Reruns

When your Bloviator was but a mere calf and was put to bed for the night, he would listen to Jean Shepherd's nighttime radio program on WOR in New York. Shepherd once told a tale of working late-night at a TV station (in the early days of that medium) when he and an engineer, as an experiment, instead of running the usual "B" western, took a clip of cowboys riding around on their horses and made it into a loop. They broadcast the loop continuously for several hours to see what viewer reaction would be. Not a single call came in. The viewers either didn't notice or didn't care.

I was reminded of Shep's tale when I read today of a demonstration (500 strong!) by anti-war protesters in Denver on the eve of the Democratic convention. It, like just about every other anti-war demonstration of the past forty years, had all the components favored by the perpetrators of these things, including rhyming chants ("hey hey, ho ho" &tc), gigantic puppets and culmination with my favorite, the die-in. It got me to thinking, as an experiment, a TV news outfit, instead of running fresh footage of chanters, puppets and die-ins for each anti-war demonstration covered, might instead broadcast identical footage for every one of them, say for a month, to see what viewer reaction would be. My guess is the viewers either wouldn't notice or wouldn't care.