Why?

They are all running wall-to-wall MJ funeral coverage commercial-free because they know some people regard it as a landmark cultural event.  You can't not run coverage of it, because people will be irate, and you can't interrupt it with commericals, for the same reason.

Comments

[Frank]

Mencken

[upyernoz]

i think it's a bit of a self-perpetuating thing. there are certainly some people who would view MJ's passing as a "landmark cultural event", but i suspect they are far fewer than the number of people who end up watching the damn thing because it's on every channel. a lot of the audience is there because you've cut off other avenues of escape and once it is deemed to be a "landmark cultural event" a certain segment will tune in just not to be left out.

if instead of what happened yesterday, one channel broadcast the event, that channel may have won the ratings contest for that time slot. but i doubt that it wouldn't have gotten ratings equal to the total of all of the channels who broadcast it yesterday.

for most people, it's only a landmark because the media pushed it mercilessly as a landmark. even with the pushing, there were still a lot of people who could not understand how it was important at all (myself included)

[Mithras]

I agree, but I think their consideration wasn't just the money to be made that day, but the money to be lost in the future if they didn't cover it and then they were to be criticized for that decision.

[sushi]

This memorial service brought to you by Pfizer. And Merck. And Johnson and Johnson. And GlaxoSmithKline...