Baiting for Ratings

I can’t imagine a newspaperman, when writing up an ongoing news event, saying, “We have just discovered a new twist on this item, so get the next edition for the full story.” Yet on the TV channels, they do it all the time. The 4 o’clock news gives out blurbs about what’s coming up at 5 o’clock, and at 5 o’clock, what’s coming up at 6 or 11--no doubt to try and keep us watching. It seems to me what they, the station, already know at 4 o’clock should be shown or told at 4 o’clock. Then it would be, as they say, “News as it happens.”

James Glen, Pacific Palisades