Jumping (on) the shark

[Cutlass]

A few do.

 

[Zelig]

This story got the first few minutes of ABC News' nightly national news broadacast last night (Sunday).

Now, nevermind the fact that there are a few dozen shark attacks per year in the US, and a handful of them are actually fatal, whereas a few hundred people per year drown in US ocean waters with no help whatsoever from sharks.

You might recall (if you're in the US) that the media went crazy in mid-2001 with the "Summer of the Shark".

So, my question is, what responsibility does the news media have for assessing and informing about levels of risk, versus sensationalist fear-mongering? Where's your line between spending half every broadcast on heart disease and cancer, and spending a lot more than 4.4% of the news on deadly accidents (a third of that being traffic accidents, and then in order falls, choking, drowning, and fires) and 0.7% of the news on homicides? Is the US media perpetuating the "OMG terrorists are trying to blow up an airplane" TSA warnings that result in more airport security procedures/theater?

Yes, the media sucks. Ban tv advertisements.

 

[Goodfella]

Yes, the media sucks. Ban tv advertisements.

Then say goodbye to Breaking Bad and say hello to subscription television if you ever want to watch a show that doesn't suck.

 

[sophie]

Then say goodbye to Breaking Bad and say hello to subscription television if you ever want to watch a show that doesn't suck.

Zelig would rather pay subscription tv than endure ads. Considering how ridiculous cable packaging is, I would rather as well.

 

[Formaldehyde]

It won't be long before you can pick and choose what you want to watch at a fraction of the cost of cable subscriptions today. It even came within a quite recent 6-3 Supreme Court decision of happening now.

The justices sided 6-3 with the nation's major TV networks and cable companies against Aereo, an Internet start-up that rebroadcasts live programs to subscribers without paying retransmission fees.

The broadcasters had warned that if one company was allowed to avoid those fees, others — from Dish Network to DirecTV — surely would follow. That would risk billions of dollars in revenue that broadcasters plow back into creating new programs. Retransmission fees brought in an estimated $2.37 billion in 2013.

Aereo offers TV viewers an enticing package: For $8 or $12 a month, they can get a couple dozen live channels and 20 to 60 hours of remote storage space on cloud-based DVRs. By contrast, cable packages that include scores of seldom-watched channels can cost $100 or more.

 

[Tarquelne]

It won't be long before you can pick and choose what you want to watch at a fraction of the cost of cable subscriptions today.

I remember cable TV. It was the service I used to get the programs I recorded on my PC's TV card, the proto-DVR.

That takes me back.

Are they still doing those "commercial" things? Man, they were annoying. There was this one, though, with this old lady saying "Where's the beef?" That was funny.

 

[Zelig]

Zelig would rather pay subscription tv than endure ads. Considering how ridiculous cable packaging is, I would rather as well.

<@Mars> Ads are a terrible business model.
<@Mars> They're essentially a consumer subsidy of Google/big media where the consumer pays in the form of extra costs for their vehicles/[bad] food/other consumer goods.
<azale> i can agree with this
<@Mars> Government should calculate ad spending per year.
<@Mars> And tax Google/Disney that entire amount.