It's hard not to notice the backgrounds of people on TV working from home

Los Angeles Times

Call it the "WFH distraction": "We’re all at home now," says Kathleen A. Hughes. "And that includes the many politicians, reporters, professors, authors and medical experts who are being interviewed about the global pandemic on television news shows. As a result, viewers are suddenly seeing all kinds of home interiors in the background — but without the filter and perfectionist lens of TV crews and production designers. Quite the opposite." For instance, Seth Meyers went from using his hallway as a background on Monday and Tuesday to his bookcase on Wednesday. The backgrounds are most distracting on cable news shows, says Hughes. "The unusual backgrounds go unmentioned, understandably, because the focus is on the vastly more important crisis at hand," says Hughes. "But when you’re confined at home, anxiously watching one news show after another for coronavirus updates, it’s easy to get distracted by the backgrounds and have questions. So many questions."

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