New Episode, Same Old Crap

I was reading Long Island Newsday's television schedule today and noticed that they color all new episode listings orange. Not a bad idea, especially during the beginning of a new t.v. season. What struck me as odd, however, was that not only are new episodes of entertainment shows highlighted orange, but so are all new episodes of Fox News Channel programs. Again, not a bad idea, as I am sure there are some of us that wonder whether or not tonight's Bill O'Reilly rant is the same as last night's, and, without the help of the Newsday color coding, the average viewer would probably never know the difference.

I scanned down the page to see if this color coding system was also used for CNN and MSNBC and was surprised to see that it was not. Is this Newsday's subtle message to us viewers that Fox News Channel programs are not news, but are instead entertainment? It's funny because the word "news" derives from the word....yep, you guessed it... "new." So, wouldn't it be sort of overkill to label an episode of a news show as new? The whole point is that it is new news, not old news. But, upon giving it more thought, it came to me that everything on Fox News IS old news. You know exactly what you're going to get.