NORRISTOWN, Pa. — The coffee was just about pouring itself on Monday at the Sessano Cafe here, across the street from the Montgomery County Courthouse, where one of the most high-profile celebrity trials in decades is taking place. Pot after pot emptied — five times the usual amount — as television crews jockeyed to position their trucks outside.
In this town outside Philadelphia, where high-profile court cases arrive with the frequency of comets, the sexual assault trial of Bill Cosby is benefiting local businesses, drawing the curious and packing hotels.
But the scene here is far from the media circus that surrounded the O.J. Simpson murder trial in the 1990s, which was set against the glamorous backdrop of Los Angeles and produced voluminous coverage domestically and globally.
In a week when the news cycle has been dominated by hearings in Washington, an election in Britain and terrorism around the world, the long-awaited trial of an American icon almost seems like an afterthought.
CNN, which had planned to run a special report on the case involving Mr. Cosby on Monday to coincide with the start of the trial, postponed the program because of breaking news. On Tuesday, CTV, the Canadian broadcast network, ran a report on President Barack Obama’s visit to Montreal instead of a segment about Mr. Cosby’s trial. The British news organization Sky News has also rethought its coverage plans for the trial after the terrorist attack in London last weekend. And now that the prosecution’s two star witnesses have testified, the media’s interest in the trial may dwindle further, at least until there is a verdict.
“Is it the lead story? No,” said Jean Casarez, a CNN correspondent covering the trial. “But is it being covered? Yes.”
The decisions about how to handle the trial reflect more than just the flood of competing news on a given day. Newsrooms everywhere are under financial pressure, and resources are more limited than they were when the Simpson case was unfolding. With fewer employees, it is harder for news outlets to staff a dayslong, out-of-the-way event like Mr. Cosby’s trial, especially since he is on the back end of his career.
And while the prosecution of Mr. Simpson was an absorbing murder mystery, there is little doubt that…
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