Local TV News...is it worth watching?

Do you pay attention to your local TV news? If you do, what bothers you about it? What things would you change if you could? I spent ten years in local TV before moving on. There are some things about the business that I enjoyed, but lately I’ve noticed a general decline in the quality. I find myself irritated more often than I feel informed. I’m not talking about nitpicky stuff either…I’m talking about the overall product. All the stories are beginning to sound the same, the teases are tiresomely brazen and overblown, the reporting shallow. I know there are some TV professionals on the SDMB…and I want to hear from them as well as the consumers. Why do you watch a certain station instead of another? What do you like/dislike the most about your local news? I would appreciate and eagerly await your comments.

I don’t really bother with the local TV news. They had a report here recently, during sweeps week, about an overworked high school senior. Really breaking, timely stuff, you know. And one of the pieces of advice the reporter gave was, “If you type your papers, you can edit them more efficiently.”

Really? Well, I guess I’ll put this stone and chisel down for my Anthropology final and click on “Word!”

This wasn’t as bad as the Florida station (The Fort Myers FOX affiliate). Their opening promos were of a school bus full of kids turning over and all the kids going from their seats to the ceiling, and the Columbine killers shooting up the woods. Neither was local at all. The tie-in on the school bus story was that “it could happen here,” and they didn’t even mention what had happened to the kids on the bus in the video, when it had happened, where they were besides Pennsylvania, or anything else pertinent. They just talked to some muttering school board members about whether seat belts should be put in school buses. But the video from Pennsylvania was shocking, and I guess that’s what they wanted. Ditto for the Columbine killers. Nothing local there, just “new evidence.” They didn’t even try for the “it could happen here” angle.

Local TV stations don’t bother covering local news, because local news is often meetings and permits and plans and politicians. Very rarely do gas lines rupture photogenically in the middle of city council meetings.

-They lead with fire and car crash stories because of the pictures, stories I’m concerned about like state budget, local politics(I’m in CA)come much later.

The same EXACT story from the 10, 11pm news is also on the morning news. Could we ‘freshen it up’ a little for the am cast?

“We are following breaking news on this story…” Well it broke last afternoon, nothing happened overnight, why is it breaking again this morning?

One station has an excellent sports guy. Well now he’s ‘chatting’ with the other anchors during his segment. I love it when he’s doing sports, but I don’t care about his professional/personal relationship with anchor ‘Pam’.

Sending crews out to get live field reports/shots when nothing is really happening in the field at the moment. I’m really tired of the outside of the Modesto court house, especially on a report about the Peterson hearing that will take place TOMORROW.

Gratuitous teases designed to hold the viewer through spots, rather than increasing the viewers understanding of the news .

Sorry, reporting what movies did well on the weekend box office is not news IMHO.

On a general point, just the ‘pack’ mentality of news coverage. I’d like it if someone would investigate stories from unique angles rather than trying to keep up with or compete with other news organizations.

No. Inner-city murders and robberies are of not interest to me, but dominate the news.

I watch local news for sports updates on the rare occasion that I care and for the weather. Only one of the local channels has news I can stand to watch, the others are as decribed in the OP “the teases are tiresomely brazen and overblown, the reporting shallow”. Things like “could your child be eating dangerous, life-threatening chemicals? That story after the break…” And there’s one local guy who fanciesw himself a hard-hitting investigative journalist and has periodic stings on local businesses. Overblown and embarassing, really.

I stick to weather and sports.

Ray Bradbury said once, while speaking at the University of Kansas to never watch local news because it’s nothing but depressing stories about crime and death. He never watches it and is a very happy person.

I watched the local news whenI live in Utah all the time. I’d even get up early in the morning so I could catch it…now I can barely drag myself out of bed 5 minutes before I have to leave, but that’s neither here nor there.

However, when I moved to California, Istopped watching it completely. It’s crap, crap, crap. It swings wildly from “Last night four people were BRUTALLY MURDERED! here are some pictures. Look at all that blood! Let’s go live to the scene!” “Yes Bob, there sure is a lot of blood! We drew pictures in it on the sidewalk!” to (and I swear to God I saw this story) “an elementary school in Pennsylvania is raising a nest of ducklings (cut to footage of ducklings). It’s part of aproject to raise duck awareness (cut to cute nearly incoherent child babbling about ducks). Isn’t that amazing?”

And all the female anchors fill me with Rage. It’s like they choose people with the worst, high pitched, brittle voice and the fakest smiles. shudder

Yeah, pepperlandgirl has got it pegged, LA local news is the worst, I think. Of all the exceptional talent that they could attract to this market, what do we get? The most fake, banal, superficial robots possible. The worst is KNBC’s Colleen Williams. I guess they have to be plastic, in order to peddle fear the way they do.

Oh, either that, or we have total inane bimbos like Jillian Barberie and Dorothy Lucey… two women that make Kathie Lee Gifford and Kelly Rippa look like insightful geniuses. KTLA invented the all-fluff anchorbimbo morning show, and then KTTV (FOX11) perfected it with the boobs and brainless morning brainsuck program that I guess even has a nationwide syndicated hour, now…

I get my news from NPR (FM) and KFWB (AM) radio now. Or Yahoo News.

And yes, I’m much happier, and much better informed.

Ours is. The picture doesn’t do her justice, and she seems quite intelligent.

Plus, WNEP (ABC affiliate) news is pretty unbiased (i.e. doesn’t focus on just one county. WBRE (NBC) is Luzerne County news, WYOU (CBS) is Lackawanna County news. WNEP covers the region).

Sure, there are some dorks there, but overall, the station’s anchor teams seem to have genuine chemistry and charisma, while lacking any air of superiority.

The only TV news I’ll watch is Washington Week on PBS. The rest, local and national, is a waste of time. I get my news from National Public Radio. I also read the Indianapolis Star. The local Fox station is “all the terrible things that might make you feel afraid!” TV news in general is short sound-bite audio and helicopter video. What did you learn? Nothing.

Another vote against LA local news. It consists of one part crime, one part fashion/makeup/celebrity “news” and one part car chases. What really grinds me is when they say something like “Next! A mother fights to keep a wild bear from attacking her baby!” and you think it happened locally since it’s the local news, but then they show the tape and it’s in Botswana. I swear there must be a global market in dramatic footage. It’s not as if there aren’t any real, substantive problems to report about here, but the news seems to be aimed at non-English speakers (hence the emphasis on dramatic footage, which requires no verbal explanation) or the very stupid. Plus the anchors are a cheesy lot of second-hand electric donkey-bottom biters. I avoid the local news whenever humanly possible.

Local news is crap. Here in Boston, we have 3 Network news channels, plus FOX. Their format is all the same. In fact, if you flip from one station to the next, you can hardly distinguish them from eachother. What’s really hilarious…on slow days (no murders, fires, explosions), they earnestly try to make mundane things into news…like “News flash-our KIDS are eating unhealthy foods!..or…“What YOU can do about indoor air pollution!”
Oh, and this (ridiculous ) new custom of sending a reporterto stand outside an empty courthouse (for some creep’s trial to start TOMORROW”…"Live, Cindy Dipshitz at Suffolk County Courthouse)…gawd, its so stupid!

  1. If you’re going to do an expose, make it about something important.

I have seen 3 seperate reports on how Bennigan/Chili’s type restaurants are unhealthy. In one, the reporter says, “If you order a double cheeseburger, onion rings and have a hot fudge sundae for dessert, you’ll be consuming (high number) grams of fat.”

My first reaction was, “well duh”.

  1. Don’t constantly self promote the fact that you got the story first or that it is an exclusive. IT DOESN’T MATTER.

The only local news I see regularly is the 5-minute teaser before the 5AM news show starts, and I only watch that to get the weather.

I do find it amazing that in that 5 minutes, I can find out about box office take or which celeb is divorcing which other celeb or what the results of last night’s reality show was. :rolleyes:

I go online for news - I can filter out the crap quickly and find what I need, ignoring the rest.

Eh. I hate watching the news, period. Mr2U has to have his Fox News in the morning though, and ABC 7 in the evening. Frankly, I can do wtihout all the twits. Hey - we have Walter Jacobsen - you have to ask if our news is worth watching?? :rolleyes:

Just for the weather report.

Here in Richmond a few years back the local ABC station had a husband and wife anchor team (Paul and Paula Alexander). That was painful.

When I lived in Fredericksburg we watched the Washington stations for “local” news and they were actually good. Glen Brenner was the absolute best sports caster in the world, and when I was a wee lad Willard Scott was the weatherman on the Washington NBC affiliate.

Are you kidding? I LOVE our local news. As a friend so eloquently put it, Channel 5 news is a reporter’s last stop before the glue factory.

I mean, where else can you hear a reporterette pronounce the word “Kanawha” three different ways in the same 2 minute story?

I’m part of the much coveted, yet hard to figure out, 18-25 age group. I don’t watch any TV news other than The Daily Show, and I’ll read the NY Times, or news online. I’m becoming increasingly cynical and realize that the “news” programs really don’t care about reporting the news as much as they care about ratings and selling commercials. They have no interest in informing people (unless it would increase ratings).

Speaking of my increasing cynicism, I just finished reading the thread about shills in GQ. :dubious:

Glad to see you mention the Daily Show. I’ve figured out that the second commercial break of the Daily Show is when my local station shows the forecast, so I flip over then. When the forecast is done, I’m back to Jon!

Another local news hater checking in.

All they seem to talk about is car accidents and housefires. Oh, and sports and weather.

If I want to see sports and weather I would rather get the more information available on the internet. I also just don’t understand why I should care more about a car accident in my area than one on the other side of the country.

I’m much more interested in national news. I feel like it affects me more. I might watch local more if they spent time on local politics.