What is it with this royal wedding nonsense

[Howard Glazer]

Steve Ordinetz wrote:

>>On Fri, Apr 29, 2011 at 2:10 AM, Donna Halper <dlh@donnahalper.com> wrote:

>> What irritates me is how most local stations have cut back on local news
>> and cut back on budgets for the newsroom.  Yet they will come up with the
>> money to send a crew to England to cover an event like the royal wedding.
>>  WHY?
>

>For the same reason we saw wall-to-wall coverage of Princess Diana's death,
>Charlie Sheen/Lindsay Lohan's antics or the results of American Idol.  >There
are a substantial number of listeners/viewers who care more about celebrity
>gossip than they do about city council meetings.

Unfortunately, that ought to read, more accurately, "There are substantially MORE listeners/viewers (and readers, too, for those of us in print) care more about celebrity gossip than they do about city council meetings." 

Commercial media have to decide whether they give the public what the broad masses WANT TO know, or what the people who own the media outlet feel the broad masses SHOULD know. Ignore the royal wedding or Lindsay Lohan, many of your listeners/viewers/readers look to your competition or other media for news. Ignore the city council or zoning board meeting, maybe a few people directly affected by the meeting look elsewhere for news; the others just watch the wedding/Lohan coverage and don't think they've missed anything important.

Howard