Back in the day when dinosaurs roamed the earth TV news seemed much simpler. You had your normal noon, 6:00 and 11:00 pm newscasts (sometimes 5:00 pm as well, if you were lucky). If something major happened, like an airline crash, the local or national news would interrupt Match Game with a 'BREAKING NEWS' bulletin, say what needed to be said, and then return you back to normal programming to watch Richard Dawson say something randy.
That's not the way it happens anymore in this 24 by 7 world of information saturation. Now, the 'Breaking News' banner is thrown onto any type of news story that crops up, from a winter storm on the East Coast to the continuing battle over Anna Nicole Smith's body. Not only that, but they now throw in banners like 'Developing Story' and 'Just In' on these stories, which just confuses the hell out of me. Frankly, stories that feature these headers all seem like 'Breaking News' stories to me.
Take the continuing media circus surrounding the Anna Nicole debacle. On one cable news network they had a 'Breaking News' banner on a story about Smith's body being exhumed. Why didn't this have a 'Just In' banner instead? It was just reported, wasn't it? Does a story go from 'Just In' to 'Breaking News' after its been on the air for a few minutes? Is it a 'Developing Story' when an announcement is about to be made that the body has been exhumed? Am I asking too many questions?
Let's take another example: the Valentine's Day winter storm that struck the East Coast. That was a 'Developing Story' for a few days. Why? The storm came and went and people did what they normally do on the East Coast when this happens . . . overreact (especially in the Mid-Atlantic states. Those wimps!). Yet, the story remained in the 'Developing' stage. Wouldn't it just be a regular news story at that point?
Look, I know that it's not the distribution of information that's important anymore for the news outlets . . . it's the ratings and the advertising revenue and the stardom. And, before you get all 'liberal news media' on me all news outlets are equal opportunity offenders. However, while constant 'Breaking News' and 'Developing Story' headers may get them the viewers now it may not down the line. It's the The Boy Who Cried Wolf syndrome. Eventually the networks are going to cry 'Breaking News' one too many times and people aren't going to believe them anymore. Then, when something big happens that really is 'Breaking News' there will be no one to listen.
The question is, will the news media ever realize that they're crying wolf?
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
2-22-2007 @ 11:35AM
cm said...
Amen!!!!
Reply
2-22-2007 @ 11:36AM
Bill said...
They're probably going to have to invent a new term for important breaking news that's just in. Maybe they'll just make a "Holy Crap!" banner.
http://popculturejunk.blogspot.com
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2-22-2007 @ 11:39AM
erroneous_nick said...
Good points there Richard and you're right about the "boy who cried wolf" syndrome. They all cried wolf one too many times for me a good while back and now I get my news from the internet where I can read what I want and avoid any so-called "breaking news" if I wish. All I know about the recently-deceased Anna is that she's dead and everyone's her baby daddy. And that's more than I wanted to know.
I think Rita and Katrina were the turning points for me. Living right between where the two hurricanes hit and having both hosted evacuees and lived with some of the damage, along with the major population explosion we've experienced where I live, has given me more than enough "hurricane experience" first-hand. The local news broadcasts were as bad as the national ones and the information overload, especially the overload of repeated information, just did me in with respect to TV news.
All this over dramatization of supposed news has eroded the perceived integrity of all the news outlets.
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2-22-2007 @ 11:59AM
John S. said...
This is ironically funny to me coming from a site that frequently uses BREAKING NEWS in post titles for items that aren't breaking, or news. Maybe the standards are lower for a niche blog.
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2-22-2007 @ 12:19PM
Richard Ott said...
I agree with the above story, but I also think
there needs to be at sometime in the near future,
a split-screen technique used for Special Reports,
so that you can find out developing stories, and
still watch your favorite TV shows uninterupted
on the same channel. In the late 1970's, these funny
and revolutionary camera angles were used on many
shows, and if it's used, today, why isn't the news
media taking advantage of this every time say,
President Bush interupts The Price Is Right umpteen
days at a time? Someday, I hope to finally see the
camera do a split-screen where the announcer says,
"We interupt our regular programming to bring you..."
and the screen goes wwwwhhhooop! into a half-screen,
especially for 100 hours of bad news coverage like
what happened on September 11'th, 2001.
RICK.
Reply
2-22-2007 @ 12:33PM
Ryan Sullivan said...
My beef with this banners is that they are getting more and more elaborate (read: bigger) and are popping up in more and more of the tv shows I watch. Just last week there was some shooting in Philly and they decided to then shrink down my show into the upper right hand corner of the screen and add another screen in the top left-hand corner of the on-site news coverage and then have a huge scrolling bar at the bottom of the screen about what was going on.
Shooting in Philly? Doesn't that happen all the time!? Why do they need to interrupt my tv show for something that they are going to announce on the commercial break as well as the 10 o'clock news that was coming on in a half hour!?
And then you also get the channel 6 news van driving across the bottom of the screen to let you know that the news is coming up next after lost. They did that during the "The Others" meeting last season when Jack went into the forest to get Kate back. It was all dark and I was trying to make out the faces of the others and then a news van comes driving along making the screen all bright.
Sorry, my rant is over now. You may now return to your regularly scheduled internets.
Reply
2-22-2007 @ 12:59PM
lauch said...
I'm sure they had some focus groups for each banner. Person A did not stay during the news hour following the show because the banner was not running. Not only that, Person B didn't stay for the news story that was "Breaking News", and Person C didn't stay for a news story that was "Developing". All the while, Person D stayed for the news when he saw "Developing Story", but not when it was "Breaking News".
And CNN.com has breaking news along with FoxNews.com. The internet isn't safe either. My RSS feeds are also starting to show signs of BREAKING NEWS. There is no escape. You will be assimilated.
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2-22-2007 @ 1:39PM
imdennycrane said...
Completely agree with the author. It doesn't affect me to see the banner anymore - it seems to always be there.
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2-22-2007 @ 2:01PM
David said...
I completely agree. Whenever it snows they are like "Breaking News! it's snowing in the Northeast". Smith has been dead for weeks, but it's "Breaking News" that the "trail" is a bigger joke than than that of OJ Simpson.
Fox once had "FOX NEWS ALERT!!!" for a dog that was stuck on the ice on some random pond. they watched it live for 20 minutes as the firemen tried to get the dog off the ice. You want to know how it ended? The dog drowned, nah, I'm kidding, that would have been better. The dog walked off the ice itself.
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2-22-2007 @ 2:25PM
Darren said...
Let the specialty news channels handle the breaking news - IE CNN, FOX NEWS etc and all the presidents addresses and the networks just carry the entertainment. We don't need every station in the US to carry news about a snow storm 1000 miles from me and fighting for views every time the president has something to say. Say it on CNN etc and who ever wants to listen can!
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2-23-2007 @ 2:41AM
GhaleonQ said...
That's why people should depend on the radio (since the briefs are written by the same writers as news services) or the Internet for breaking news and newsmagazines and newspapers for the stories themselves. One won't properly follow the recreation of the Italian government (AGAIN!) without quality news, which is to say, "Not the kind found on television."
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