zlacker

Is there any other viable method for organizing TV?

I doubt even the median HN reader can hold a dozen complex ideas in their head at the same time, certainly not for longer than 45 seconds without starting to confuse them.

Let alone the median general public.

>>Michae+(OP)
Probably not, as long as we continue the requirement that all information conveyed to the public must be done in a way that is maximally profitable to the producer. As long as information must be profitable, it will inevitably cease to be information and turn into entertainment soon enough. When was the last time you saw a TV Station that wasn't majority ads?

>>Michae+(OP)
You can stop pretending that the contents of the news-show has any relation to reality.

IMO, the entire problem comes from this one lie. But you see... a lot of people wants this propaganda machine.

Also, nowadays you can stream deep journalism that people can adjust to their time availability. We usually call those "documentaries". Most of the stuff that carries that name is psychotic garbage too, but informative ones do exist.

>>wholin+j7
At the same time its not like the harder information isn’t available. One can find factual news and pieces of information. This is what the policy wonks who craft policy that the pr wonks spin into soundbites have to be able to find and read to understand the world after all.

Its simply not fun nor satisfying for most people. News isn’t to be informed for most people. It is for entertainment like any other fodder content shoehorned into some free minutes of your day. And that’s ok because as long as some technical people need to actually get things done, there is good information and data out there for you to actually learn about the world. It just will be in some dry .gov website or some other source perhaps instead of distilled down to a 2 min article written to a 6th grade reading level with a catchy headline on cnn.com, but thats OK. You will learn to appreciate the dryness and technical language.

>>marcos+Hg
How does the relation of news shows content to ‘reality’ matter?

Even if the announcers were reading complex fan fiction stories they would still need to break it up into tiny chunks.

>>asdff+Cl
I will say though we shouldn't underestimate habitual inertia in all things. My dad will probably watch Cable news till he dies. There's arguably far more interesting and entertaining things on the internet, that i have showed him to access and explore on his laptop, that he uses frequently. But his main source of news appears to be Cable still, and it doesn't seem like it's gonna change.

Then there was the great culling of newspapers and magazines. It was probably the last thing longer than a paragraph that my dad actually read consistently. They mostly went online, stopped being delivered and he was forced off of the reading experience. Sure, you can seek things like that out but it was serendipitous, they got less funding, raises prices, fox continued to foxify, i don't know that he's really read anything since! I, myself, am trying with some difficulty to begin reading more. I need the concentration back