When every story is breaking, none is

Breaking News: It has finally happened! The ticker-tape hysteria of 'Breaking News' has broken down. After years of declaring everything from two world leaders not hugging to a minister's yogic pose as 'breaking', media platforms have discovered that viewers have fled to the other end of the flattened news spectrum - online, where everything from a nuclear war to no eggs on the menu gets the same ho-hum play.

Breaking news was once 'news flash', special information that warranted interruption of scheduled broadcast or scripted news. But when every headline is breaking, nothing is. Market research now reveals that audiences no longer twitch at the red banner. 'Breaking News' has become the televisual equivalent of honking on roads - loud, insistent, overused, pointless and, thus, ignored. The apocalypse could arrive, and the chyron would still read: 'BREAKING: PM Eats Sandwich'. Viewers, unimpressed, moved to their phones, which at least allows the thumb to control the narrative.

The last breaking news that channels announced was 'Breaking News: We Have No Breaking News'. One imagines news anchors wandering the studio, muttering 'developing story' like cannibals deprived of humans. Thus ends an era, in which the only form of sudden news catching our fractured attention is Trump's Truth Social 'channel'. But that, of course, is entertainment.