The evening news and popular science programs exemplify its adroit use. A concept driving infotainment was expressed long ago by H. L. Mencken, a publicist who entertained two generations with his sardonic wit. But infotainment need not be hedonic.
Viewers have a hearty appetite for conflict, violence, personal threat.
No news program is complete without them. Likewise with science. In the decades prior to the AIDS epidemic, science infotainment was replete with stories playing to the craving for calamity and enjoyment of the sense of personal threat. Fallout from nuclear testing, spring made silent by pesticides, overpopulation, nuclear winter, and the Greenhouse Effect are a few of the comprehensive doom scenarios that recruited large followings hungry for Apocalypse. This curious hankering for threat is probably a first cousin to entertainments that feature the thrills of risk-taking and narrow escapes, such as bungy jumping, highspeed skiing, rock and mountain climbing, horror movies, sporting mayhem and so on.