A Four-Letter Word Called Fill

Despite the wave of cable cutting, most Canadians with cable are watching either a cable news or sports network every week. If you watched an NHL or NBA playoff game over the weekend, you were watching one of them.

It makes me wonder if many people have become too lazy to think for themselves. Do they just hear what's being said on a news or sports network and agree with it?

Wall to Wall Talk

In 1980, when CNN was launched, it became the first 24-hour news channel in the world. If CNN didn’t know it before, it soon learned there wasn’t enough news to cover 24/7 365 days a year.

It soon started having experts commenting on the news. It then moved to having talking heads yakking about politics and other subjects of interest that really weren’t in the news, but were interesting and people wanted to watch. That evolved to where we are today. Most news programming on CNN is really opinion. There’s some news coverage, but you have to watch a long time to find it.

Fox News was launched in 1996. It picked up the CNN model and ran with it. Today it’s the most popular news network in the US and it’s filled with editorial opinion. News coverage is secondary.

In Canada, CTV and CBC have news networks. Neither gets viewership numbers anything close to what the news nets in the US do. For many “viewers” it’s just background as they go about their day. Sometimes they have solid live coverage of news events in Canada, but not often. Normally they repeat news stories every half an hour, or bring in experts to talk about the news because they have time to fill.

Radio is the same. All news stations have been tried and normally don’t last long, because there’s not enough news to fill a 24-hour clock, so it’s repeated every 15 to 30-minutes. Talk stations are easier to program because a good talk show can fill two to three hours.

The Super Bowl of Fill

There’s the word “fill” again. It’s a key word and cable news and sports shows are littered with what I called fill, because they’re filling time in the best ways they can find.

Watch TSN’s SportsCentre at night or in the morning. It’s a 60-minute sports highlight show. There aren’t enough sports highlights to fill that 60-minutes, so the lineup looks like this – highlights from a game last night, a former jock to talk about the game, highlights from another game, a panel to talk about that game, followed by highlights from another game, wrapped up with the first former jock back on the screen to talk about it.

Wash, rinse, repeat.

It’s a 60-minute sports show that really should be about 30 minutes. Fill makes up the rest.

Sportsnet went to a 30-minute sports highlight show awhile back, which was the right decision, but that same show runs in a loop for about nine hours from 1am to mid-morning. Why? Because they have time to fill.

Try telling me having the same show repeated 18-times is good TV.

What happens on a daily basis is the cable networks finding the best way to fill programming time with content. Some of it is good, some isn’t.  Having four ex-jocks sit in a studio and navel gaze about the chances of Auston Matthews scoring 70 goals isn’t good TV in my mind, but hey, if people are watching it, then advertisers will pay to sponsor it and everyone’s happy.

This year’s Super Bowl pre-game show was six hours in length. However, that was just on the day of the game. There were a few hours of pre-game hype the day before the Super Bowl. The pre-game show for the Super Bowl actually started Saturday afternoon if you can believe it.

It’s all fill, but if people will watch it, the TV networks will keep making money off it and they’ll keep delivering. When you look at what’s important and what’s just talk it’s clear the majority of coverage is just opinion.

Thinking for Yourself

The blurring of the lines between news and opinion has become a real problem on the cable news networks. What is fact and what is just somebody’s opinion is sometimes difficult to figure out.

A reader suggested to me this confusion over what is news and what is somebody’s opinion has resulted in people being too lazy to think on their own, so they accept somebody else’s opinion. He might be right. It’s just one of many things about the media that has become concerning.

The way CNN and Fox have covered the Donald Trump hush money payments trial has been fascinating. CNN has covered it with a sense of glee, devoting lots of time to it and as soon as coverage of the actual trial is over, it brings in experts to talk about what a bad day it was for Trump.

Fox has given the trial much less coverage and when their experts talk about it, the chatter is not about whether the testimony was good or bad for Trump, but instead a lament asking why Trump is being persecuted.

If you want to see Trump behind bars, you’ll agree with the CNN coverage. If you don’t, then you’ll like what Fox has to say. Or, maybe the coverage you're watching has shaped your opinion?

There’s one thing I do know. TV news and sports programing contains more fill than actual solid content. I’ve learned to avoid the fill and use the time to do other things that are normally more productive.

When you understand what’s fill and what isn’t and why networks are doing it for ratings, it becomes a lot easier to go for a walk or read a book.