All The News That Fits?
And it's not just the cable news networks, where they barrage you with stock tickers and scrolling headlines and graphics and "News Alerts" (that really aren't). The cable networks seem to have twisted the New York Times slogan "All The News That's Fit To Print" into an odd sensory-overloading "All The News We Can Fit!" philosophy.
No, it's also the entertainment channels. I remember watching the NBA playoffs earlier this year on TNT as Dirk Nowitzki pulled up for a 20-foot jumper and thinking "Whoa, Dirk. Watch out for Kyra Sedgwick. Not only is her show airing tomorrow at 9, but she's about to block your shot." Apparently, TNT had super-imposed some moving advertisement for an upcoming episode of Sedgwick's "The Closer" on top of the game broadcast.
Today's New York Times takes a look at this new quote-unquote innovation, called a 'snipe' inside the industry:
Snipes are just the latest effort by network executives to cram promotions onto television screens in the age of channel surfing, ad skipping and screen-based multitasking. At first, viewers may feel a slight jolt of pleasure at the sight of a new visual effect, they say, but over time the intrusions contribute to the sense that the screen is far more cluttered — not just with ads, but with news crawls and other streams of information.It borders on an academic exercise to ask What All This Is Doing To Us -- either in news or entertainment programming -- but that doesn't mean it's not worth asking. The TV watching experience used has evolved into a frenetic mess of get-in-and-get-out bursts to keep your finger off the remote control. How does all this extra stimulation condition us to a different news-watching experience? Is there any way to measure what this has done to our attention-span?For better or worse, viewers say, the additions are making the experience of watching television more closely mirror the feeling of using a computer…
Research suggests that packed screens can impede comprehension. Tom Grimes, a journalism professor at Texas State University in San Marcos, Tex., said that people who are looking for quick information like stock quotes or a weather update can handle a certain amount of clutter. But "if they're trying to listen to a reporter describe a complicated series of events, it's very difficult to absorb that information" with too great a visual barrage, he said.
And, like anybody who asks rhetorical questions should be able to do, I have a small take-home test for you:
Try watching "The NewsHour" on PBS. Just try.
Every so often, I tune into the program to see what sort of aptitude I have for a news program with few graphics and long-form discussions, after years of watching HeyYouLookHereForTheLatestOnParisAndAfterThatWeWillTalkIraq hyperactivity. So I'll sit down for a discussion on the immigration debate (or whatever) and enjoy it for a few minutes.
Then it'll keep going.
And going.
… And going.
Here's the thing: Yes, you'll learn about whatever issue they happen to be taking on – I think Jim Lehrer had Joe Biden (D-DE) and Richard Lugar (R-IN) on for fifteen minutes (an eternity on TV nowadays) after they questioned General Petraeus before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. But you'll also get an idea of how we as TV consumers have been conditioned to quick spasmodic bursts of information that calls itself news today on the cable networks.
The world can't be boiled down to a sentence here or a slug at the bottom of the screen, and politicians have figured out how to game the system. It's time to ask for more. Particularly as we enter an important election campaign, it's critical for us to stretch our news-viewing muscles and get limber for a serious information workout in the year ahead.