"tscottme" wrote in message
...
"Gig Giacona" wrote in message
...

THough I am ashamed to admit it I was once a reporter for a lo-cal TV
station. Our news director made it very clear one day after a young
reporter-ette used the term "War Zone" to describe the aftermath of a
tornado that if anyone used it again there had better be some pictures of
tanks and soldiers to go along with the story.

Slow fade to latter that very same day. There was one of those little
inserts the networks feed to the locals to insert in the 5 o'clock news
about upcoming stories the network will have that night. A network
reporter
was describing the aftermath of some battle somewhere and acctually said,
"...It looks like a war zone here..." The news director who was also the
local anchor could not even begin to stop laughing before he was back on
the
air.


That's a good story. I still shake my head when they dispatch some
schmuck
to stand on the shoulder of an overpass and broadcast live what it was
like
7 hours ago when there was a fatal car wreck "not far from where I'm
standing." Or the ever present real or fake stand up shot outside City
Hall
so they can tell us they are considering this or that. God forbid we
learn
of these considerations from a reporter in a studio, how can we trust them
if they aren't standing in front of the building where this future
decision
will be announced?

I'm as big a news junkie as ever there was, but I've discovered that I can
learn more by watching less. Despite the incessant complaining that they
only have 22 minutes to broadcats news, they seem to fill 8 minutes of it
with the latest bogus "medical research" discovered by some grad student
that eating Twinkies doubles your chances of contracting dropsey or
interviewing the receptionist for the drive-in wedding chapel where
Brittney
Spear's hairstylist got htiched.



Oh no, you got me started now. I too am a news junkie but I refuse to watch
lo-cal news. It is without a doubt the worst possible way to get information
on anything. Large market or small market it doesn't matter. You would be
better of walking outside your house and listening for news to happen.

One of the reasons for this is the very nature of the 22 minute newscast.
Because 22 minutes doesn't mean 22 minutes for news you give up at least 10
to sports and weather of which at least 3 was our much loved weather person
telling people who live here what the weather had already done and was doing
at that very moment.

During the summer when ad time was at its low point, NEWS had at most 12
minutes to fill. During an election season when there was actually some
local news to cover we might be down as low as 8.

Since it came down from on high that our audience didn't have an attention
span we were maxed at a maximum of 3 minutes on a story unless we had video
of the world ending. In that case we would have gotten an extra 30 seconds
but 15 of those seconds would have been used in extra anchor toss where the
anchor would have to ask me a question that I wrote and specifically left
out of the story in the first place.

Those same powers that be also decided that the one thing short of the end
of the world that could go over 3:30 was features that weren't news at all
but fluff.

I hate lo-cal TV news. Can you tell?