An open letter to CNN

Dear CNN,

In lieu of the tumultuous events of the past few weeks, I’d like to applaud your news coverage.

Michael Jackson passed away on June 25^th, 2009, and like many others I learned of this while watching So You Think You Can Dance that evening. That seems to me as fitting a venue as any to learn about the passing of such a talented and revered dancer, and indeed, to their credit, they even played a short clip of the music video Thriller in his memory. To my knowledge – albeit limited because I do not watch So You Think You Can Dance regularly – the producers of So You Think You Can Dance have chosen to not spend any more of their valuable airtime exalting, commemorating, debating, analyzing, or nitpicking the details of Michael Jackson’s sad and abbreviated life. This is where you come in.

It is because of this dismal lack of responsibility on the part of So You Think You Can Dance that I would like to thank you. As a twenty four hour news service, CNN has the opportunity to present pertinent news, as well as provide intelligent in-depth commentary on the issues its on-screen personalities, writers, reporters, staffers, program managers, and Tweeters agree are important and influential. Well done.

At first it seemed a bit of a stretch, turning to CNN to satiate my appetite for constant immersion in the Jackson death, but it soon became instinctive. I realized that in fact your news service is uniquely well-suited to churning this pointless PR event into a mindless and insubstantial paste suitable for my spoon-feeding. This revelation occurred to me during your coverage of the ongoing situation with North Korea. I realized that I was completely aware of every facet of the North Korea conflict due to the impeccable job your crack news team had done illuminating it, and I didn’t need to be patronized with redundant information about a conflict I knew absolutely everything about. I was frustrated, and I began to wonder if anything new was happening with MJ. Luckily, during one of your frequently-occurring advertising blocks you plugged your unceasing coverage of Jackson on Twitter, and I was able to quickly abate my anxiety.

I was initially surprised that So You Think You Can Dance - by my estimation a much more fitting venue for useless nitpicking and time-wasting, and therefore perfect for the ongoing coverage of Jackson’s life and death - was so eager to soldier on with the bland, unimportant programming its viewers expect every week and thus forego the ratings boost so temptingly presented by the Jackson death. I now realize that they must have been driven off the scene by the Big Dogs – ABC News, NBC News and FOX - led unfalteringly by you, and the realization that they could never compete with the talent, time, and money you’ve decided to squander on such a minute and pointless event. I mean, think about it from their perspective. This was a once in a century opportunity: a silly, frivolous dance-based reality show with plenty of gaps which could easily be filled with five minute vignettes about Jackson and his dancing – a perfect fit for a dancing show struggling to captivate an audience. But then a world-renown news service comes along, so satisfied with the job it has been doing providing comprehensive first-class coverage of breaking and ongoing news events, so certain it has fulfilled its obligation as a serious news-dissemination agency, so conscious of the enlightened and politically savvy audience it regularly captivates, that it decides to pick up a soft-news piece to dispel the vicious rumours that it’s too serious and “newsy” for flimsy human-interest stories.

I don’t blame you for being smug. If I were doing my job as well as you, I would be too.

Thank you CNN.

Yours,

John