Shameless advertising masquerading as local news
I was just watching FOX5 News, one of our local news channels, and I was horrified to see not one but two minutes-long ads for other Fox programming disguised as local news segments. The first segment asked the mind-bogglingly important question, “Are the judges on American Idol too critical of bad singers?” It included clips of American Idol and even some banter between the talking head anchors about how some of the comments were inappropriate because they made fun of someone’s eyes and face (i.e. not something he has any control over). But it was a thin veneer of news segment sparsely applied over top of a large base coat of advertising; it was quite obvious they were just pushing American Idol using controversy as a selling point.
The second advertising segment was even more blatant. The talking heads read off some lame information about stress, and then launched into a segment about how “Jack Bauer from 24 experiences lots of stress.” They continued giving some nonsense talking points about how to reduce stress in your everyday life, all of which was interspersed with video clips from 24 showing “stressful circumstances.” In case there was still any doubt that Fox news was simply whoring for 24 under the guise of news, at the end of the segment, the anchor said, “Oh, and you can catch 24 every Monday at 9:00pm right here on Fox.”
And they wonder why they’re losing viewers as people shift to the Internet for their news. Maybe it’s because, on the Internet, you can actually find news, and not just advertising for the network’s other programs camouflaged as being newsworthy.
