TV News

The world is a strange place.  I know that it has been said many times but it is proven so often that it should be said repeatedly.  People see everything that is going on around them and do not really see anything.  If asked what just happened most of the time the people will not know even the large facts about what has occurred in front of them. 

The best example of this occurrence may be the television news anchor.  These people sometimes are so involved in the immediate actions of the broadcast that they do not see the event that is being covered as a part of the news  This excuse is not always the reason that they look so dumb. Sometimes it is just that they are not very intelligent, they are shown up when they are made to ask questions of a field reporter or a news source.   

On days that you really want to know what is happening, you do depend on broadcast news to cover the important stories occurring around the world at a moment’s notice.  Among other times don’t expect to see good news coverage on a weekend and especially on Sunday afternoon.   In a smaller market even on some weekdays you will not see much news. 

It will be said that the internet has taken over as the instant news gathering location for many people, but remember that many people still can’t read and many do not have access to the internet.  “The story will be covered in full on our web site”  is a common quote on news programs when events go very long.  A person is giving an important news conference and after the first few questions it comes time for a commercial and the story goes to the net. This does not include car chases in Los Angeles.  When a local station has a good car chase and all of the stations have their helicopters in  the air it will go as long as the choppers have fuel.  The ad department may have a fit, but the ratings do rule. 

For some events  the internet can actually help. Recently I have been made more aware that many local TV stations do send their local news programing to a web site.  This includes stories that are breaking quickly and may not be on  the air because the station manager does not want to interrupt the soaps or Morie.  I was able to see the unfortunate chopper crash in an area of Seattle, WA.  It was barely covered by my local stations but had good coverage, as you would expect, on Seattle TV stations.  I do know that area and was interested  in how close the crash was to the space needle and a broadcast station that I had visited.  On that visit I had the opportunity to see Seattle stations at work from the top of the Space Needle.  I was aware that the local stations use heliports on  top of the stations and send the birds up during newscasts.  It was easy to see how much worse this tragedy could have become.

In the Houston TX building fire a news anchor was interviewing a witness on the phone when that witness mentioned that they had the building worker jumping from one balcony to a lower balcony and the fire department rescue.  This part of the event later, was the big part of the story.  That station had beat everyone to the big part of the story and the anchor ignored it on air.  She did not even ask a follow up question to get more of a description of the event. 

            All is not perfect but you can see so many different levels of accomplishment that when you see the best ones you do know it.  Living in a major city you do have the best  most of the time but not always and so frustration is the  norm.