TV News Is Royally Screwed

From Tuesday's TVNewser via MediaBistro.com:

Not long after Buckingham Palace confirmed there would be a royal wedding next year of Prince William and his fiancee Kate Middleton, the news networks went in to high gear with Royal coverage.

The three network morning shows lead with the news in their cold opens; all three dubbing it “breaking news.” CBS tells us that Erica Hill is getting on a flight (Tuesday night) for London where she will anchor a split version of “The Early Show” (Wednesday). “Today” show’s Natalie Morales and “Good Morning America”‘s Bianna Golodryga are also heading over (Tuesday night) and will be in place for their shows (Wednesday) morning.

Let's see: the networks didn't bother to aggressively cover the run-up to the Iraq War or the financial meltdown and they routinely present cheap human interest stories and infotainment as hard news. But--FUCKIN'-A!--give 'em a wedding featuring a filthy-rich inbred British tribe and it's ALL HANDS ON DECK!

And that's the way it is, huh?

Walter Cronkite Is Spinning In His Grave.

From PublicPolicyPolling.com:

A new poll asking Americans whether they trust each of the major

television news operations in the country finds that the only one getting a positive review

is Fox News. CNN does next best followed by NBC News, then CBS News, and finally

ABC News.

49% of Americans say they trust Fox News to 37% who disagree. Predictably there is a

large party split on this with 74% of Republicans but only 30% of Democrats saying they

trust the right leaning network.

CNN does next best because it is the second most trusted of Democrats, Republicans, and

independents. 39% say they trust it compared to 41% who do not, with 59% of

Democrats, 33% of independents and 23% of Republicans saying it carries credibility

with them.

The major networks all have the majority trust of Democrats but less than 20% from

Republicans. NBC, perhaps because of the ideological bent of MSNBC, does the best

among Democrats at 62%. Overall 35% of voters trust it to 44% who do not. CBS does

the worst among Republicans, with 69% distrusting it. A plurality of independents

express distrust of all five outlets we tested.

“A generation ago you would have expected Americans to place their trust in the most

neutral and unbiased conveyors of news,” said Dean Debnam, President of Public Policy

Polling. “But the media landscape has really changed and now they’re turning more

toward the outlets that tell them what they want to hear.”

Teabag TV is the most trusted name in news? That's the way it is?

So That's How NBC Found Jeff Zucker!

From the BBC:

The world's first film shot entirely by chimpanzees is to be broadcast by the BBC as part of a natural history documentary.

The apes created the movie using a specially designed chimp-proof camera given to them by primatologists.

The film-making exercise is part of a scientific study into how chimpanzees perceive the world and each other.

It will be screened within the Natural World programme "Chimpcam" shown on BBC Two at 2000GMT on Wednesday 27 January.

Making the movie was the brainchild of primatologist Ms Betsy Herrelko, who is studying for a PhD in primate behaviour at the University of Stirling, UK.

Over 18 months, she introduced video technology to a group of 11 chimpanzees living in a newly built enclosure at Edinburgh Zoo, UK.

The enclosure, which contains three large interlinked outdoor arenas, as well as a series of smaller rooms in which the apes can be studied by researchers, is the largest of its kind in the world.

Despite the fact that the chimps had never taken part in a research project before, they soon displayed an interest in film-making.

Ms Herrelko set the chimps two challenges.

The first was to teach the chimps how to use a touchscreen to select different videos.

By doing so, Ms Herrelko could investigate which types of images chimps prefer to watch.

The second challenge was to give the apes a "Chimpcam", a recording camera housed in a chimp-proof box.

Initially, the chimps were more interested in each other than the video technology, as two male chimps within the study group vied to become the alpha male, disrupting the experiment.

But over time, some of the chimps learned how to select different videos to watch.

For example, the chimps could use a touchscreen to decide whether to watch footage of their outside enclosure, or the food preparation room, where zoo staff prepare the chimps' meals.

The results still have to be analysed in detail, but it seems the chimps did not prefer to watch any of these images over the others.

Ms Herrelko is not sure why, but it could be that the images shown were too familiar to the chimps or because they have no way of asking to see something different.

Then in the final the final stage of her work, she investigated what happened when she gave the Chimpcam to the whole group.

Gradually, the chimps started playing with the Chimpcam, carrying it around the enclosure.

In a related story, the chimps don't find Jay Leno funny, either.

Those Fox-y Public Airwaves.