Originally Posted by
JustinHeywood
It’s not the media’s ‘preference’, it’s the human preference for a concise, easily digested narrative. If they covered every facet of every story, no-one would watch it.
Justin, you can argue the ins and outs of human preference till the cows come home but there's plenty of evidence that there's no innate or strong overall preference for concise over detailed. Humans are story telling animals and since we started writing stuff down there have been as many popular long and complicated stories as there have been short and succinct ones; the Odyssey, Shakespeare, Dickens and God forbid the likes of Harry Potter and Lost all bear witness to that.
You can argue chicken and the egg, producer/consumer again till the cows come home but the 6 second 'grab', the 2-3 minute news 'story' and the 22 minute episode are all most assuredly products of the media's preferences.
As to who's the greater fool, good question.