Recently
on a Sunday morning a friend of a friend woke up, turned on the TV
intending to get his daily fix of the “Kavanaugh saga”. But this
friend was particular. He wanted to watch it through the lens of
those who produce “Meet the Press” on NBC. Sadly he discovered
that the morning's NBC shows had all been preempted by the Ryder Cup
Finals. So he lamented to my friend or on social media his distress
over being denied this week's “Meet the Depressed”.
I
know how he felt. Three days earlier I had been denied my regular
dose of “Price is Right” because CBS decided to preempt their
entire day's programming with the Senate Judiciary Hearing
concerning Justice Kavanaugh's suitability for confirmation. I had
already decided to wait on the news bunnies' recap of the riviting
testimony. So I tried to substitute “Price is Right” with a local
news segment on ABC or FOX or even something on public television. No
such luck. Every local channel, plus public TV, plus all the cable
news channels, including BBC and C-Span had all decided that only
they separately and individually could produce the true, “fair and
unbalanced” peek into the Senate chambers I needed. So the same
hearings were broadcast simultaneously on at least 5 local and 7
national cable channels.
Was
this collusion to ensure that if I watched TV Thursday daytime that I
would for sure watch Senators Grassley, et al at their “finest”?
Did CBS not trust its “Price is Right” viewers to record the
Senate proceedings on another channel and dutifully watch it after
“Price” ended? I obviously don't understand the thought
processes at work here. I understood all three channels covering the
Kennedy funeral in 1963. I understood however many (7 or 8?) channels
covering the events of 9/11/2001. But from my humble point of view
things have gotten out of hand. We shouldn't have to settle for Home
Shopping Network in order to find a TV show we want to watch that
differs from the topic du jour.
But
I triumphed. I clicked around until I landed on the Golf Channel's
presentation of the opening round of the Ryder Cup competition.
It
did make me chuckle on Sunday, however, to ponder how all the news
junkies would have felt if the Ryder Cup Finals had been broadcast on
ten or twelve channels simultaneously and deprived them of reactions
from the White House.
