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Ask HN: Does anyone find it strange that sport is part of daily news?

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Re: Ask HN: Does anyone find it strange that sport is part of daily news?

#61
post #60
post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How much relevance would ANYTHING on local tv (or even national) have in 100 years? That’s a weird bar to hit.

1918 flu pandemic would be kinda relevant, don't you think

are you arguing for more coronavirus coverage? I don't watch sports but I think we're getting plenty of that.

Re: Ask HN: Does anyone find it strange that sport is part of daily news?

#62

Yes, I agree. Why is 30% to 40% of the time slot allocated to matters that are as ephemeral as the weather and of no long term consequence whatsoever? (For that matter, the weather segment has become much longer than it needs to be, but I digress). Afaict it's only bc it's cheap filler. Certainly most sports fans can either watch things as they happen, or can find out the results any time they want on the internet. I…

I assume you are joking about the weather, but either way... Before weather was freely available on computers or phones, it was useful to know what the weather was likely to be so you could plan local and/or national travel accordingly.

Idk about other areas but I suspect my local stations are fairly representative of at least the north eastern quarter of the US. All of them burn the better part of a minute with a 'teaser' piece that reveals essentially nothing, early in the half hour. Then about mid way through they burn what must be a solid 4 minutes at least with all manner of fluff. This is when there are no extreme events. If they just stuck to the next 24 hours, and then maybe a brief look at the "7 day" just for the general trends, they could stick that in place of the dreaded teaser, and even repeat it later (in case you missed it) and easily shrink it by 75%

Re: Ask HN: Does anyone find it strange that sport is part of daily news?

#63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I assume you are joking about the weather, but either way... Before weather was freely available on computers or phones, it was useful to know what the weather was likely to be so you could plan local and/or national travel accordingly.

Idk about other areas but I suspect my local stations are fairly representative of at least the north eastern quarter of the US. All of them burn the better part of a minute with a 'teaser' piece that reveals essentially nothing, early in the half hour. Then about mid way through they burn what must be a solid 4 minutes at least with all manner of fluff. This is when there are no extreme events. If they just stuck to…

True. The teasers are an unfortunate side effect of the primary goal of TV news, which is to sell ad slots. A family member did the weather graphics for a TV station years ago. I've sat on the set and in the control room a couple of times during a live broadcast. Everyone involved is really talented, and it's a shame that talent isn't devoted solely to the long-term benefit of the viewer and society.

Re: Ask HN: Does anyone find it strange that sport is part of daily news?

#64
There's a lot of that. Why are the Kardashians in the news? Why are movies in the news? Fast food restaurants? Vacation spots? The weather?

People are interested in various things. News is whatever people find interesting that shows up when you diff today vs yesterday.

Re: Ask HN: Does anyone find it strange that sport is part of daily news?

#65
post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That wasn't a sports story. It was a political story. A political story should not be relegated to People or the lifestyle section just because it happens to involve famous athletes.

If that’s a political story, almost anything involving both a politician and a celebrity is a “political story.” Think of all of the times that Trump tweeted something about a celebrity, or that celebrities tweeted about Trump. I don’t think it can be right to say that these were all newsworthy events. But suppose that we restrict consideration to only those cases in which Trump tweets something about a celebrity (ra…

In this case, what was being tweeted about was politics. It's the content that makes it political, not who tweets it. The President was directly rebuking athletes for taking political positions that the President did not like, and they were responding to that criticism.

Re: Ask HN: Does anyone find it strange that sport is part of daily news?

#66
That's a mystery to me. I'm not interested in commercial sport at all. I never google games or scores or players. When I use Flipboard, it always, always inserts sport news into my feed no matter how hard I try to suppress, block, or mute sport topics in my feed. I start suspecting that it's some kind of sponsored promotion that obliges Flipboard to inject sport news into the feed.

Re: Ask HN: Does anyone find it strange that sport is part of daily news?

#68
post #23
post #22

I think you're pretty much right about the bread and games comment. I think sports can be a big distraction from politics. I believe the White House invites championship teams to visit. So I think political manipulation is still a big part. You can find more evidence in the post-9/11 deals between the NFL and the government.

Just like politics can be a big distraction from the policies and governance that those pesky proles would demand otherwise?

I don't see much disconnect between politics and the policies/governance.
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