Part 2: How soundbite culture has shaped our society

The 1990s: Reality TV drives spectacle over substance

This piece is the second in a five-part series tracing the evolution of soundbite culture and how it’s shaped the way we consume information, debate ideas, and trust (or don’t trust) the media. Each decade tells a different part of the story. This series starts with the 1980s, when political campaigns, corporate advertising, and media consolidation collided to shrink our attention spans post-Cronkite era journalism. From there, I’ll look at the 1990s tabloid boom and reality-TV era, the rise of the internet in the 2000s, the weaponization of social media in the 2010s, and finally, the algorithm-driven attention economy of today. Together, these chapters reveal not only how our media ecosystem has transformed, but how it’s changed our society and psychology at the same time.

When news started borrowing from entertainment

The 1980s gave us the political catchphrase and the corporate slogan, but the 1990s capitalized on sensationalism and added to the spectacle. The culmination of the 24 hours news cycle, reality TV, tabloid journalism, and cable news both shortened and dramatized the already condensed message. Suddenly, the clip that was used to get audiences to tune in wasn’t just about brevity, it was about encapsulating and heightening the conflict, turning every tear, scream, or zinger into a must-see moment replayed again and again. The soundbite evolved from a tool to condense politics and ads into a formula that would shape the future of media consumption forever. Traditional journalists were both reporting on reality and competing with it, blurring the line between information and entertainment.

From regulation to deregulation: How policy set the stage

The rise of spectacle-driven news in the 1990s wasn’t only driven by audience appetite. It was enabled by a major shift in U.S. media policy. Over the last half of the 20th century, the federal government’s stance on media ownership and regulation flipped from protecting diversity to embracing deregulation in the name of competition. The market changed drastically over this time, so let’s take a look at some of the factors behind this shift leading up until the 1990s.

Safeguards for diversity

In the 1970s, the FCC treated media diversity as essential for democracy. The Fairness Doctrine, introduced in 1949, required broadcasters to air controversial issues and include contrasting viewpoints. So, by the ‘70s, this created a perceived sense of balance in news coverage, with 72% of Americans trusting that the media reported “fully, accurately, and fairly” in 1976, according to Gallup. However, around this time, critics began to argue that the doctrine chilled free speech and discouraged coverage of divisive topics to avoid conflicts with regulators. Meanwhile, cross-ownership bans also kept newspapers and local stations from falling under the same owner, while the FCC’s financial interest and syndication rules (aka fin-syn rules) prevented the big three TV networks (ABC, CBS, NBC) from owning or profiting too heavily from the syndication of shows they aired.

Deregulation takes hold

By the early 1980s, the balance struck in the previous decades was starting to unravel. For audiences, rules like the Fairness Doctrine and fin-syn had fostered a sense of impartiality and trust in the news. But for broadcasters and policymakers aligned with the Reagan administration, these same rules were viewed as outdated barriers to competition and profit. Reagan’s FCC chairman, Mark Fowler, captured this new philosophy when he declared that television was nothing more than “a toaster with pictures,” implying that it was a consumer product, no longer just a tool for communication. This ushered in a wave of deregulation. The Fairness Doctrine was repealed in 1987, enabling the rise of partisan talk radio and less regulated political commentary. The industry quickly recalibrated, shifting its focus from serving a broad public to serving segmented audiences and advertisers.

Consolidation at full speed

By the mid-1990s, the philosophy of deregulation reached its peak with the Telecommunications Act of 1996, the first major overhaul of media law in over sixty years. Marketed as a way to spur competition in a rapidly changing media landscape, the act instead cleared the path for unprecedented consolidation. The impact was immediate and palpable. It eliminated national caps on radio ownership, raised TV ownership limits, and required periodic reviews of ownership rules, opening the door for further rollbacks. Time Inc.’s $18 billion merger with Warner Communications in 1989 was just the opening act. In just a few years, radio ownership declined by 25% as conglomerates bought up local stations, while TV networks gained even greater reach. Clear Channel Communications went from owning 40 radio stations in 1995 to more than 1,200 by the early 2000s, homogenizing rundowns and agendas across the country while squeezing out the power of the local newsroom. CNN, Fox News, and MSNBC seized the larger reach deregulation enabled, carving out partisan or personality-driven niches that doubled as business strategies.

The death of the shared experience

Against the backdrop of deregulation and consolidation, public trust in the media declined sharply, from 72% in 1976 to 53% in 1997. The previous model of Cronkite-era journalism was disappearing fast, making way for programming designed as much to keep viewers emotionally hooked as to keep them informed. The shared experience that once existed, when millions of households tuned in to the same nightly newscast and walked away with a common understanding of the day, quickly dissolved. In its place came a constant, competitive churn of breaking updates, dramatic graphics, and looping commentary. The incentive behind those producing the news and those tuning in wasn’t necessarily for depth in coverage, but drama.

Anchors became personalities and nightly news promos sounded like movie trailers. TV and news producers alike began frankenbiting, a technique for slicing quotes and reactions together to maximize tension and encourage audiences to tune in after seeing the promo, despite often being misleading and pulled out of context. Traditional, straightforward reporting struggled to compete with a media environment designed to feel like a spectacle.

Spectacle over substance

By the 1990s, the soundbite had stopped serving as shorthand for the story and started replacing it. News and entertainment collided so completely that the most memorable moments of the decade weren’t policy debates or deep reporting. Instead, they were the clips, catchphrases, and scandals that could be replayed, parodied, and packaged for maximum drama. The decade’s defining moments ranged from high-profile trials to political scandals to reality TV, revealing just how far spectacle had eclipsed substance. Let’s take a look:

• The O.J. Simpson trial (1994–1995) didn’t receive typical courtroom news coverage. The trial’s daily coverage became packaged as an ongoing drama and promoted like a TV show. Court TV aired the proceedings gavel-to-gavel, CNN ran wall-to-wall updates, and the major networks packaged the most dramatic moments into nightly highlight reels. Phrases like “If it doesn’t fit, you must acquit” became cultural catchphrases, endlessly replayed across platforms. Media coverage of the trial blurred the boundary between journalism and entertainment, pulling in audiences not only seeking updates on the legal proceedings, but for the daily cliffhangers and the cast of characters who emerged from the courtroom. And while celebrity involvement guaranteed heightened attention, it also raised uncomfortable questions: what does it say about us as a society that we prized spectacle over the court system’s integrity, and how much might the media’s interference have shaped the very outcome of the trial?

• The Monica Lewinsky scandal (1998) marked one of the first times a political crisis played out in real-time on cable. But instead of deep dives into constitutional law or governance, the coverage zeroed in on salacious details: the blue dress, the late-night jokes, the scandal soundbites. The story became less about impeachment as a legal process and more about endless speculation, panel debates, and partisan spin. What was once confined to editorial pages now unfolded live on screen, fusing political reporting with tabloid journalism. And while the involvement of a sitting president naturally drew mass attention, the fixation on scandal over substance revealed what the media thought audiences valued most: sensational clips and partisan outrage. But even though audiences were drawn to the spectacle, should that have been the way, morally and ethically, that journalists reported on it? If the same scandal broke in 2025, outrage would almost certainly focus on the imbalance of power and Clinton’s inappropriate behavior, with Lewinsky framed as a victim of exploitation rather than mocked or shamed. Of course, times were different back then. But by turning the scandal into a ratings-driven spectacle, how much did the media alter, and perhaps undermine, the democratic process itself?

• Reality TV and tabloid talk shows introduced the formula for creating the spectacle that news quickly learned from. The Jerry Springer Show turned fistfights, screaming matches, and chair-throwing into must-watch daytime theater. MTV’s The Real World perfected the “confessional” interview: a few seconds of raw emotion, often stitched together through frankenbiting, rearranging quotes and reactions to heighten the drama. The formula was simple: conflict, climax, payoff. And it worked. Viewers were trained to expect the insult or the scream as the emotional hook, a template news networks borrowed for their own promos and panel segments. Yet the very popularity of these shows raises another uncomfortable question: if producers were willing to manufacture conflict and exploit people’s most vulnerable moments to satisfy audience appetite, what does that say about how little morality or ethics factored into the media diet we were being fed? And perhaps more importantly, this hunger for conflict and drama primed audiences to take the bait whenever presented.

What started as a media strategy to capture attention in the 1980s had, by the end of the 1990s, reshaped our culture itself, conditioning us to crave conflict, look for spectacle, and measure stories by their shock value rather than their substance. This trend started to slowly shape our society into one that now anticipates juicy drama in every headline and even incentivizes people to act out in pursuit of attention, creating a whole new problem in the process.

By the end of the decade, the shift was undeniable: the shared nightly news experience had fractured into a 24-hour stream of soundbites and drama. Cable networks had proven that keeping audiences hooked meant keeping them agitated and polarized. Reality TV showed how far editing tricks and conflict could go in driving ratings. By normalizing spectacle and sensationalism as news, did we set the stage for the very chaos, outrage, and distrust that dominate today’s media landscape?

What came next would only accelerate this cycle. As the internet entered American homes and collided with cable’s nonstop pace in the 2000s, the speed of news and the conversation around it moved into overdrive. In the next installment, we’ll look at how the internet boom of the 2000s collided with the rise of the 24 hour news cycle, fueling an environment where the race to be first often overshadowed the responsibility to be accurate.