Tom Brokaw was asked an interesting question the other day:

What purpose should the evening news serve today?

His answer (”none”—I’m paraphrasing) shouldn’t shock you if you’ve been reading this blog, where I recently introduced the concept of television as a news-free zone:

Well, it’s a struggle. It was a struggle when I left 3.5 years ago. I think the Nightly News has found the right balance. People still want to know what happened that day. What we do is not so much wire service accounting but two or three of the biggest stories of the day. Maybe do them for a little longer and maybe with a little longer analysis.

And then give them what I call added value: medical news; you can’t do enough about the economy these days; the environment is on a lot of people’s minds. So it’s that mixing and matching that is the trick to holding people and giving them reason to want to come watch it.

Obviously, Brokaw couldn’t say this, but I can. There’s obviously no news on these programs. their purpose is to serve the advertisers of adult diapers, erectile-dysfunction medication, and sleep aids … until even the old folks who watch the network news abandon the ship, like all the rest of the rats.

And then television will be entirely free of the pretense that it is serving the needs of its audience for hard news. And perhaps we’ll all be better off.