A rise in comedy and reality shows, the emergence and establishment of non-stop trivia in news, and most significantly, the end of political news dominance, this is the face of the news channels today – a Centre for Media Studies (CMS) Media Lab analysis for 2007 has revealed to Hardnews.
The research indicates that TV news today is no longer political. It has become abjectly insensitive towards issues concerning health, education, environment and public interest. It has become flooded with sports, entertainment and crime stories. This has become integral part of news bulletins. It is not surprising that a decrease in the number of political stories has coincided with a rise in the number of sports, entertainment and crime stories. Even a little shift in favour of human interest stories seems to be again trapped in meaningless trivia and selective and obsessive 24-hour coverage of issues like ‘Prince in a hole’ or a ‘naagin’ out to take revenge.
read the complete story at that excellent site Hardnews
a reader's words 
tv has always been a medium for massaging the minds of the masses into consumerist oblivion. so it is not surprising that news channels too have become entertainment channels. the innumerable ads are anyway full of trivia. so this means that the proportion of trivia is even higher if we take the time for ads also into consideration.
Nice one. Good to see you back.
welcome back from hiber- nation to Imagi- nation. 🙂 The decline of political coverage only shows that the entertainment component of politics has been decreased.
Well, there is now a ‘healthy’ competition between political trivia and non-political trivia. So u can see health is also on the agenda.
Reality becomes so unbearable for consumerist, PoMo. middle class that merchants of virtuality compelled to announce ‘real shows’…
@Rahul- you mean the medium is not so much the message as it is a massage? LOL
@Indscribe- thanks, nice to see your blog doing great
@Ishwar- love the biting sarcasm of your comment!
News has been on a downhill slope.