This query at Nicholas Weaver's Random Thoughts is the sort of thing you see first at the edges, on smaller blogs, and then, sometimes, a few days later you see it everywhere.
Except that I just spent a chunk of Monday morning in the car repair waiting room, which was playing one of the local TV stations, I think the NBC affiliate.
In the hour and a half I was there, the news covered the following topics (that I can recall):
- The weather (the sun rose this morning — illustrated with lovely pictures of Miami)
- Anchorman Peter Jennings dies
- Yoga for dogs (actually, they didn't cover this — they produced a lengthy promo for the upcoming story on the nightly news).
- Space shuttle landing delayed due to weather
- The weather (the sun is in the sky, illustrated with lovely pictures of Key West)
- Extensive interview with a mother who had to take her kids to the first day of school today.
- What to do about the “problem” of curly hair
- The world's smallest ice cream
- Interview with Barbara Walters about Peter Jennings [note that he anchored for a different network; this wasn't an internal ABC promotional thing]
There were probably other stories, but I can't remember them. I can, however, assure you that the following topics were never mentioned at any time:
- The war in Iraq1
- The economy
- Any foreign countries
- Any other states (except in the weather report) (update: and possible landing sites for the shuttle)
Which is why some of this edgy thinking stays at the edge….
1 Update: I forgot one: the war did get mentioned during a segment on four singing grannies who were interviewed wearing their silly costumes. The grannies write and sing anti-Bush protest songs, and they called the war illegal and immoral. The segment didn't actually make fun of them, although one had the sense the interviewer was struggling between a desire to mock and a desire to respect the aged.
