Guest blogger - Lynn Mobley - WE are "the media"

I’m starting to think I’m not meant to watch the evening news. I don’t have acid reflux, I got enough calcium during my formative years, and when I want to sleep, I count glasses of merlot. So, during the moments I’m not busy admiring Brian Williams, I feel like I might be watching the wrong show.

It’s clear that younger people aren’t watching the news. Otherwise, they’d run funny ads featuring Neanderthals and lizards and ducks and beer, and ducks and lizards drinking beer. Apparently, Madison Avenue thinks that everybody who watches network news is pressed close to the old black-and-white, straining to catch the names of new chemicals that reverse the ravages of time, while they weigh the side effects - weight gain, weight loss, death, erections that can last for more than ten hours - all rattled off at breakneck speed by folks who sound blithely unconcerned.

Is it the ads or is it the news? The economy is frightening, the war is devastating, the candidates have to resort to throwing dirt because we voters get so easily bored with issues. Used to be that some government agency would point out the benefits of global warming two or three nights a week, but even that spot of brightness has burned out. And the station breaks just make it worse.

Apparently younger people get their news from “other sources.” They don’t seem to need that quiet half-hour to digest after a home-cooked meal, before Seinfeld or Jeopardy. Or maybe there’s another reason...

Maybe they don’t watch the evening news because, like me, they get, like, totally bummed by the ads. The litany of things I can look forward to before I shuffle off this mortal coil makes me want to end it sooner rather than later. Once, I could count on the news to remind me how lucky I am. Now, unfortunate people around the world are getting rockets dropped on their houses, and all I can think about is the heartbreak of psoriasis?

We need a network for health-care ads, with no other programming, where people who speak more slowly than auctioneers can go in-depth on symptoms and counter-indications. I know there’s a market for it. I’d even pay for it, just so I could focus on the news.

Wait a minute - I’ll bet there’s one on cable...

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