I force my eyelids open each morning, search for the remote control in the bed, flick on one of the pastel morning shows, and hear the top stories of the day read to me by a perky but not too perky woman who is not too young and yet not too old. If I go newsless for the next ten hours and invite one of the three network anchors into my living room at six o'clock that evening, I'm more often than not given the same news I listened to for five minutes at eight in the morning, except now it's stretched over twenty-two minutes plus commercials.

The networks are obviously at a disadvantage in this age of immediate information. They are in the delicate position of having to create news that is unique to them. Brian Williams has begun to run stories on people in small towns who whittle, and Katie Couric has introduced the dangerous concept of interactive news. "Send me a story you'd like to see on the news," she purred one night into the filtered lens. "I'd like to hear it."

Well, I wouldn't. I like for a story to be so important that reporters feel the need to report it. If I sent in a news story, it might go something like this: "Today I tried a recipe I've never tried before. When a recipe states that dough will not stick to the pan even if you don't grease it beforehand, don't believe it."

The anchors I feel most sympathy for are the teams on Headline News. Repeating the exact same stories over and over and trying to keep them sounding as if it is the first time they're being read has to be harder than Madonna trying to pretend to be a virgin.

It would be unfair not to note that the fifteen-minute summary of events from around the world is very handy for those of us exercising on a treadmill. I, however, walk for twenty minutes, so I still have to endure five minutes of repetition.

I am in my best shape during a celebrity murder trial. I can extend my twenty minutes of treadmill to an hour with the aid of an interesting cross-examination. Recently, judges have been ruling against cameras being permitted in the courtroom...something about a circus-like atmosphere, using people's misfortune for entertainment, judicial interference, blah blah blah. Do they not care about the state of my inner thighs? Have they no conception of the benefits to my buttocks? If I sent pictures of me before the O.J. trial and then after, they might reconsider.

Another question I have concerns the female news anchors on Headline News. Why are they all beginning to look like models? Where are they finding newswomen these days? Playboy? I have nothing against beautiful women getting jobs, but shouldn't the networks at least throw a few hours of broadcasting, if only in the middle of the night, to a woman with a high forehead and a big nose?

The more attractive a woman reporter is on CNN, the more time she gets to spend indoors. If you're over forty and have a double chin, chances are you're filming your report wearing a parka and freezing on the White House lawn or wearing a flak jacket down in a spider hole in Iraq. If you're over fifty and still in front of the cameras, you'd better be blonder than angel food cake and thinner than angel hair pasta. I love Judy Woodruff and Lesley Stahl,but I think the last time they ate something the Beatles were on Ed Sullivan.

"Breaking News" is a graphic that is currently being greatly overused on television to command our attention. The last time I saw it flashed on my TV screen it turned out that someone in a kitchen in Iowa had broken something. My suggestion to keep news fresh is radical but just might be entertaining. Instead of a "Breaking News"
graphic, how about a "Made-Up News" graphic? It would keep the Headline News anchors from excruciating repetition and give networks stories that nobody else has.

"Hi, this is Katherine McKennedy and here are today's headlines...Tony Danza announces he is running for president of the United States...Bill Gates goes bankrupt...and Osama bin Laden marries Jennifer Lopez in a drive-through chapel in Vegas. More after these messages."

I don't know about you, but I'm staying tuned.


From the book: I STILL HAVE IT...I JUST CAN'T REMEMBER WHERE I PUT IT by Rita Rudner. Copyright © 2008 by Ritmar Productions Inc. Published by Harmony, a division of Random House, Inc.

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