Can someone explain why cable has so much Ronnie?

[cally]

I don't mean this as a sarcastic question. The all Ronnie all the time is just boring. I doubt anyone is watching it so why are they doing it? There is no story there. No mysterious illness, no sex scandals, just nothing that should make a story. So..

[ibegurpard]

1. Who owns the networks?

That is where you'll find your answer.

[bryant69]

2. State funerals are good tv

You may not be the sort of person to watch it (I know I'm not) but there are plenty of people who will.

And it's dirt cheap isn't it?

Bryant
Check it out --> http://politicalcomment.blogspot.com

[LowerManhattanite]

10. Bingo!

"And it's dirt cheap isn't it? "

Run the feeds (and loop 'em), and the obit video packages that have been in the can for at LEAST 18 months repeatedly. Much cheaper than running the day's stories from stringers across the globe. Little to edit and in-studio talking heads are scads cheaper than crews scattered to and fro.

It's morbid, cheap, reality TV. Those videophone links to Kufa, Najaf, Baghdad and Kabul cost megadollars. My brother-in-law is an ABC News cameraman and we discussed this well into the wee hours last night.

[magnolia]

3. Liberal media...

...my ass!!!

[Warpy]

4. The regular networks cut in

Every time Ronnie's casket is moved. It's going to be all Ronnie, all the time this week. I suggest we all descent en masse on our video stores.

[LTR]

6. What if...

... They body sprung up out of the casket?

Think that would spice up the news coverage a little?

[LTR]

5. What else is there to talk about?

If it isn't Reagan, it's Kobe Bryant, Scott Peterson, Michael Jackson, J-Lo, etc...

After a while, the two cable news networks (and Fox) run out of stuff to talk about.

They live for these big stories.

[tom_paine]

7. The 24/7 "Dry Hump the Tragedy" mode of coverage didn't start yesterday

On the one side, that is how the pathetic remannats of the American Free Press conduct themselves these days. It has most definitely contibuted to them being a laughingstock.

On the other hand, when either Clinton dies, you'll see quite a different bit of coverage, an Imperial Amerikan coverage of a "Trotsky".

You'll see...

[I thought so.]

8. 58 years old.

That the average age of a cable news viewer. For them its probably like a Star Trek marathon.

[Indiana_Dem]

9. I know Nixon was a crook and Reagan considered a saint but

I don't remember a solid week of Nixon when he died. What gives?

I've just turned my TV off this week.

[LowerManhattanite]

13. Nixon was different...

...his lasting television images are of him sweatily muttering "I am not a crook", and then waving buh-bye, liquored up on a pitcher of manhattans as he scurried off to Bebe Rebozo's Island getaway with the Watergate prosecutors, the press and 7196 political cartoonists hot on his ass.

He left the office cravenly and as such couldn't possibly engender the level of "good will" that ol' 666 did.

[leftofthedial]

11. necrofellatio

sells advertising to war profiteers, corporate agriculture, oil companies, and SUV manufacturers, I guess.

[Servo300]

12. Because it's cable....

[Lin]

14. And, what news AREN'T they covering? This is

maddening, it's enough to turn ppl against the "great communicator" fer chrissake, I mean, a camera fixed on the funeral home 15/20 minutes after he dies?! this is gruesome :(

[Az]

15. Think Elvis

The right loves Ronnie so much because he saved them from the ravenous liberals. Ronnie basically pimp slapped the Democrats around during his tenure. His policies were a failure at their claims but the still created situations that the right had longed for for decades.

To many on the right he is an absolute hero. Someone that restored their belief in manifest destiny. That somehow they were special because Ronnie said so.

This kind of hero worship registers with those that need people to stare at the idiot box for periods of time. They have a locked in audience that will gape at the flashing screen while they paint their eyeballs with ads between the diatribes of how great the great communicator was as he was great. Isn't that great?

[cally]

18. Some may be fascinated

but most the audience isn't. So why do it? I think the media is biased and thinks that all the rest of the country thinks like the fringe right. Throw out any idea that the media is based on market ideas. I don't think it is. It is based on political idealogy.

[PROGRESSIVE1]

16. After this week, the Kobe, Michael Jackson, and Laci Peterson....

coverage won't look so bad!

[Zinfandel]

17. Republican owned corporate media...instilling the country with right-wing

ideology...a form of brainwashing...over and over and over, 24 hours a day...

Just like the lies Rove makes up for Bush, he says them over and over and over again until the media regards them as truth...

And then begins the instilling process.