The Two-year Marketing That Repeats Every Four Years
Does the way cable news has been covering presidential elections build the demand for pungent outcome?
Demand is built by consistently reminding a person of a product’s existence. And that cable news hand over microphone to anyone more likely to increase ratings is well-known.
But consider also the way cable news advertise their own coverage of presidential elections. One expects a very zingy outcome in a show that has been advertised with fanfare for days. Over two years such fanfare never ceases on TV screens.
That there is motivation for cable news to promote an underdog — who wants to watch a car chase where distance between protagonist and antagonist is a hundred miles? — also seems troubling.
In this excitement-on-screen-or-starve world, it would seem abnormal, in fact, to expect a boring outcome.
I, for one, would like to see cable news become a force for good.
