The embarrassing part of this blog is having to admit that I’m an occasional “entertainment TV show” viewer, but I’ll take the hit because it did result in this blog idea.

During the “winter” months when I cannot train outdoors on my bike, I ride a wind trainer in my basement several nights/mornings a week. To help pass the time, I watch TV, and sometimes it’s mindless TV simply because of the hour of the day. My weeknight routine finds me watching the dinner hour news, which is followed by “ET” and “ET Canada”. It’s mindless but, it does help pass the time. And at least I can feel somewhat justified by the fact that it has been preceded by me watching the news!

One thing that I’d started to notice this past indoor cycling season was the increasing overlap between what I was seeing reported in the “real news” and the “entertainment” shows. Each seemed to be creeping into the other’s territory – a sort of blurring of the lines - which didn’t make sense. My husband called it “newsertainment”, which I think is quite fitting! When I watch the news I want to see and hear about things that are truly newsworthy. I don’t really want to hear about mindless, trivial showbiz stuff that is more suited to the entertainment shows. To me, this cheapens the news coverage.

On the flip side, I find it irritating when I watch an entertainment TV show and find various aspects of the “real news” include in the coverage, albeit sometimes trying (or managing) to find a very weak and far-fetched “entertainment” connection. To me, this really trivializes – or sensationalizes – the news. Tell me what the killing of Osama Bin Laden has to do with “entertainment”?!? (I won’t bore you with more examples, but that one was really the icing on the cake for me!)

 Maybe it’s just me, but I expect to find a pretty firm “dividing line” between the two. Have you perhaps noticed this (if you’re willing to admit to watching entertainment TV show like ET and ET Canada!)? What do you think?