But if you give a look at the newspapers of the 20s & 30s, there was the same breathless publicizing of every case involving pretty girls, adultery, or murder. Just off the top of my head, there was Bonnie & Clyde, the Hall-Mills case (adulterous minister murdered in an orchard with lover), the Judd Gray murder (wife's lover beat husband to death with a sashweight), white slavers, corpses in burning garages, rival bootleggers in shootouts with gun molls, etc. etc.
Even if you go back to the 1870s and 1880s, there was a thriving "penny dreadful" literature based on the Wild West and the seamy side of New York, featuring damsels in distress, soiled doves, and gamblers . . . The Police Gazette made its owner very rich by covering 'innocent girl missing in the Bowery' stories as well as lifestyles of the rich and famous.
The major difference is I think the widespread availability of hundreds and hundreds of TV channels with lots of time to fill. The competition is more cut-throat even than the days of multiple newspapers in a single town, and the stations will put what sells on the air. I think that competition for readers is what drove the tabloid murder-and-adultery fest (the radio stations couldn't broadcast that stuff under strict FCC rules at the time), and it's driving the competition for scarce viewers among numerous TV outlets today.
I never watch TV, so it all mostly passes me by. I watched the sentencing hearing on the live link provided by a FReeper.