Never Thought I’d Say This

…but Wolf Blitzer has done something right. For the record, I have no soft spot for his newscast, the Situation Room. It’s something I watch at the gym because it’s just mindless enough to keep me distracted while I run or ellipticize. But a few days ago, something Wolf said actually got me thinking.

Apparently, you can download a Situation Room screensaver on the show’s website and get a running ticker of headlines on your screen. It’s one of those inventions that makes me wonder why no one thought of it sooner. In the olden days, families ran their TVs on mute over dinner. In the ancient days, they kept the radio on low volume in the kitchen. The news was background noise. In today’s digital world, the screensaver is (silent) background noise.

Granted, it’d be better to have the global headlines from a decent news show like BBCWorld or some regional news from a local station (here in New York, that’d be NY1). Still, even a Blitzer-ticker beats those silly swimming fish or the geometric animations that come on most PCs.