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If I were being paid to talk for 60 seconds about the stock market, weather, traffic, energy supply, sports or any other subject and have to fill that air time each day well then I'll have to say something.

Just because there's nothing useful to say doesn't avoid the need to say it and fill the allotted time so far as the media's concerned. Hence there's still a full weather report to say it's fine and 20 degrees, there's still a full traffic report even if there's no traffic on the roads and so on. Time is scheduled, advertising is booked, person must speak regardless of whether there's really anything to say or not.

On a bigger scale, the TV news always finds something to fill 30 minutes with. If there's no actually important news well they go and find some filler - anything from the council re-sealing a road to a minor traffic accident to the routine operation of a long established factory can be stretched out to a substantial news report if there's a need to fill time.

More specific to the stock market, well if you were paying me to supply you with a newsletter then I'd better write one. Nothing worth saying? Doesn't change the fact that you've paid for a newsletter and I need to write one in order to keep you paying me. If I don't write it then fair chance you stop paying and that's a problem for me, so I'll write regardless of whether there's anything worth saying or not.

I've very intentionally illustrated how it works in this post. Lots of words basically repeating the exact same thing over and over just going through different examples and using different words to say the same thing about all of them. That's how you turn nothing worth saying into a full 60 second report.

Now just replace this sentence with the back to studio tag line and we're done.

(In case anyone thinks I'm joking, not really. Time has to be filled if someone's paying to advertise immediately before or after it, newsletters need to be written and so on. Always bear this in mind).