The fallacy of phenomenon News There was an unbylined article in the NYTimes of June 15 entitled, "Reaganite by Association? His Family won't allow it."
The article talked about the rather obvious attempts to paint Bush as a
political heir to Ronald Reagan and the attempts by the family to
quash that kind of comparison. A part of the article captured
my attention and provoked some thoughts on the media and the TV habits of the nation.
(from the article)
Just over 35 million viewers tuned in to the channels carrying the funeral
of President Ronald Reagan on Friday night, the high viewing point for the
coverage on the Reagan funeral events last week. That was a big increase for the cable news networks that carried the events,
though it represented a small decline compared with the entertainment
programming on the broadcast channels the previous week. Among the broadcast
networks, ABC had the largest audience, with 8.1 million viewers. On cable, Fox
News had by far the biggest audience with about 5 million viewers.
Compared with other news events covered by all the broadcast networks, plus
CNN, Fox News, MSNBC and CNBC, the funeral did not have an especially high
number of viewers. The last State of the Union address, for example, was
watched by 43.4 million viewers on those channels.
(for the full text visit: http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/15/politics/15memo.html?pagewanted=21)
By some mysterious
process the various news outlets, which ordinarily are fiercely
competitive, decide to cover the same story at the same time. We, the
viewing public have habits which do not change because our favorite TV
show has been preempted. We do not turn off the TV. An unusually large
audience, focused on a single story, becomes a phenomenon.
A
TV news phenomenon takes on a bandwagon effect. Print reporters start
writing columns and the magazine shows do analytical pieces.
At some point it may come full circle and some
commentator will mention the story that "just won't go away". It won't
go away because they won't stop flogging it. They base their decisions
on ratings, but the fact is that they created those ratings by taking
away our choices.
The size of the audience does
not make the event a phenomenon. The only way that could
happen is if the size of the audience increased significantly beyond
the normal combined viewership. It would be phenomenal if they ever
reported that.
Melvyn Polatchek
11:58:12 PM 
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