There I sit, watching my piddly local TV station news, when the old-enough-to-know-better anchor read a story about the bombing in Tan-ZANE-ia (rhymes with mania). Could they have renamed the country of Tan-zi-NE-a and not let me know?
Must be tons of other goofs out there - might be fun to make
fun of the talking heads.
I only get annoyed when the news anchors began talking amongst each other about the story that was just read.
Anchor 1: “Seventeen thousand people were killed violently today from a volcano.”
Anchor 2: “That’s just horrible! All those people… so sad…”
Anchor 1: “Yes, so sad… so tragic…”
Anchor 2 (with a big smile on his face): “And in other news, Hollywood’s favorite couple are breaking up… again! Ha, ha, stay tuned!”
Field Reporter - Susie Sunshine, “Police report that the robber shot the convenience store owner, and pistol-whipped a customer before fleeing.”
Anchor - Bert Stoic, “Susie, was anybody hurt in the robbery?”
This sort of thing happens all the time, usually during a live field report, but also, quite often between two anchors sitting just a couple feet apart.
Don’t these talking heads LISTEN to one another?
Last fall, I watched some blonde twit on our local news station refer to fall foliage as fall foilage (as in tinfoil) 3 different times.
[sup]banging head against wall…[/sup]
One of my personal faves (on the radio):
“…birthdays today include the third president of the United States, Jefferson Thomas…”
This is a local thing, but it still irks the hell out of me. We have had our NFL team for six years now. Some of the local newsreaders, and even sports-types STILL don’t know how to pronounce the team name.
It is NOT JAG-wires
It IS JAG-wahrs
unless you’re talking about the Brit. motorcar, then it could be JAG-u-ars
If I were station manager, it would cost anyone who mispronounced it on-air $100 - for each offense. Instead of “Happy Talk” at the end of the show, I’d walk onto the set, and collect it from them on camera.
There is a woman I hear on the radio who regularly pushes the boundries of idiocy. The other day she was reporting on rising gas prices and said, “And those of us who have electric heating have to remember that even though the heater is electic, the pilot light is still gas.”
I think her pilot light went out years ago.
On Christmas Eve, the local NBC station had a special where they showed taped performances of area high school choirs singing holiday music. Interspersed with the choirs were the newscasters and other employees of the station wishing the viewers a happy holidays and such.
One guy, I think it might have been a sportscaster, finishes his monologue with, “And in the words of Tiny Tim, a merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night.”
I couldn’t believe it, and I can’t find anyone to verify that I was not having aural hallucinations, everyone in my family was sleeping (this was like around midnight), and no one I’ve talked to watched this special, so if anyone in the Rochester, MN, area who happened to be watching KTTC around midnight on Christmas Eve happened to witness this, please…let me know.
I have always hated TV people who mispronounce things. Continuity announcers are some of the worst! It’s their doggone job to speak to the public, can’t they take the time to learn how to pronounce those words before saying them? Is it so hard to do their actual job they get paid megabucks for???
There used to be an ad in the cinemas back in my home town, where they asked trivia questions. They pretended it was a fun exercise, but really it was some stupid advertising ploy. ANYWAY, the answer to one question was ‘Janeane Garofalo.’
Only they pronounced it “JANE ANNE GARA-FO-LO”.
ARGH!
I heard that same dumb thing about six times that year… sigh
About the not listening to each other thing: They DO have little speakers in their ears that feed them questions and data and they have screens to read from and when you’re live it all gets very hectic.
It only makes sense that this kind of thing happnes once in a while, we all screw up under pressure.
The other examples, like not knowing how to say names of countries are a whole other story.
— G. Raven
Interesting subject, but there is some uncertainty over the pronunciation of Tanzania.
In 1978 I was doing a driving job and drove the junior minister for the Tanzanian defense department to an airshow in southern Britain. I was surprised to find that he pronounced his country Tan Zane Ya. The Oxford guide to the English language gives Tan Zan I A as the ‘usual proununciation’, not the only one; it does not give this form to other African states, implying that there is some uncertainty.
Tanzania was formed from the union of Zanzibar with Tanganyika. I wonder whether there was a tendency for people from Zanzibar to stress the Zan in order to promote that part of the country.