My mother is a TV news junkie. In a way this is to be expected from a former professional
politician, but she falls asleep to
CNN. And like many around the world, we spent last
Wednesday watching the horrible news of the terrorist bombings in
Mumbai, India. So there we were watching angry crowds, burning hotels, and jostled reporters, all through layer after layer of
graphics.
It's like this: My mom has a 37" T.V. not huge by modern standards, but still pretty darned big. Yet somehow the networks managed to turn it into a 17" set by overlaying layer after layer of graphics. First there's the news scroll. Just above it, in big bold print they remind you that you're watching the bombings of Mumbai, as if we somehow had missed the obvious. Finally, in the upper left corner is the actual picture, surrounded by a window of blazing orange and yellow. It even had its own event scroll, unreadable as it was buried beneath yet another layer of graphics. It was as if the network was parodying itself by laying on so much crap that you couldn't see the picture. I always thought pictures were the strength of television news, with an image or clip conveying information that might take pages to write.
The reason, ladies and gentleman, is multitasking. Even though we have the internet, the iPhone and podcasts, it seems Americans watch every bit as much TV as they did back in the day, when there were three networks, local channels pushing re-runs and B movies, and one tube in the living room, which we all fought for. We watch TV with our laptop in our lap and the ear buds from our iPod firmly implanted. We're doing two or three things at once and it seems the younger we are the better we are at it.
So while I think the media's current case of graphic overdose stupid and self-defeating, I get it. They don't have our attention, just a sliver of it. They, (and their advertisers) want it all. And so they pile on the crap, hoping that we'll take a moment to glance up from World of Warcraft and notice there's a story on.