• by Wayne Friedman , Staff Writer, April 5, 2011

The federal government might close down in the next couple of days -- and who is at fault? You'll never guess.

In a gym locker room -- with a CNN newscast blaring overhead -- an elderly man was moaning how he'd lived in this country for 55 years, and despite threats in previous years to the same, the government had never shut down.

"You know why this is happening? he asked any and all who would listen. I was expecting the usual array of suspects: President Obama, Republicans, Democrats, or Tea Partiers.

"To sell TV commercials!" "Yeah!" joined in another man.

Wow. I didn't see that coming. Surely racy news content -- Charlie Sheen, earthquakes, Mideast wars and battles -- would have been a better guess at prying some dollars from news-minded TV marketers to target their key 25-54 viewers.

But no. The federal budget battle was really about someone's media budget. The reality is, you'll really never know what hits people.

CBS News might claim it still has the most competitive, hard-working journalists in the world -- on par or better than say NBC News or ABC News. Yet for around a decade before Katie Couric got there , CBS was in the basement when it came to ratings.

Will this disgust push this man to avoid CNN in the future? There shouldn't be anything to fear. Seems this allegation was levied against all TV news groups.

All to say TV viewers -- and maybe TV news viewers in particular -- shouldn't be taken on simple face value, that there is much stuff we might not recognize that pushes people's buttons.

The Republicans gained a majority position in the House of Representatives -- and Glenn Beck's ratings are down for the year. Recently -- and somewhat unexpectedly -- on the heels of unrest in the Mideast, the major earthquake in Japan, and other events, CNN's ratings grew.

Try to figure out what make sense, and I'll show you a TV news viewer shaking his head while putting on his socks, and blaming a media seller and a goofy car insurance ad.