Sitting in the airport this morning, Headline News was on and they were talking, for a good 10 minutes, about whether or not Beyonce lip synced the National Anthem. As a lead in to that hard hitting segment they said (and I’m paraphrasing, but I’m not embellishing or exaggerating):
Remember the fiscal cliff? You probably dont remember what it was about but you definitely remember all the melodrama, from our coverage of all the back and forth, well today congress is going to have a vote on the debt ceiling, but first let’s talk about Beyonce!
Seriously. I got dumber.
Relatedly, when I went on a tour of CNN HQ a few years back, they walked us through the HLN studio and the guide (who was conveniently standing underneath a TV with HLN playing) was talking about “the gatekeeper”, the editor / producer type whose job it is to filter the content going to the anchors on air to “make sure we aren’t covering a cat stuck in a tree”. As he was talking, HLN was featuring a story about…. a cat in a tree.
520 Chestnut 
I didn’t even know who Beyonce was until the inauguration. I had seen her name in print but had never heard it pronounced. Seems to be it would have been nice to have an opera singer, but your point is well taken.
The amount of time and effort it takes to research and present important stories isn’t worth the increase in viewership. In fact, if the news gets too informative, people tune out. It’s much more profitable to manufacture controversy, or show video of a cat in a tree.