Enough With Walter Cronkite Already

Stop with the Walter Cronkite tributes already. Stop telling the media how much it sucks and how wonderful this demigod of news was back in the day. Stop making comparisons about the way it was and how it will never be again. Stop it. Stop it. Stop it. The person to blame for the demise of this industry, the drop off of intelligent TV, the killing of news is YOU. That’s right. Give yourself a big pat on the back you remote control freak. You killed a perfectly fine institution and then turn around and complain because all you can find to watch in TV news are things like Octomom and Michael Jackson’s cousin twice removed guesstimating the late singer’s drug usage.

You have only yourself to blame for the bad TV news that’s on these days. Back in the good old days, let’s say when Uncle Walt was on TV, newscasts were just 15 minutes. They were black and white and that was the color of the news content as well – no color commentary from news anchors, just the facts. But that wasn’t good enough for you, was it? You needed more – more content and more color. Technicolor was the new black after all and by God, if you couldn’t get what you wanted, you threatened to turn off your 3-network TV until you got it. You were like Veruca Salt in Willy Wonka, throwing a tantrum and just to get you to behave, the networks gave in. Now look at you, a bratty news viewer who is learning the lesson, “you get what you deserve.”

Because of your demands, news programs expanded to 30 minutes, then 60. Cable came in so that you viewers could get more news, more entertainment, even a new channel dedicated to weather. And then there were all those channels showing big screen movies so you no longer had to leave your house. You were buried in entertainment and loving it! When asked which you preferred watching, news about the Balkan Islands or “Fantasy Island,” your choice was clear. So it’s no big mystery how TV news changed from Cronkite’s time. Entertainment started seeping into news programs because you wouldn’t watch otherwise. It also didn’t hurt that news programs were (and are) the cheapest blocks of time a TV station could produce. The math was simple: cheap news + entertainment = more viewership i.e big profits.

It’s all your fault.

Over the next week, I expect to read more bemoaning the current state of TV news and how network bigwigs, reporters, anchors and overpriced media machines have ruined it. Pish pah. You don’t like it? Use the power of the remote control for good and stop watching. You’ll get the networks’ attention. As Uncle Walter would say, “… that’s the way it is.”