Frantic producers at CNN are entering week three of the search for new ways to cover Malaysia Airlines Flight 370. The network has enjoyed a spike in ratings since the Boeing 777-200 disappeared from radar on March 8, but executives fear they are running out of new angles.
CNN presenters have looked at every conceivable reason why the airliner went missing with 239 passengers on board. These theories include terrorism, mechanical failure, the sudden appearance of a giant dragon-fish hybrid, the possibility that the world went missing but Flight 370 is still there, bad nightmare, very bad nightmare, Burning Man festival 2010 + LSD + college obsession with the series “Lost,” and the chance that nothing outside of ratings is even real.
Additionally, CNN has aired more than 60,000 hours of interviews with expert guests, ranging from a Colorado model-rocket enthusiast, a family of Montana circus performers called The Flying Perrottis, a Kenyan woman whose only connection to Flight 370 is that her father-in-law travelled to Beijing in 1988, a Mongolian villager who only just learned about the missing plane, to a Los Angeles Chipotle employee who has been sneaking free burritos to a CNN camera crew.
Sources say many CNN employees worry about losing their jobs if they fail to keep the “whole search for the missing airplane thing” afloat. One assistant producer said the network is considering permanently looping back to initial reports aired March 8 about the missing plane, leading electrified viewers to believe they have entered a time warp in which they can “endlessly relive the awesomeness of CNN breaking news.”