I’m sitting here watching CNN, and it’s the time of day when the news stories are less BBC and more People Magazine, if you know what I mean. Less Christiane Amanpour, more Mary Hart.
Well, they were talking about Serena Williams chewing out the line judge at the US Open, and TJ, the show host asked, “Why do you think there’s so much attention on this? Why are people still talking about it?” He then spent the next two commercial cycles covering the Serena story by itself, bringing in talking heads to help understand what happened, what it means to society. Then, to keep the story going, he wove the Kanye West VMA rant and the Joe Wilson Congress outburst into the story to find common threads.
The answer seemed obvious enough to me. When a major news outlet is talking about something that doesn’t deserve much news time and wonders why it just won’t die…isn’t it because THEY won’t stop talking about it? Aren’t they a part of the problem??
Well, I tweeted my thoughts to CNN:
@ricksanchezcnn people are making big deal of serena williams cause cnn won’t stop beating a dead story. i feel like i’m watching US Weekly
And a few minutes later saw my comments rolling across the TV screen. At least CNN is willing to take criticism and show it publicly. I thought that was pretty cool.
The things I can make happen from my couch, drinking beer and watching TV…
A new breed of media influencers is emerging. Couch potatoes will not be silenced!!
