I heard
a story on NPR's Marketplace on Thursday that related to Koffi's observation that the American media devotes an inordinate amount of time covering crime. Looking at the "if it bleeds, it leads," phenomenon through the lens of the ongoing trial of alleged murderer Jodi Arias, the report concluded that it's all about eyeballs to advertisers—something we've discussed in class before:
“If you deliver more eyeballs, the value of that time goes up. That’s one of the reason a lot of these cable channels, for example -- you know, in many cases if they can latch onto a case like this, people get hooked, they get addicted to it,” Sheehan said. “It’s kind of like this is the Phoenix version of the O.J. Simpson case.”
And according to one local reporter, the trend isn't going to end anytime soon:
For Chris Kline at the local ABC station, the trial shows him that there are huge revenue opportunities in airing future high-profile cases.
“If our audience is hungry for this and we can offer them that overage, that’s going to help our overall business as we push forward in a really tough economy,” Kline says.
I haven't been following this case closely, but the one clip I have seen seems to justify some of the media hubbub—this trial really is ridiculous:
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