Is 24/7 news the latest reality TV hit?

Is 24/7 news the latest reality TV hit?

Find it hard to tear yourself away?

Wherever we go, the war is being played out before our eyes - even banks and railway stations are screening rolling news coverage. Has it become a form of grisly entertainment?

Every morning and again at the end of each day, Aaron Shaff makes his way to Euston station in London to catch up with the news headlines. The American student buys a coffee and sits himself down on the concourse in front of a large screen relaying BBC coverage of the second Gulf war.

Mr Shaff, 22, from Indiana, is in the capital on a week's break from a peace studies course in Northern Ireland.

"Normally I don't keep up with the news as much when I'm on vacation. But in Europe, I feel a lot closer to the action and so I want to keep up with what's going on.

Aaron Shaff at Euston station

"London also gives me more time to read and reflect - sitting on the Tube, for instance, or stopping in here."

He finds it particularly hard to tear himself away from coverage of combat deaths.

"I can feel the impact on those families. Many of the boys out there are about my age and I sometimes get drawn into the feeling it could be me. I've got a draft card - I'm overseas and it'll be a long time before the US drafts people in, but it does bring it closer to home."

News hound

For Bill Weller, an office worker on a late lunch break in the station pub, keeping an eye on the headlines while nursing a pint helps feed what he calls his "news habit".

"I'm addicted to the war coverage. I was the same 12 years ago during the first Gulf war, I just found it riveting to watch missiles snaking towards their targets. Yes, sometimes it does get a bit much, especially with the repeats, so I make sure I tear myself away every so often and go for a run in the park."

War has become pub talk

Viewing figures for the rolling news channels - and the surge in online users and newspaper sales - suggest Mr Weller is not alone.

At a nearby table with a grandstand view of the station's TV, trader Nigel O'Donnell reckons he has doubled his news intake. "I've started turning on the TV in the morning before work to see what's happened overnight."

His colleague, Paul Broster, does the same but admits that his viewing habits have as much to do with the charms of the BBC's Breakfast News presenter as his desire to keep up with world events.

Other businesses, too, are starting to cater for their customers' appetite for information. Customers queuing at a bank in south London last week were "treated" to repeats of the previous night's blitz on Baghdad on a widescreen TV typically usually reserved for screening in-house adverts.

Any news with that?

But just because war coverage can be found at the click of a remote, can interest match the level of information on offer?

The world watched as Baghdad burned

At the few pubs in the City of London screening news - as opposed to Sky Sports - one afternoon this week, the patrons pay scant attention to the shots and shells and smoke on-screen.

For the slickly suited men and postal workers mustering in a tavern near Liverpool Street station, pub life is much the same as it ever was. One patron absent-mindedly flicks ash over his own rucksack as he feeds coins into the slot machine.

Behind him a conversation switches from office gossip to B52s as the news anchor cuts to Fairford base in Gloucestershire. But the conversation soon turns to house prices when one of the group mentions that she hopes to buy in the area.

Then, as the watering hole begins to fill with after-work drinkers, the publican flicks from news to a sports channel. As the action goes from Gulf to golf, no-one bats an eye-lid.

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