Max Headroom: War Episode

So let me first start off by saying that this was one of the most ..unique... shows i have encountered in awhile. For being in a mass communications class I found myself picking out the media messages in the episode. Although there are three different types or classifications of media messages, i found that this particular episode dealt with two specifically. One was entertainment and the other was information messages.
As an audience we rely on the news to bring us the informative side of the media. We expect truth and have a trust in them (to some extent at least) to provide it to us. Audiences are not only interested in the informative side of the media but also the entertainment side as well. People get so caught up in gossip and celebrities sometimes the actual informative part can go to the wayside. People like to get emotionally involved in stories and when they do more people wastch and ratings go up.
Now, as a T.V. program your popularity and job rides along ratings. This basically means whatever attracts the most attention goes on air. In the T.V. show Max Headroom, the stations started dueling over the fact that one news station started making news up. Breakthru channel starts staging terrorist attacks so that they can get better ratings. So what do you do when the news is wrong? When the news is turning informative messages into entertainment messages? How do you compete with ratings that are through the roof when its all based around lies?
At this point in time, it's the channels going head to head. One has to expose the other for it's actions. There are many times in which the different media messages are blurred. And, yes, many times informative and entertainment messages blend together to form one message, but Breakthru is a perfect example (slight exaggeration) of what is taking the entertainment portion too far. It shows us that ratings mean everything to some. But there are still a lot of channels that are focused on the news and the informative stories. Even if the stories are feature stories most channels care about the informative message much more then ratings.