When the News Makes News

Here I am in my palatial Times cubicle, where I have been, off and on, for the past 10 hours. During that stretch, millions of people have watched playful banter on “Live With Regis and Kelly,” torrid affairs on “Days of Our Lives,” uplifting stories on “Oprah,” tongue lashings on “Judge Judy,” and trivia-obsessed nerds on “Jeopardy!”

The TV has been on here too, albeit with the sound turned down most of the time. Only it has never left CNN, which doesn’t come close to equaling the audience for any of those programs.

Newspapers, not surprisingly, are preoccupied with news. Most newsrooms in America have some combination of CNN, Fox News Channel, MSNBC, Headline News or CNBC playing nonstop in the background--as opposed to, say, daytime court shows, Cartoon Network or the Hallmark Channel. Yet while that dial positioning makes perfect sense, it also contributes to coverage of broadcast news and especially cable news channels that seems excessive--or at least is disproportionate to their percentage of the viewing pie.

Of course, those aren’t the only factors feeding a fascination with TV news. Broadcast journalism offers its print counterparts a mix of wealthy larger-than-life characters (just what makes Dan Rather tick, anyway?), complex and compelling ethical issues (at what point do you stop running the Inglewood police video?) and bare-knuckled competition (Fox officials saying, in essence, “CNN stinks, pass it on,” and vice versa).

It is, quite frankly, a head-scratching medium for us print folk: impossible to ignore because of its influence and immediacy, but so convoluted--and frequently compromised--by show business values that it’s easy to question how much real information is coming through.

So TV news is interesting. It has all the elements of a good story. Moreover, most major news operations are headquartered in New York, the world’s media capital, feeding discussion of the topic in newspapers there that can’t help but spill over elsewhere.

That said, the volume of coverage showered on these channels--even before the events of Sept. 11--has consistently overshadowed more widely viewed general entertainment networks, until I have begun to wonder if all the fretting done over who’s up and who’s down amounts to the media having a conversation with itself.

Flipping through newspapers in recent weeks, it’s hard not to pause and ask if people out there are muttering, “Connie Chung? Gee, why all the fuss?” “Phil Donahue? OK, so it’s nice to see that he’s still ambulatory, but now what?” “Bill O’Reilly? It’s certainly entertaining to hear him rant, but why does he insist on referring to his show portentously as ‘The Factor,’ and more important, does he ever shut up?”

Even “Nightline”--rightfully heralded as a national treasure after ABC’s poorly executed courtship of David Letterman clouded its future--spurred a deluge of front-page coverage that, in hindsight, is pretty impressive for a program watched nightly by less than half the audience that tunes in for “That ‘70s Show,” “According to Jim” or “The Amazing Race.”

Just consider Nielsen Media Research ratings data for April through June. Viewing of the news channels remained way up versus a year ago, with ratings leader Fox more than doubling its prime-time audience to 1.1 million viewers. CNN averaged nearly 900,000 viewers, up almost 60% year to year.

MSNBC, also known as America’s NewsChannel, experienced a more modest gain during the second quarter, to 330,000 viewers--although the channel did exceed 400,000 in July, thanks in part to Donahue’s much-ballyhooed return. Headline News reached 220,000 people on average, while CNBC saw second-quarter ratings tumble along with the stock market, losing more than a third of its audience to 225,000 viewers.

Putting the numbers in context, those five channels combined averaged fewer than 3 million viewers in prime time--or less than a third of the audience watching ABC, which can seemingly never have its ratings mentioned without being preceded by the word “beleaguered.”

Indeed, that five-network total hovers below averages for the UPN or WB networks. According to Nielsen, front-runner Fox News on its own doesn’t even equal tune-in for Pax TV, the seldom-talked-about seventh broadcast network, whose prime-time menu--consisting of such programs as “It’s a Miracle” and reruns of “Diagnosis Murder”--averaged roughly 1.3 million viewers last season.

Still, a quick search of The Times this year--to use a near at hand example that could easily be replicated at other publications--found more references to CNN in the entertainment section than sister Turner cable channels TBS, TNT and Cartoon Network garnered together. For that matter, you can toss in Lifetime, the most-watched basic cable network, and children’s leader Nickelodeon and still not match mentions of CNN.

One could argue that this tilt stems in part from a heightened interest in news since last year’s terrorist attacks, but the trend has held pretty firm going back the past several years.

Part of this comes down to human nature. Journalists, like anyone else, have an incentive to please their bosses, and bosses frequently get ideas about things with which they have some familiarity. So while it filters down to reporters that one of their editors saw something on CNN or MSNBC that might merit coverage, it’s much less common for someone to pass along a similar note about more widely seen offerings such as USA’s “The Dead Zone” or MTV’s “Sorority Life” (although I can understand why editors might be reluctant in the latter case even if they’re watching it).

News channels have also become more adept at catching the attention of newsroom occupants, especially since they began tarting up the screen with graphics and scrolling updates that run up, down and sideways. The other day, for example, a colleague messaged me wondering if I was watching “Larry King Live,” where the on-screen bulletin promised that actor John Schneider had a major secret to reveal. Apparently, the big news was that the former “Dukes of Hazzard” star was a fat kid, which, considering the buildup, came as something of a letdown.

Last week, I was minding my own business when this e-mail popped up from someone on the copy desk: “There are so many graphic elements going on around Connie Chung you can hardly see her.” Another copy editor proposed a story on the faceless people who compose the idiotic text on Headline News, such as research indicating that people who sleep less live longer, which the channel headlined, “You Made Your Bed, Now Die in It.” The Times published an editor-suggested article late last year along similar lines, wondering if the post-9/11 news crawls amounted to information overload.

These are good questions, to be sure, and journalists tend to be curious types. But the truth is, relatively few people outside newsrooms play CNN and Fox News as the video equivalent of elevator music. If you stopped average people, in fact, depending on their viewing habits they could probably come up with as many intriguing queries about their own favorite channels, from Lifetime (“Why do all these women fall for good-looking killers?”) to Fox Sports West (“Don’t any of these sportscasters speak in a normal voice?”) to Cartoon Network (“If Superman is invulnerable, how come Wonder Woman just beat his brains in?”).

This isn’t to say news channels don’t deserve extra scrutiny. Granted, their average audience is small, but millions of people drop in on these channels from time to time, and their existence can play a dramatic role in our lives, from influencing the political process to helping stories feel alive and current and important--at least until the next one comes along.

Nevertheless, it’s worth taking a step back to consider whether the press is overdoing it--that is, if the inordinate preoccupation with every uptick in Chung’s ratings and every tuck in Greta Van Susteren’s newly remastered face might be out of step with the vast audience out there. Many people, after all, are more apt to watch “Gladiator” for the umpteenth time, or even pro wrestling, than thrill to see who Donahue is skewering, what mismatched opponent O’Reilly is body-slamming or who’s participating in Fox’s nightly tag-team event on “Hannity & Colmes.”

Given what often passes for TV news these days, in fact, it might be an interesting experiment to temporarily replace the news channels by putting “Gladiator” and “WWE SmackDown!” on a continuous loop, just to see if anybody in the newsroom notices.

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Brian Lowry is a Times staff writer.