It's Ironic when all the news is about how the news statisticians make the news. I mean, who do you think is actually polling people beside the two parties? Well, of course the News organizations, and of course the parties polls are bias, so we trust the News.
I always try to understand a person by what angle they take things. I mean if I were to go ask a fish sales person what their favorite fish today was, well they will tell me which fish they either are trying to get rid of or the most expensive, both a means of making money. There are no altruistic motivations from politicians or news agencies, everyone has a bent.
When I use the term bent, I'm saying what is the core motivating force which causes that entity to do something. We know that the news agencies give us 30 minutes, where they tell us what they think is important. So because they think something is important, does it make that important to us? If my son hit a home run at his little league game, I don't see that being a blurb on our local, let alone our national news. So what makes something important.
Well first they need to determine what people are willing to tolerate, I mean if I don't want to watch something, I find something else to watch. If I can tolerate the news for 30 minutes, well they've hooked me to that degree. Of course why do they want a large number of Americans watching, is so they can sell us Advertising.
So besides the news they are giving us, they are selling us stuff we don't want or need, but it pays the bills. Our 30 minute news cast is now down to 25 and some change. There is no way that you can fit all the news of the world today into 25 minutes.
So we need to determine what is most tolerated by the majority of the views, so that they can sit and be sold goods they don't want or need. So they need some kind of number which tells them who is watching and what they want to see. Nielsen media of course has the nitch which tells everyone who's watching what. They simply poll (using your tuner in your cable box) or ask people what they are watching at any given point in time. This way they can determine which news company has the most people, and the general demographics of the people who are watching.
Now as far as me, I've never spoken to Nielsen Media so their statistics don't represent me, or many other Americas. (This we can say about everything including the presidential election). But what they do, is get a number from other people who might be like me in some way, and use those as a sample to determine who watches what.
Now back to what's important, as I said before the news's Bent is towards commercials, and the people who want to pay for those commercials want lots of people to see those commercials. So We can say their bent is towards the money. But, to be a devils advocate, what about those public TV stations, they don't have commercials. Of course they get their money from other places, like donations (yea, those annoying call-a-thons) and business grants (which is very much like commercials) and of course Federal funding, all three which come out to Money. Well heck, it's the American way, Almost everything has a bent towards money.
Now that I've dragged you down this rabbit trail, let me digress back to the point of topic, these wacky polls. You see right now, the polls don't matter. In some states, like Texas, people are voting in early elections. So these call around polls don't tell us anything, And the news agencies are perpetuating the suspense by making these polls drift up and down. Of course there is only one reason why? I'll let you answer that one.
