Is it normal that TV and radio channels around the world give more space to empty entertainment, gossip and violent content instead of scientific and educational programs?
Television and radio channels worldwide tend to allocate more space to entertainment content, rumors, and violence at the expense of scientific and cultural content. This is due to several reasons, including their pursuit of attracting audiences and increasing advertising revenues, the faster impact of emotional and dramatic content on viewers, and the ease of producing and consuming it compared to scientific and cultural programs. Additionally, media policies play a role in shaping content, along with the influence of technological and social changes that have driven audiences to seek knowledge online rather than through traditional channels. However, serious and valuable content still exists, though it is less widespread, highlighting the need to enhance media awareness and support meaningful programs.
Society nowadays is not used to focus for long times and especially on education or scientific topics. It is actually a vicious cycle, it's easier for TV and radio to give more space to "empty entertainment" as it is to build more elaborate content, and so it is for people, watching a gossip tv show it's way easier than concentrate on an actual educative topic. It has a benefit for the mass media because they have more audience, but this is an actual problem for society, people every time is less used to read a full text without losing concentration or getting bored, and that affects a lot at the time they have to study something or just make a critical thought.
This should be really revisited especially thinking in terms of long term impact and try to balance the "empty" content and the more educative one, so people can learn how to balance it too in their personal life. For example, reward or encourage cultural or educative content could be a technique for keeping them up and try to get them to more people.
Yes, it's common for the media to give more importance to entertainment, gossip, or violent content than to truly educational or scientific programs. This is due to factors such as popular demand, which favor the common media we're talking about. The programs that should be shown more frequently have smaller audiences. Another factor that promotes this is the commercial interests of each network, since television and radio stations depend on advertising for revenue, so advertisers prefer programs with larger audiences. Another reason is the cost of producing an entertainment program over a scientific or educational one. Therefore, we can say that it's normal due to all the factors mentioned above, although there are platforms that offer scientific or educational programs.