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Re: [ARSCLIST] Classical Radio, was [ARSCLIST] Mercury co-founder Irving Green passes
----- Original Message -----
From: "phillip holmes" <insuranceman@xxxxxxxxxx>
> To take this one step further... Why is it that the local news will send
> out some pretty face to the police station, court house, accident scene,
> etc..., late in the evening, to give a live report hours and hours after
the
> news is no longer news. And sending out some poor soul to say, "yes,
there
> is ice on the overpass and it's really cold out here, back to you John and
> Gloria". But the bane of my sports watching is the pretty face who does
> sideline reporting. "John, Coach Parcells says that if they play better
> than the other team, and score more points, they might win the game. He
> said that the defense has to stop the other team and the offense has to
get
> on a roll. Back to you." Sigh! Eyes rolled back in head! Thank God for
> my PVR!
>
Combination of at least two things. First, on-air news staff are quite often
selected for "photogenicitity" (to make up a word) rather than skill in
either news work or announcing (at least "Naked News" didn't last, eh?!)...
and, second, TV stations usually only have two (in some cases, one) newscast
per day. Since many of their viewers don't get their news from any other
source, news isn't "no longer news" until after it has been telecast! We
used to get a lot of our TV news from Buffalo stations...and it is a
Toromto cliche that Buffalo and vicinity must have been totally burnt
down, given the number of fire reports we saw on the evening news!
Finally, it is usually in the station's license terms that they have
to devote a certain percentage of their broadcast time to coverage of
sports and weather, as well as local news (or their schedule may
include a five-minute weather and five-minute sports show!). Since
most local staff aren't expert in either sports or weather, we get
the cliche-ridden inevitability! In fact, when I was but a youth,
the local station in Champaign, Ill's. had a meteorologically-
expert "weatherman" who could recite the official forecast...and
then explain in detail exactly why he thought it was wrong...and
he was usually right!
Besides, it wouldn't attract viewers if the local news consisted
of, "Well, folks, absolutely nothing happened here today..."
:-)
Steven C. Barr