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Somewhere there's a Today Show executive who thinks people want to wake up and be miserable

I tweeted about this subject Friday night, but I want to address this right here in Screencaps because there are so many of you who don't do social media and this is our connection to each other. The subject of the morning shows -- Today Show, Good Morning America and whatever CBS is throwing out there these days -- losing incredible amounts of viewers has been a hot topic and it has all the experts twirling their fingers trying to figure out what the problem is.

It's a Saturday morning, it's early and I don't have much time, but here's the deal with morning shows: THEY'RE SO DAMN MISERABLE THAT PEOPLE HAVE STOPPED WATCHING THE GARBAGE. I sit here at Kinsey HQ with my wife who's also working from home and I like to throw on GMA to see what they're up to.

Here's the rundown from GMA producers:

• Always start with the 'VID. Every single day unless there's been some mass murder

• Pivot to politics, find a Trump angle

• Some sort of murder/crime story or stories, preferably a suburban white woman who's been killed or children that have been harmed

• Black Lives Matter propaganda of some sort/a race-based story

• Then they do it all again at the top of the second hour

Day after day after day. Constantly the same miserable topics that make people miserable before they even go to their miserable jobs. And then people tune out. They're not even bothering watching. How bad is it? The Today Show has slipped below three million daily viewers and the experts say they don't have records going back to a time when the show was under that number.

What's going on? My theory is that the misery being pumped out has gotten to be too much. People are just burnt out and they're smart enough to determine that the networks just won't stop with the bombardment of misery.

I can't believe for a second that the networks have research that this stuff is a winning formula with Christy in Columbus as she's trying to get three kids ready in the morning. Or with Brad in Louisville who used to tune in before work to laugh a little bit before going to work.

Here's what our Screencaps research tells us: You guys want to be entertained. You want to laugh. You want to see food that you can cook after work. You want to see travel destinations to dream about while at work. You want to see the latest from semi-professional Instagram models. You just don't want to be bummed out at 9 a.m.

And the formula is working. The growth of this column is off the charts. I'm hearing from guys all across the country who constantly thank me for this column and what it means to their mental well-being on a daily basis.

• Paul B. writes:

Love the Bigfoot stories. Thanks for publishing my letter and giving me an honorary TNML membership. I live down it SWFLA, about 10 minutes from Marco Island, I know you know where that is since I've read many times of you writing about it. It's a wooded place where I live and one of my dreams is hoping to see the Skunk Ape run across the road one night. Preferably with my wife and kids in the car so they can stop telling me that it's not possible for it to exist. So far all I've gotten are bees, bears, gators, and pythons. Keep pumping out the Bigfoot stories.

Skunk ape? I had to do a Google search for that one. I've said it a million times, but Florida never ceases to amaze me with the craziness. The state is so nuts that it has its own version of Bigfoot in the form of this skunk ape thing that has allegedly been spotted on video going back to 2000.

• Chris B. writes via email:

Joe, I enjoy your column and (almost) wish I had a yard again. Anyway, we went to the Boone (NC) Bigfoots (kudos to them for the correct plural) last weekend for Hawaiian night. Great night of Americana: minor league (so, high effort) ball, 70 degrees at sunset, and because some of the visitors were delayed by traffic, they played cornhole for the first run. https://www.bigfootsbaseball.com

• Did you guys see the news that Boston Beer, the maker of Sam Adams and Truly hard seltzer "overestimated the growth of the hard seltzer category" and earnings were crushed as a result? The company's stock dropped 26% Friday and it looks like you might be seeing the end of the seltzer craze in the United States. As it stands this summer, there are reportedly 220 seltzer brands on the market right now. Seriously, 220.

• What a week it's been. I assumed the Bigfoot beat and I learned there's a skunk ape. That's a full week right there. Now it's time to get out of here to do some landscaping, maybe swim a little bit, listen to music and suck down the final days of July as we head ever so close to football season. We're less than two weeks out from the Hall of Fame game.

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