What's wrong with TV: a theory

In the pet theory department, I'm convinced I can explain why TV news is so bad, and how it happened over the last 30/40 years.  My argument dovetails nicely with Postman's Amusing ourselves to death, which I highly recommend.

Here we go.

For the first 20 years of broadcast television, news was seen as a public service. there were few advertisements & news editors had more of the public interest at heart. Edward R. Murrow's interviews with McCarthy on See it Now could be described as a the...