Local News

I'm thinking of giving up on news. I feel as a citizen I should be watching the news. But why? Is the news going to change me or am I going to change the news.

If I thought I might have some impact on those events, then I probably would watch. That seems unlikely, though. Somebody is murdered, a plane crashes, prices go up... What am I going to do about it. If I was President, I would probably watch the news a lot.

How about how the news impacts me? It virtually never does. The news has a lot about murders. I've never known a murder or a robbery victim. I would have a better shot at local news, but I just can't watch that. Local news is about 30% telling you the weather. Even then, they never tell you all of it. They'll tease you with what happened today, then "Later in the broadcast, I'll be back with the seven day outlook." Unless I'm a farmer or I'm building an ark, the weather is nice to know, but its really not that big of a deal. I'm not wasting 20 minutes to hear your guess about the weather.

The sports report on the news is lame. There might be 15 major league baseball games and they'll give of scores of four of them. Its like, "Here is the news from 4 randomly chosen states. We just threw darts at a map and this is where they landed. Today in Iowa..." Here is a good rule in sports reporting. If we can see the stands and they are virtually empty, don't tell us about the event. No one cares or more would have shown up in person. Local sports are fine, but the only people that care are the participants and maybe close family members.

And laughing. Man those local broadcasters do a lot of laughing. Especially in the morning. For people reporting on murders and things, they are in amazingly good moods.

So that will free up some time. I don't recall watching a full local news show from start to finish, so this probably won't be a big time saver for me anyway.