I'm a Pop Culture Genius

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The Genius

Staff Writer

So there I was writing my column for the upcoming issue of the Ebbtide. Lounging on the couch and watching The View (even geniuses have guilty pleasures; actually everything we do tends to be a guilty pleasure), I had just reached about 200 words when ABC News interrupted four estrogen charged women with their so-called Breaking News. I start to brainstorm possibilities: another hurricane disaster, a major development in bringing the boys home from Iraq, something worth interrupting The View.

The big announcement: “Scooter” resigned from his post as VP Dick Cheney’s Chief of Staff. I do not, for a moment, discredit this story for being anything but newsworthy. But BREAKING NEWS-WORTHY? I don’t think so. As a genius, it would appear that I was right because NBC, CBS, and even FOX didn’t break in the middle of programming to broadcast this event.

In total, ten minutes of The View was lost to this story. Whatever. I continued writing, pausing for breakfast and then picking up where I left off, right about the time that The Ellen Degeneres Show began (yet another guilty pleasure). I was just about to break 500 words in my column and watch an exciting interview between Ellen and the beautiful Catherine Zeta-Jones on the tube. Well, not exactly. NBC News jumped on the bandwagon (mind you it was 60-minutes after ABC) and announced to the world that an investigation was going on and “Scooter” quit and blah, blah, blah.

So I deleted my original column because there are some things that need to be said. Now I am all for breaking news if and when it is life changing, life endangering, or life ending. To quote-unquote interrupt my regularly scheduled programming to bring this important news report and announce that “Scooter” resigned or Lassie died or Kermit and Miss Piggy are breaking up is absolute absurdity.

Where is the logic in making these stories breaking news when in just a few hours, the normal news broadcast will air and the same news story can be told? Wait. There is no logic. Broadcast journalism likes to bash these news stories into our heads over and over and over again. If they saved the news stories for the actual news hour, broadcasters might actually have worthy reports to share with the viewers. Instead, the big wigs would rather interrupt my programming and leave the not-so-newsworthy reports for the actual allotted time period.

Why?
No, seriously, why? Someone please tell me why they do this. I’m eventually going to learn about the story. If I wanted to watch the news, I’d watch the news. Going back to my first point, if the story is going to alter, risk or terminate my life, then please spoil my programming and tell me what is going on. But if it can wait, then let it wait. I hate watching breaking news bulletins where the facts are “just arriving” and the news anchor is searching for words because the teleprompter is throwing words up there as quickly as the information is wiring into the studio.

The broadcast is often sloppy and mediocre at best. Why not wait to put together a well researched, well edited, and well scripted segment? It would make more sense, appeal to the viewer a lot more and allow me to watch the show that TV Guide says should be airing on the screen before the network so rudely interrupted it.

But what do I know? I’m just a Pop Culture Genius.