Easier less-offensive things to put on air if just for ratings. Being a subsidiary of General Electric, a defense contractor, my thinking turns not to ratings, but fear mongering and emotional manipulation to anger viewers into supporting combat operations which GE then benefits from supplying arms and material to troops.
If the American public weren't constantly being primed to be afraid of things, we would never support offensive combat operations "in order to protect us." If you're not afraid of unknown, you don't desire protection. So if defense contractors wanna flourish, they need us to be afraid. Their tv propaganda outlets like CNN, MSNBC, Fox, and others do this by depicting things that are sad and horrible. More fearful we become then, the more authority and power we give to our government to "keep us safe."