TV news/breakfast TV impressions

I think watching a bit of breakfast TV, and also the commercial weekend news, gives a good idea of what the media thinks their audience is thinking.  Or is it that the media is forming the thoughts that they think they are reflecting?   

Anyway, some observations:

*   Channel 7, which I generally prefer amongst the commercials for news and breakfast TV, has been running pretty hard on "youth crime crisis" for quite a while now.  I worry in particular that it is going to be an election problem for Labor in Queensland;

*   Channel 7 also has the most shameless undisclosed commercial interests going on - with the Saturday/Sunday "how the real estate market is going" segments, featuring one or two agents, and usually scenes at an auction, clearly not there because it's news.  Also, the breakfast show this week have been promoting heavily Kylie Minogue's new album and Las Vegas shows - really quite a challenge, given that I can't see much of their typical audience is the ageing gay demographic that I think has been Minogue's "base" for a couple of decades.

*   ABC Breakfast - which is OK-ish, but tends towards both being too earnest and spending too much time on sport, is doing its best to give the Voice Yes vote a push, this morning featuring Paul Kelly and that Adam Briggs.  Briggs, who I find particularly annoying, was presenting himself as meek and moderate - pretty much the opposite of how he comes across on Twitter.   

*   I haven't been noticing all that much about the Voice on 7's breakfast TV.   But I only see bits and pieces, usually.   Both shows have segments that bore me. 

*   Both shows have been on the Qantas attack - it's the one issue that is pretty much uniting all sides of popular politics in Australia!

*   I used to be most annoyed with 7's Breakfast when it gave a platform for normalising Pauline Hanson or other right wing nutters - and on the other side I blame them for creating Kevin Rudd as a plausible leader at a time people within Labor already knew he was going to be a terrible boss.   Maybe I haven't been watching it in the right time slot, but I get the impression they are more careful now about who they let on to represent the Right, at least?