I never thought Miss Manners would make the SOWNY Board, but stranger things have happened. On Monday, the syndicated column published a letter from a TV news viewer who seemed upset by a lack of "you're welcome" being said by a guest or a debrief reporter as they ended their segment and were ushered off the air by the anchor. 

Miss Manners answer was pretty strange:

"...it is an awkward situation. Don’t you think “You’re welcome” would sound as if the correspondents had done the anchors a favor?"

I believe that shows the person behind the nom de plume (or the writer of the letter) doesn't understand how TV works. Saying "you're welcome" is a waste of airtime. It also takes up a lot more time than they think. Often the person is coming via satellite, so there's at least two or three seconds before the person being thanked actually hears it. That leads to an awkward pause and a waste of valuable airtime as you wait and wait for the response. 

If you've ever done TV news, you'll know that a three second pause of dead air feels like an eternity. And multiple three second pauses that go on in an hour show can add up to a lot of wasted space.

I remember our former news director announcing a policy on this - say thanks and get on to the next thing. Don't wait for a response. It definitely made the show flow more smoothly and it was a good idea that's in place at most shops. But not all. CTV Toronto is especially guilty of this. They don't seem to have a policy on the "Thank You-You're Welcome" craziness that can happen during a live show. They need to stop wasting viewers' time, along with their own.

A news program is better if the anchor just says "thanks" and then moves on to other stories. It has nothing to with "manners." It has everything to do with pacing. And newscasts are better off for not doing it. But I'm not sure the average viewer understands that.

Miss Manners: ‘Do we no longer acknowledge thanks on radio or TV?’