Even in the early 90s news started shifting towards our modern incarnation. CNN was considered hard news in the 80s, but that changed around the time of the Persian Gulf war and Wolf Blitzer becoming the Scud-Stud, and all the other shows like Cross-Fire becoming news-er-tainment (or whatever the proper industry term is), etc...

> CNN was considered hard news in the 80s

I blame CNN for much of the state of news today. TV news has always been poor, but before CNN proved otherwise, news was not something that was considered a profit-maker. Once CNN showed it can make money, then the profit maximalization began in earnest, and with that came the descent into news-as-entertainment.

That started well before the gulf war.

Oh, that goes way back before CNN and cable, or even TV.

As an aside, 99% invisible had a pretty good podcast on how radio (which delivers news to more Americans -and is trusted more- than TV) content has changed over the years. https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/the-divided-dial/

The change has been systemic, and that change shaped CNN more than the other way around.

An oft-forgotten movie is the Network (1976) that predicts the rise of activist news hosts: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_(1976_film)

This is still true today, though. I am generally sick of the news too but sometimes it is nice to watch local news (WDIV channel 4 here in Detroit) from 6 to 6:30 to hear about stuff going on around town, and then NBC nightly news from 6:30 to 7 to get some more national info.

That's good to hear. I haven't watched cable or OTA TV for around 15 years at this point so I don't have a good idea of what it's like these days, except for that time ~5 years ago when I tried plugging in an antenna to see what I could pick up but immediately lost interest after being reminded how much time ads take up on OTA TV channels.

The ads are undoubtedly the worst part. During local news it’s terrible/obnoxious furniture companies and national news is 100% drug commercials.

frankly, the ads are the least bad part. at least ads are honest in their intention

"...in rare cases, may cause gangrene of the perineum."

love that the disclaimer has to explain where the perineum is on that one lol

Which has an effect on content.

Which has an effect on the political process.

i feel like TV ads get a bad rap sometimes. you dont have to actually watch them, they provide a natural pause in the action to go get a snack, go to the bathroom, do something else, rather than sitting there for 12 hours straight "consuming content"

There's a weird phenomenon I've started noticing when watching streaming shows where I keep thinking a commercial break would be nice. Even on shows built for streaming.

It's not that I want the ads so much as I want a short break from consuming the content.

But when they are in the middle of a film, they often make the film twice as long, and films these days are already awfully long. They can also give you a heart attack when they are thrice as loud as the film, and often start after there was a silence in the film.

Yep. For a decent chunk of my early adulthood, barring really major events, my news consumption was ABC World News Tonight and maybe This Week with David Brinkley on Sunday if I was around--and Time Magazine delivered weekly to my mailbox.

And that was pretty much it.

And Frontline for long form.

Not newspapers?

Do you consider newspapers as long form? (I certainly never have.)

While there are/were Sunday magazines, I'd generally consider magazines more broadly for deep dives into particular aspects of culture, politics, and hobbies.

It depends on the magazine (and the newspaper), but I'd generally agree with that perspective.

I was more reflecting on newspapers not being mentioned at all as a news source. ABC World News Tonight, This Week, and Frontline are all TV sources, and Time Magazine is a pretty different beast. Back in the day newspapers and radio were pretty significant news sources for people (and radio still is).

I don't know if I'd call newspapers long form, as they certainly have lots of short articles, but I'd say they regularly have "longer form" than Frontline.

Certainly a fair number of people got daily newspapers at one point. Post-uni, I never actually lived especially near a city and never felt the need to subscribe to the (in my case) Boston Globe which wasn't especially relevant to my day-to-day life. (To this day I don't although I do subscribe digitally to the NYT and the Economist.)

PBS Newshour was watched every night by my parents, no need for a 24hr drip feed of FUD.

And realistically, as a fellow 80s and 90s kid . . . what benefit is there to this always-on 24 hour news extravaganza?

There are not enough relevant things going on in the world to merit a 24-hour news cycle, so the media has to make things up to fill the gaps. But once they make things up, they're pathologically incapable of distinguishing their own made-up crap from actual relevant news items.

So we spend the day glued to our phones flooded in crap.