Wednesday, April 25, 2012

brian and i are calling it quits

Ever since I gave up on CBS's Scott Pelley last summer, I've been watching The NBC News With Brian Williams, and. dammit, I just can't take it anymore.  I still DVR it but just can't bring myself to watch even one more day, so once I remember how to un-DVR it, I will.  Last week may have been the final straw when Brian kept leading off with the who-cares?-story about Obama's Secret Service guys who hired prostitutes.  Stories like this are apparently titillating to someone somewhere, but they are not real news stories!  There is a whole world out there to report on!  The formula for Brian's program is always the same:  An unimportant but overly-reported tidbit about airline pilots losing their cool or something similarly wasteful of air time; a report on outrageous but basically non-relevant words out of the mouth of a presidential candidate; a health update of either something else to fear or a possible new drug to sure some awful disease (followed by a commercial for one of the drug company sponsors); then ending with some heart-warming and schmaltzy bit about someone "making a difference."  I just can't spend any more time watching this drivel.

It's going to be a horrible election year anyway, so it might be a good year to skip the news altogether.  I'm certainly not going to switch over to Diane Sawyer on ABC!

2 comments:

Jon said...

As I'm sure you know, this isn't so much a problem with Brian Williams, it's a problem with the American public. This is the type of news they want to hear, so this is the type that will be reported. Can you imagine how low the ratings would be for any show that would dare to report real news? I doubt any such shows exist, except maybe on BBC. Just don't switch to Fox. :-)

Howard said...

Funny you should say that, Jon, because i was thinking of starting to DVR BBC news.