The Absence of Narrative: Boredom and the Residual Power of Television News

Abstract The article begins by arguing—against conventional wisdom—that one of the defining features of television news is the absence of narrative codes in its structure. Rather than raising the questions that it later resolves, television news has a disjointed structure that makes it hard to follow or comprehend. Viewers find it much more difficult, for this reason, to retain information from the news than from almost any other form of television. To understand the influence of television news, we must understand which elements this disjointed narrative encourages us to retain. These elements tend to involve oft-repeated sets of simple associations rather than any more complex histories. Indeed, the failure of news to communicate historical connections impoverishes the quality of decision making and public understanding by citizens who increasingly rely upon television news to provide information about the world.