Sunday, July 31, 2005

Out of whack

Two examples of how we journalists have our priorities misplaced ...

1. We obsess over cable news networks as if everyone is watching them. The fact is, only journalists and bloggers -- plus a few assorted cranks -- watch these networks. Check out the cable Nielsen ratings. As of this writing, the top "news" show of the week was Fox's coverage of the John Roberts nomination, which scraped into the top 10 just below a rerun of The Waterboy.

2. In the early days of rock, the "payola" scandals were devastating. Today, we find that Sony gave a few illegal boosts on behalf of Jennifer Lopez, Good Charlotte, Franz Ferdinand, Jessica Simpson, John Mayer, Maroon 5 and Switchfoot ... and does anyone care?
Posted by at

1 comment:

Neel Mehta said...

I care. Well, sort of.

Apologies to the Buggles, but my theory is that radio killed the radio star. Top 40 stations are called that because they only keep 40 CDs in their inventory, and that's all they play. Disturbingly, the inane fans keep calling to request the same stuff. Most of the time it makes that format unlistenable, especially if you hate matchbox twenty.

For once I'd like deejays on broadcast radio to play what they like, and to hell with the listeners. I remember reading about the unfortunate demise of a rock station whose DJs wouldn't play Bush because "they sucked."

8/01/2005 3:34 AM

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)