Info-tainment. Designed to feed an image and encourage consumerism, rather than to transmit information for its own sake. Kinda like Bear Grylls. Kinda like most media presentations.

My old man, the vet, was invited to do a local radio call-in show. First show, somebody called in to ask how to get a kitten down out of a tree, The old man's response:
" Go walk down the street in front of your house. Look up in the trees. Do you see a lot of kitten skeletons in the branches? No, you don't. Because when they get hungry enough, they climb down the trees by themselves, you (expletive deleted) fool!"

He was not invited back. He didn't feed anyone's image; he didn't encourage consumerism. He just told the truth. Small city upstate NY talk radio was not ready for the truth.