All television, publishing, and other media are subject to marketplace demands. Unfortunately, media outlets aren’t very good at measuring those demands.

For instance, does anyone remember a TV show called “Designing Women”? It was a pretty good show, and there was a character who, occasionally, went off on a wild and funny rant. Doubtless, focus groups with watchers found that the audience loved those rants, so the writers were directed to do more of them. Eventually, every episode had at least one rant, and even two.

And it wasn’t funny anymore. Not knowing when one of those rants would happen, and their relative novelty, was part of the attraction.

As William Goldman says, when it comes to entertainment, “Nobody knows anything.” Attempts to duplicate past successes most often end in less-desirable results, or even downright failure. We get a single good movie about penguins that made good money and, all of a sudden, everyone has to have a penguin movie.

I’m sure that TV news has been transformed for much the same reason. In the rush to improve ratings, focus groups have told the marketers that beauty is good, short is good, human interest is good, so we get Katie Couric instead of Eric Severide.

What the marketers missed in all of this, of course, is that the reason to watch the news is to become informed, and when you don’t have that, the only ones left watching are the ones who tune in out of habit.

Thanks for your thoughtful comment.

I’ve challenged my students to spend a single day without their cell phones. So far, no takers. Add to your list of causes the almost-desperate need for instant access — and its counterpart, instant availability.

Colleges need to challenge their students to lengthen their attention spans. For example, we ought to have them writing more — and longer, more complex papers and essays.

But here at my own university, students tell it’s possible to graduate (if the appropriate profs are picked) without writing a paper longer than three pages. That’s no way to develop an analytical mind.

After they graduate, they just become additional members of the herd. And that’s sad and frustrating for me.

Really, the internet is no different. Rarely are blog entries anything that might be called in-depth. They blurb it out and then everyone piles on to add their blurbs. Newspapers have followed the herd of network news and the internet.

There is in-depth coverage on the internet and in a select few print outlets, but one must look hard to find them. We decry the politics of sound-bites, but refuse to sit still for anything more.

In the end, how we got these short attention spans matters less than lengthening them in any way that we can, because it is those short attention spans that make us such easy prey for propaganda, advertising, and bulls–t.

Stick it to the man, leave your cell phone at home and turn it off long enough to read a book…maybe even disconnect your cable. And try not to spend all day watching 2.5 minute clips on YouTube.