First, newspapers started dropping days of the week. Now a network is.
Guaranteeing dailiness is expensive and inefficient for the producer. And the idea that we out here need to keep to anyone else’s schedule has been outmoded since the invention of the VCR and the internet. So dailiness looks outmoded.
But keep in mind, if you’re going to produce a newspaper, publishing only some days of the week makes no sense. It makes a lie of the necessity of getting the paper every day. It reveals that publishing a daily paper was only a matter of commercial convenience, as newspapers are trying to publish only on the days when they have the most ads: Thursdays, Fridays, and Sundays. When the other days were profitable – not newsy – they brought papers. When they’re not profitable, to hell with Mondays.
Dailiness – like newspapers and networks – also implies staleness: Once it’s out, it’s over. But thinking of media as a process instead of a product makes constancy a value over punctuality.
