I’m betting CNN is using the same sort of eyeballs metric to figure out whether people stay on the channel or change it when Brittney comes on - or better yet, if they stop on CNN while channel surfing. Market share is king, which leads us to catering to the masses - even when its “supposed to be” a news channel.
Nine zillion cable channels out there, and yet not one of them is worthy of being true news - because Brittney sells more advertising.
I officially gave up on CNN this past summer, when it was doing live updates for Paris Hilton’s release from prison.
Just for fun, I watched a couple news broadcasts based in Chicago yesterday to see how much I was ‘bombarded’ by ‘constant’ news of Britney, that was so prevalent it was pushing out news of the economy, election or war in Iraq.
here’s what I found. Channel 2 news at 10:00 pm? No mention of Britney at all. Channel 9 News at 9:00 which is an hour long broadcast? A forty- fortyfive second byte on Britney going to the hospital at approximately 9:35 pm, after the top stories, weather (STORM WATCH 2008!) and medical news. Channel 5 news at6:00? (or five?), no mention at all, unless I missed it.
So, I guess what I’m saying is…maybe we’re just looking for things to bitch about?
No new footage to show, that’s why - she was locked up in the hospital. It was on the morning news yesterday when they had the fresh “midnight escort” thing to show. Same with past incidents like Paris being tearful about jail, etc. If Britney had mooned the photographers from her hospital room window or screamed at them, you bet they’d be showing the new footage. Hell, the local news even breathlessly reported the “Hannah Montana uses a body double to do costume changes” non-scandal.
Frankly, I don’t care if it’s one second worth of mentioning the latest star’s meltdown/imprisonment/DUI/whatever, I don’t wanna see it on a “hard” news show. If they could develop a filter to block out that stuff and play a little Muzak until it’s done, I’d probably prefer that, and I hate Muzak.
I’m not an entertainment snob, I watch shows like How Clean Is Your House, What Not to Wear, Hell’s Kitchen, etc., and I’d rather not see indepth political analysis during those. Just partitioning my entertainment types, I guess.
From what I recall of that particular episode, Brittany had zero to do with the press following her - the media is to blame for that debacle, not the sorry, sick, sad Ms. Spears.
Brittany has done enough jacked-up crap - let’s not blame for things for which she is not actually responsible.
Do you mind weather, sports, and “the kitten who found its way home after three years” stories? I guess my point is, even “hard news” shows have breaks for ‘soft news’. I just don’t…find myself getting as riled and frothy as the OP about it. Like we’ve been saying all thread: there’s more important things to worry about. If Britney coverage were my biggest problem, I’d be on my knees thanking God right now.
That’s true, I’m not about to get an aneurysm over it; it just bugs me. Sports in small doses is OK because most of the time it’s on the local news and is local sports - unless we’re building up to the Super Bowl or World Series or whatever. (Hint to newscasters: I could give a damn about whether Brady’s ankle is OK.) “Lookit the kitten that got rescued, aww…” ‘human’ interest stories… eh, throw those at the end of the show I guess. Weather is fine on local (but please don’t flip out about some snow, we live in Chicago for god’s sake) but if it’s on national it’d better be a serious impending disaster.
I agree with the comment by gwendee that I’m sure that my definition of “news” would change a whole lot if I had to handle the programming of a 24-hour news channel. And I do understand that (per Dangerosa’s illustration) though I am a person, in this case I’m not “people.” It irritates me, that’s all.
(I also think it’d probably help Ms. Spears a whole lot if the paparazzi did “leave her alone!” That way she’d either have some space to clear her head and reset her priorities, or if she is in “I need attention!” mode she’d probably “hit bottom” more quickly and hopefully find her way to whatever help she needs. Not to mention that if the media didn’t seem to care about her, perhaps some of the worst human influences in her life would stop leading her astray. As another “mental health consumer” I feel a certain amount of sympathy for the woman even as I suspect she is doing a lot of self-destructive things that probably won’t stop unless she can truly choose to seek help.)
I agree that the coverage of Britney is overblown…I want that to be clear. However, I don’t think it’s 100% the fault of Britney. I, too, think she’d benefit from being locked in a cave for three months where no one knew what was happening.
And I don’t know if it’s because i’m not the smartest person on the block or not the most…um…serious…but about twenty minutes of “hard news” and I’m either ready to commit myself or fall asleep.
But I like and am interested in kittens. Can’t say the same about Spears.
I haven’t seen television news in years. But it used to be that you’d get half an hour of national news, and of that half an hour, most of it was news - there would be a small single human interest story at the end of the newcast. This was followed by local news, which was news for the first bit, followed with a human interest story, followed with weather, followed with sports.
Seems like what has happened is that entertainment news - which used to be “human interest” sorts of stuff somehow has started to (or did) bleed into real news?
The lead story on the national news just now (“Breaking Story!”) is that a judge has declared her mentally incompetent to handle her own affairs, apparantly a pretty drastic move.
It’s hugely drastic. The specifics will vary from person to person, but for the short form - she can now be held, indefinitely, for psychiatric treatment, and she no longer has the right to refuse treatment. In practice this can end up with the patient not even being consulted. (Note, please, that I’ve said it can, not that it will or always does.)
What makes the situation even more volatile, IMNSHO, is that either someone will be granted guardianship of Spears’ assets, or a trust of some kind will have to be formed to govern them. And given the number of people in this thread who think that she has surrounded herself with users and enablers, I wouldn’t be surprised to see a court battle to make the one over Jessica Simpson’s estate and daughter look restrained and mild. 
My entry into the Most Irrelevant and Pedantic Nitpick, Subcategory Pop Culture Esoterica, 2008:
“15 minutes” isn’t really used properly in the OP, IMHO. When Andy Warhol said, in commenting on the growing ubiquity of mass culture in 1968, that “In the future, everyone will be world-famous for 15 minutes,” he meant people like reality show winners and parents who leave their children at home while they go on vacation; people who are famous for one incident and then disappear. It doesn’t simply refer to sensationalist journalism.
Britney Spears, like her or not, has been “legitimately” famous, as a performer, for quite a long time now. She’s not really one of the 15-minuters that phrase refers to.
Apparently, it’s her father.
I’m just curious. If the emotional, mental and physical breakdown of someone we mostly admired, like, say a Hugh Laurie (who suffers from depression) were happening on television, would we scream that we didn’t want to hear it or would we be saddened and compassionate for the loss of a talented artist and wish for his quick recovery?
Seems to me that Britney is such an easy target.
I just wanted to say I find people’s fascination with celebrities they’ll never meet or have any effect on endlessly funny.
The only reason I know who any of them are is that sometimes people make the mistake of talking to me about them. “Who? Oh. Er, I don’t particularily like (celeb in question)'s movies/music. Couldn’t care less about their personal life. Sorry.”
Disillusioned, they mutter that they don’t care either. Then, unable to think of anything else to say, they walk away. Sometimes I’ll see them a bit later, engaged in an animated discussion about Britney/Kevin/Lenny and their latest drug/weight/relationship/legal troubles with a complete stranger. If you didn’t know better, you’d swear they were talking about their families, with the amount of knowledge they have about these people.
It’s really not that difficult to avoid celebrity news. You don’t need to watch the shows about their meaningless lives. No one is forcing you to buy tabloids. You don’t need to join in on the discussion two complete strangers are having about the drug problems a famous singer/actor is having. I’ve never felt the need to discuss anything about an actor other than his/her work in films, or anything related to a musician other than the music, any more than I would feel the need to discuss the personal life of a well known doctor or businessman.
Not that I’m judging anyone, I think it’s hilarious. Especially when people talk endlessly about celebrities, then complain endlessly about how sick they are of hearing about them. It cracks me up. And no, I’m not being sarcastic 
We now return you to your regularily scheduled thread.
Anna Nicole Smith, rather?
I almost never seek out celebrity news; most of it comes straight from the “real” news providers like MSNBC or CNN, and you can’t avoid listening to it, even in a real news broadcast or as a headline on a real news site. I’ve gotten so much information on Britney Spears, unwillingly, that I’m now slightly interested in her story. It’s like watching a bad drama, or getting into a trashy novel; I didn’t choose to start this particular story, but now I can’t help but want to know how it ends. Of course, if it comes up as a topic, I DO know a little bit about it, so I will join in. No one wants to be left out of the conversation.
That’s human nature, and it’ll keep celebs on the front page for a long, long time…
I have a friend who is a producer for the TMZ show. Britney is in regular contact with TMZ and the paps re: her whereabouts, at least about a year ago. I was with him at a club on Sunset “staking out” Brit, waiting for her to drive away in her Mercedes and say something crazy.
My friend hates a lot of the job but he admitted following Britney made it a lot easier, seeing that she always gave a heads up about where she was going, etc.
Personally, her situation has crossed the interesting line and now is simply downright scary. I hope she gets the help she needs. I fear we’ll be seeing her name in the news for very bad things in the future - it would be great if she became uninteresting, and was able to get her mental shit together away from the glare of the media. She definitely brought this on to a large extent but now it’s just pathetic. Hell, even Lohan and Paris have managed to keep out of the news of late…
Whoops. I did mention I live in a cave, right?