Consider this as a path to the undoing of America.
The unfettered primacy of TV audience ratings.
With no viable public control of the airwaves – the BBC and
CBC being time-tested good-government examples of non-ratings-based national
news systems – America, instead, relies on these ratings for its news
(entertainment?). If the ratings are high, then that program (currently all
things Trump) will receive outsize attention. Why? Because it’s “damn good”
business.
The veil on what is being presented as responsible news and
analysis is rarely lifted. But during the recent presidential campaign, CBS
boss Les Moonves did so when he said:
“It (a Trump presidency) may not be good for America, but it’s
damn good for CBS.”
Ratings worked to keep Trump in the public eye for days,
hours on end, last winter, spring, summer and fall.
Hillary’s ratings were not so high, in contrast. In fact,
she seemed to think the less she saw the red light of the camera the better:
that her critics would savage her (often unfairly, at times less so) and eat
into her national poll lead.
Those historically high ratings – drawing millions more “eyeballs”
than any other modern presidential candidate – helped create a wave of populist
fervor (not just “support,” Trumpists are in a fever over their guy) and a
swing to extreme politics the likes of which we living Americans have never
seen.
Trump, in keeping his pledge to these followers, is tending
to his base. Heretofore, we thought of “a base” as an aggregation of moderate,
level-headed citizenry. The change that this national vote wrought is to
replace that temperate base with an awakened and galvanized fringe that creates
an unstable equation of national affairs that is both unfamiliar and untested.
Do the major US news networks race ahead to dissect this
disturbing, emerging reality? Perhaps, if the idea can be sold to the news
bosses. That is, if real resource dollars are spent on real news programming.
Alas, though, what we’re more likely to get are bosses who
chase the easy bucks dictated by our Extremist Ratings System.
No presidential candidate theater, no problem. Cover the
stagecraft of the White House news conferences, pony up time to the Kellyanne
Conways.
Or, better yet, satirize Trump and his inner circle.
SNL ratings have hit a six-year high. Yippeeee! And do the
comedian celebs’ increasingly Trump-bashing skits move the needle toward a more
recognizable America, the one we wonder if it has been lost forever?
I would hazard to say no.
I’m not advocating the muzzling of SNL. Far from it. But it’s
a cheap ratings play.
What’s needed instead is a view of the bigger picture that
comes from a news media that is not reduced to the business imperative of extreme
ratings.
Next: Run for Your Life: New Leader of the Free World
