Sensory overload

Disclaimer: I have chosen Fox News as the subject of this discussion only because I believe they edge out the other 24 hour cable news networks in their use of graphics technology, but truth be told every dedicated cable news channel is guilty of leveraging the same strategies, just not as effectively as Fox has.


It was my Mom who theorized recently that the reason these 24 hour cable news networks rely so heavily on splashy, strobe-lighting graphics is to keep the human eye focused on the screen. By its very design, the human eye is genetically predisposed to flick towards a flash of light or jerking motion instinctively, a skill probably honed early in our species' history to keep our distant ancestors away from danger, and alive to see another day. It still comes in quite handy while driving our vehicles down the eight lane 65mph mega highway that for many parts of the country is the new Main Street, USA.

Earlier in the era of television advertisers and programmers relied on keeping someone's attention through the use of engaging dialog, whether the topic was a televised debate about McCarthyism or a game show host lauding the wholesome properties of Minute Rice via an hourly live read. To be fair, those were the days before remote controls, 498 channels, High Def TV and DVD players, so the practice of keeping an attentive audience who is still getting used to the idea of tiny people living inside the wooden and glass box in their living room was easy as, well, Minute Rice. Are cable news channels, who are by their very nature striving to blast past all the glitzy distractions of modern daily life to pin viewers to their couches for twenty four hours at a time using a variety of advanced graphics technology to leverage our ancient instinctive nature to glue our overloaded eyes to the sweeping, colorful movement and periodic alarming strobe lights on the screen? Will this result in a sort of "Boy-Who-Cried-Wolf" syndrome whereby legions of glassy-eyed news junkies, instincts numbed from sensory overload stare straight ahead and fail to spot the flashes of light coming from that fire truck barreling down across their field of vision?

Curious to test the theory, I conducted my own ad hoc experiment. Yesterday my beloved Car and Driver magazine arrived, perfect timing. I kicked back, tuned in to Fox News, opened the magazine, and attempted reading about the latest 0-60mph in .3 seconds street legal Corvette. True to Mom's theory, the movement and flashing definitely made it hard to focus on anything but the screen. I lost my place many times, and must have inadvertently re-read the bit about the Vette's cornering capabilities at least five times. So, the graphics do definitely grab one's attention away from whatever else is in their field of reality and pull it magnetically to the screen. Check.

But maybe the same would happen on any TV show? Perhaps intense graphics have little to do with distracting me away from my magazine article? Maybe I was being too hard on cable news networks. I tuned in to PBS to see what would happen. "News Hour with Jim Lehrer", perfect.

Big difference. I not only got through my Corvette article, but also the article on the new Mercedes Benz luxury Hybrid concept, and even a few pages of the Letters section without so much as a glance at the screen. I was listening, and the same basic format was had there -- same big stories, same roundtable debate, albeit with less yelling and infantile insults flung at the participants from the newscaster. So, it appears as though graphics, flashing lights, bells, and whistles definitely do have a significant, measurable effect on viewer's attention when compared to a less, entertaining medium.

But what about sound? I switch back to Fox News, but this time I mute the cacophony. It's pretty interesting, you should try it sometime. Same flashing lights, Old Glory waving bravely in slow motion in the background behind the laid in boxes of talking heads. Same corporate news logo spinning like a lethargic top in the bottom left, reminding me what time it is in all four time zones, and of course -- The Crawl. That ever present, bite sized spoon fed meal of nourishing mush at the bottom of every screen on every cable news network.

The image of a chubby, cute infant having tiny spoon after tiny spoon of mashed bananas gently pushed into it's cute little mouth by a cooing mother popped into my head.

But, I noticed something else, too. The flash-bang impact of the news was significantly less with the sound muted. I was able to get almost all the way through the Mid Priced Sedan Comparo before an explosion, literally, of color and corporate logo blasted its way -- complete with animated bits of..wherever the Gibraltar like logo burst forth from before fading mercifully to the perfectly groomed face of the newscaster. The crawl cooed temptingly at the bottom of the screen, but with the sound off, it was easier to turn away.

Conclusion: Mom, you were right. The bright lights do absolutely have a real effect on us humans. Probably our pets, too, on some level. But looking at the whole picture, the psychologists and computer animation artists have gone one step further by introducing the siren to the lights, so to speak. Listen to a cable news cast tonight. Years ago, while watching Cronkite you'd have heard an important sounding, one note repeating little ditty, almost like Morse Code sending us the important news from the front lines, before the lights panned up on the master himself. But today, that won't fly. Today you've got loud swooshing, explosions, dramatic orchestral, almost rock and roll like, crescendos, another swoosh sound or two (like jets buzzing about above our heads), which eventually settles into the heavily emphatic up and down speech of the actor reading the teleprompter.

Thanks to the technology of highly advanced video production equipment behind the scenes at every newsroom on the dial (that's quaint, isn't it? A "dial", on a TV?), we can remain at a state of perpetual alertness, like being in a never ending parade of police cars, ambulances and fire trucks all blaring and blinking at full tilt, all day, every day. Exploding logos and waving American flags: the lights. Swooshing, explosions and electric guitar riffs: the sirens, horns and buzzers, warning us of...of....impending danger? Nay, of impending silence and solitude, and perhaps the moment alone to enjoy the beauty and joy of personal thought.

I then did something that felt counter intuitive, I turned the TV off and sat in the silence and listened to my own thoughts, devoid of lasers, lights, explosions and sirens. Technology is great, it lets us tune in to get caught up on the news, the sports scores, the weather, or watch an entertaining movie, any time of the day or night. But it can't begin to touch the value and importance of a moment alone with one's own thoughts.