Boston’s beloved 20-year mayor died this morning. Sometime during ThePriceIsRight, TheView, and Today, all the Boston stations broke in with the “Breaking News”. As I write this at 5:34pm, that’s all they’ve been talking about for six hours.
He had terminal cancer. He had been in the hospital for quite a few days. It wasn’t a surprise. So why do we need to talk about it for 6 hours. It preempted Judge Judy. I hope it doesn’t preempt TheBigBangTheory. Is this just a Boston thing?
And to make matters worse, when the anchorpersons are talking, they are running the same stock footage over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over. I saw Menino shake hands with the Governor 7 times in a 10 minute period.
Yeah, it was a little overboard, imo. I turned on The Chew and figured the new had just broken. I checked back later for shits and giggles and was surprised it was still on. Not that it’s not sad that he died, but it was hardly unexpected.
Just to add … Menino’s death even preempted the network news, and into the 7pm syndicated shows. As I fast-forwarded through 30 minutes of this stuff, the only advertisements were political. Too bad. I voted this morning.
Luckily, they were carrying the network news on a sub-channel. Not hi-def, but watchable. Which brings me to my 2nd gripe. One of the lead stories on ABC was an announcement by the Apple CEO. They started with “Wait 'till you hear what the Apple CEO announced”. Then, it took them 45 seconds just to get to the point that he was gay. OK, but they talked about it for 2-3 more minutes. Is “gay” that big a deal?
Television stations don’t want to get a reputation as the station that’s the last one to inform its viewers of news. So they all race to get the news out as fast as they can.
This is the guy who left the hospital the day of the Marathon bombing, even though he was recovering from surgery, right? Because his job as Mayor that day took priority over his own health?