KEVIN DRUM reminds us that the outsized influence of cable TV news is bizarre, since its ratings are abysmal. Average Americans simply don't watch it. They watch "American Idol". As Matthew Yglesias points out, the only people who do watch cable TV news all the time are political professionals. But what's truly absurd is that those political professionals don't watch it because they think they'll learn something substantive. (It is physically impossible to learn anything substantive by watching cable TV news. It's like trying to grow muscles by drinking Coke.) Rather, they watch it because they think it will keep them in touch with what average Americans are watching.

I heartily applaud the judgment of the great majority of Americans in declining to watch cable TV news. Television is fundamentally a terrible medium for communicating events and public affairs. The demand of keeping a constant narrative flow going in real-time is poorly matched to the way things actually unfold in the world. Back when broadcast TV was the only way to watch documentary video, people put up with the bad narrative-structure fit, because being able to watch people shooting at each other or tsunamis washing away villages is amazing. But now that you can put that video on the internet and make it accessible on demand, either on its own or as part of a well-constructed, coherent story, it's hard to see why anyone should have to put up with anchorpeople, or with "experts" shouting at each other from tiny split-screen boxes.

I have a TV in my office, theoretically so that I can watch one of the cable news channels. But I haven't turned it on in six months. As far as I can tell I haven't missed a thing, so I probably won't turn it on ever again.