Up until recently, a good portion of Americans received their news from T.V., but not anymore. Entertainment-based ratings giants, like The O’Reilly Factor, have pushed a format takeover of television coverage leaving most Americans seeking alternative sources for their actual news. The news from the big three networks has become nothing more than a sideshow, and the 24-hour cable giants Fox News, CNN, and MSNBC have evolved into no more than 15 minutes of select stories and 23 3/4 hours of talking heads entertainingly opining on them ad nauseum.

For example: Back when MTV actually played music, CNN also actually reported the news, and did so quite well. Then it added so many special interest and opinion shows that it had to create a whole new network to actually provide news, Headline News. Of course, it was neatly packaged as a revolving hit list of the day’s events for our short American attention span. If I actually wanted to know what was going on by watching T.V., Headline News was a pretty good source, though a little thin. Now, Headline News has added opinion and special interest shows to chase ratings and ‘voila!’ enter the new ‘HLN’. An entertainment-based format change designed to compete directly with the cable leader, Fox News. Just what we needed.

So what now? Enter the internet.

Nearly half of the 1,979 people who responded to a survey said their primary source of news and information is the Internet, up from 40 percent just a year ago. Less than one third use television to get their news, while 11 percent turn to radio and 10 percent to newspapers.

Howard Finberg, of the Poynter Institute in St. Petersburg, Florida, said the public often doesn’t understand that the sources they are accessing online such as Google News and Yahoo News pull stories from newspapers, television, wire services and other media sources. – Reuters

Interesting point, but Mr. Finberg is not seeing what is really going on here, let me connect the dots for him …

A giant news vacuum was created and something has naturally come to fill it. According to technorati.com 77% of active Internet users read blogs. According to internetworldstats.com there are 1,463,632,361 active internet users around the world and 248,241,969 in North America. Now, I guestimate about 175,000,000 in the U.S. read blogs. How many Americans watch television news? Approximately 175,000,000, according to PBS. I know this isn’t perfect, but it’s quite eye-opening, none the less.

Here is an explanation of why there has been a decrease in news demand from traditional outlets:

• Newspaper news becomes outdated the moment it is printed, but is still a great read in the john.
• Radio news is torture because you may receive 5 minutes of news vs. 55 minutes of ads, traffic and weather for every one-hour cycle during drivetime.
• Television news is nothing more than a few topics and endless bloviating about them.

And why the explosion in getting news from the internet?

• Internet or web news, such as Google News, Yahoo News and many MSM websites, actually report most of the news in real time … well, report most of the Reuter and AP feeds in real time.
• News from the Blogosphere (including vehicles such as Twitter) is opinionated, crass yet informative; connects the dots; uses many sources to build stories that are oft ignored or overlooked; and in many cases downright breaks the news.

The HLN change signifies the evolution of television news into a purely entertainment medium. The Web and Blogosphere has now taken over the role of informing the American public, filling the large vacuum left by the traditional MSM.

I am hearing a giant sucking sound.

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