http://www.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0307/06/rs.00.html
Why are the cable tv news networks obsessed with the Laci Peterson murder case? CNN legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin says on the network’s “Reliable Sources” program that “it’s about the nature of cable ratings…it takes a relatively small number of people to move the needle, to raise our ratings .1, .2, that’s 100,000 people, 200,000 people. That’s the audience that seems to be following this story very closely.” Toobin describes the case as “a soap opera, a little bit unfolds each day. There is a core of people interested in it, and we’re in the business, at least in part, of satisfying people’s interest in following the stories they want followed.”
Toobin adds that “a lot of this goes back to the Simpson case, that there was a template established there, both in terms of how these stories are covered and how the public responds to them. That the public has become very interested in the legal process.”