The Noise Has To Stop!

Larry Burkhart is the father of Anna Nicole’s baby. Howard K. Stern is not. That’s what I believe. However, that’s what I believed 10 days ago when news of Anna Nicole’s death broke. Now over 10,000 news articles and celebrity updates later — I haven’t changed my belief. Why is America obsessed with this story? Do we need another Marilyn Monroe? Did Britney really shave her head because the Anna Nicole story stole the headlines away from her? I can’t take the noise any more — this news junkie has find another way.

I long for the day when I would go to sleep with Anderson Cooper reading the news to me on ABC’s World News Overnight. When Sunday morning offered the anticipation of the intoxicating aroma of Peet’s Coffee brewing and a bagel toasting. Reading my New York Times while watching David Blum and Soledad O’Brian on the Weekend Today Show was my own personal briefing on what was going on in my world. Meet the Press and follow up with a dose of This Week with George Stephanopoulos completed my weekly ritual. Now, local demographics have shifted things around and while I enjoy Lester Holt and Campbell Brown, my local affiliate believes 5:00 a.m. is a better time slot for their show and Meet the Press is best aired at 4:00 p.m.

No doubt some local demographic survey demonstrated that the locals — long for “all things local”. Now, I must endure canned blah blah blah repeated every half hour on the half hour, using the same words to describe the story as they did last night at 5, 6 and 11 p.m. I’m forced to watch traffic traveling down a deserted freeway because they spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on “big-brother” cameras to give me travel updates on a road I seldom travel. Any yes, even more noise. Their animated little maps come with honking horns and simulated sirens to enhance “the experience”. The noise has to stop.

So I did something today I thought I’d never do. I turned off the noise. I’m alone with the silence in my house. The master-bedroom TV is silent. The 13-inch TV next to the coffee maker was on only for 15 minutes this morning. The TV in the den which typically informs me while checking morning email remained silent. The addiction has subsided.

I used to subscribe to 4 newspapers. Then as they are began to report the same AP stories and run the same wire photos, I cut it down to one. I no longer subscribe to the East Coast Papers – because they lost their East Coast “feel”. They all morphed into something known as “west coast editions”. Their pages became filled with “local” ads; local sports and weather and local noise.

I want to know how things really are in the Middle East. I want to more fully understand the wars within the war in Iraq. I want to hear about the relief effort in Darfur. I’m not all that concerned about Kenny Chesney’s sexuality and I’m perplexed as to why 60 minutes might be.

I’ll morn a little bit more for the way things used to be and then embrace the new technology that will give me the info I seem to think I need. I’ll join the younger generation and go directly to Google and type in “relief effort in Darfur” to find out what’s going on. Or when I receive a CNN news alert to my email, if it’s something I really feel I need to know I’ll immediately zip over to CNN.com. After all its still Anderson Cooper….