening 99% of the time.
That’s right, NOT A DAMN THING! Hour after hour, they report and recap on the exact same stories, usually adding absolutely no new data or information. Now, I suppose in my waiting room situation, that tends not to be a big issue, since most people (hopefully) aren’t there for more than 1 recap of every story, but there’s no way any sane person could sit down and watch CNN for multiple hours at a time and remain in any state resembling sanity.
So how can CNN survive? Are they thriving on this waiting room market? I mean, every other television network has to actually entertain viewers, why are these networks dedicated to news not held to the same standard, and how can I cash in on this market?
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