Précis This!

The Nuclear Option for TV News Breakers May 22, 2009

The good folks at CNN are locked in a spiraling rhetoric race with themselves, and I can hardly wait to see where it leads. Maybe others are in the same race. I haven’t noticed.

For years, TV networks signaled live news coverage by telling you it was live.

Then they put a word on the screen to reinforce immediacy:

That has been superseded at CNN, which sometimes breaks into a Live story with:

Maybe Live lost its luster, or a new generation of news watchers found it too vague.

Watching the news over dinner one night, I pondered what CNN might do to top Happening Now. The answer arrived before dessert when a story Happening Now was breathlessly interrupted with:

If CNN wonders what it can use next to grab our attention and make our hearts go pitty pat, I suggest reaching into The Atomic Cafe for some mushroom-laced inspiration.

How about: