Broadcast News

For most people, it's music. For us, though, CNN is our background noise. It's the station we tune to while drinking our mandatory three cups of coffee to get our hearts started. And then we leave it on - often throughout the day. In fact, I am waiting for the inevitable burn-in of the CNN logo on our screen.

Even when LK and I are both upstairs, CNN is often reporting the news to an empty room downstairs. I know it's not very green, but we are both pretty well tapped into subconsciously listening for the noise that accompanies a Breaking News bulletin. Apparently we have some inner compulsion to know what's happening in the world as soon as it breaks - even though we are usually sick to death of the excessive detailed coverage that automatically follows any breaking news.

And it is that breaking news bulletin that must be driving this habit of ours, because with wall-to-wall news coverage we have also learned how to not pay attention. I torture Linda by giving her the Sunday paper's trivia quiz each week. She has near total recall about such things as where Vanessa Redgrave met Franco Nero in the late 1960s, but she draws a blank when the question concerns someone who has been the center of CNN reports throughout the week.

I think this typical exchange during a CNN broadcast on the weekend may very well explain why this is so:
LK - What did he just say?
DK - I don't know. I wasn't listening.

Here in Oz we get the International CNN network, which is actually quite a bit different from the one you see in the US. Although they do give us plenty of US coverage by carrying the shows anchored by Wolf Blitzer, Anderson Cooper and Larry King, most of the remaining news broadcasts are anchored out of London or Hong Kong and feature lots more international news than the US audience gets.

Even at that, it's still pretty US-centric. Much of the international coverage is about things involving the US overseas - especially places where the US encounters enemies (Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, Korea, etc). The other remaining coverage is split mostly between coverage of wars, natural disasters, conjoined twins and other kids with medical probems. Their coverage of Australia has veered between disaster coverage (bushfires and floods) and things like beached whales and shark attacks.

The best thing for me with the International CNN network is the diversity of their anchors. In the US, you get anchors with names like Lou Dobbs. Not so over here, as our CNN personalities are a United Nations of Broadcasting.

I don't know how I can work it into anything I am doing but I have this idea for a family in a novel that is straight out of Dickens - raucous, eccentric and with a huge brood of kids. The parents have CNN International on in the background all the time, and because they so love CNN, they have named the kids for their favorite anchors: Ralitsa, Isha, Fionnualla, Hala, Monita, Anjali, Wolf and Larry.