Too much infotainment drives down television integrity

How do you like this pun? Television is going down the tube. Just made that up while watching three hours running of talking heads that, by the second hour, resembled Bart Simpson’s gang.

Where we had news, we now have views. And everybody’s in on the act, from Wolf Blitzer to Larry King, from “60 Minutes” to “48 Hours,” from “Dateline” to “Spin Room.”

Some of us miss the old days when Walter Cronkite or Chet Huntley and David Brinkley were our trusted-and-true newscasters. We watched them every evening and relied on their objective reporting of the day’s events. That was when attention – and money – was paid to news. Now, features – those insipid stories as soft as fake ice cream – command the competition among so-called news shows.

The result is that while we live in a communications culture, ironically, it is becoming more and more difficult to obtain accurate, clear and uncluttered information. Rather, we’re spoon-fed someone’s analysis of what is going on. Or worse, world and national news is forfeited while the majority of time is spent on one human interest story.

The obvious reason is ratings – and, the bottom line, of course, which is the engine that drives just about everything these days, regardless of what head-on collisions occur along the way.

Fed up with commercialization in programming, several people we know abandoned television altogether a couple of years ago, unplugging their TV sets and tossing them aside like worn-out coffeemakers.

We can’t do that, especially this week during the Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show televised from Madison Square Garden. We can’t miss that, any more than we could the unforgettable classic movies shown most every night.

Or the National Geographic Explorer shows or Discovery Channel or “Antiques Roadshow” or “West Wing.” Or C-SPAN coverage of the House of Representatives.

Though not a golfer, we spend many Sunday afternoons curled up on the couch watching PGA Tour tournaments where the lush grass is emerald green and announcers whisper about birdies and bogeys until we fall asleep to their lullaby. Without television, how could we justify a nap?

And what would we do at 6 o’clock on weeknights if not eat supper and watch local news and weather? To alter the routine would send us topsy-turvy as in summertime, when we often stay outside until nightfall.

During the winter months, though, we’re tuned to television. We may gripe; we may click the remote control till it wears out. We may mumble about talk shows and the wrestling craze. We may be disgusted at graphic music videos. We may complain about “infotainment” that has replaced legitimate news broadcasts.

But we pride ourselves on having never watched “Survivor,” “Temptation Island,” or “Who Wants To Be a Millionaire.” Television may be going down the tubes, but we’re determined not to slide with it.