IN Belgium, where the Covid pandemic is far from under control, the state broadcaster has decided to introduce a restriction on how much time the new bulletins can give to Covid, be it national or international.
According to audience surveys, more and more people are turning the news off because they are finding the continual coverage of Covid, and little, else depressing.
The Belgian plan is to stick to the simple facts, the obvious alerts to any new restrictions, but not go on and on with repetitive bulletins and reports.
I know a number of people, Spanish and UK residents in Mallorca, who have given up watching the news.
Obviously, the latest figures and changes to the State of Alarm are of interest, but that is pretty much all a growing number of people want to know.
Many people commented to me as to why UK news channels gave so much live coverage to Biden being sworn in as the new President of the United States - for the best part of two weeks all we got was a daily diet of U.S. politics and Covid.
Looking at the UK TV ratings for Thursday, the most watched news was on the BBC at 6p.m, but that only managed to come in at number ten on the list, the rest were murder mysteries, the soaps and talent shows. We are in this for the long haul and TV news could make an effort to lighten up a bit or cover more