Today I had a brief reminiscing with some fellow engineers about having to deal with the local news crews at former jobs and told a few tales of the regular stampede of useless, re-hashed content, multiple yet pointless liveshots and how they were more funny than informative.
I believe that local news bloopers are one of the big reasons why YouTube has become so popular. So much of what they do is fit only for passive, hilarious examples of short-term amusement.
I have collected a few so you can see for yourself:
They don’t watch TV. Mostly. Get it?
OK, I’ll repeat myself. Broadcaster’s (and many cable networks) are not relevant to young people most of the time. This is not news any longer, however it bears repeating, because thick-headed, narrow field-of-view TV execs, GMs and news directors keep fooling themselves into believing they are just one cool news story or graphic sparkle or well-timed-but-intrusive-as-hell snipe away from getting them back. People want to be entertained. Kids like the sensationalistic garbage that MTV and Fox crank out, but more often than not there really isn’t anything compelling for young people to watch on television so the Internet and the nearly infinite sites available to kill time trump the local TV station’s programming and newscasts every time. Continue reading ‘What broadcasters need to know about the core demo.’
I remember the day I lost any faith in local or national news. It wasn’t when the Colombia Space Shuttle exploded and CNN put this erroneous ‘factoid’ on the air:
A few years ago I was sitting in a department head meeting when the news director piped up about a story of significant public safety value they had learned and were eager to get it on the air. He was excited about it and was sure it would grab everyone’s attention and blow the competing local newscasts out of the water. The catch was, we were a couple weeks away from the sweeps period and the news department was going to sit on it until the station could use it to get that bump in the ratings they so desperately needed. Furthermore, it wasn’t going to air immediately when the sweeps month began. Continue reading ‘TV News. My apathy is becoming loathing.’
