Alicia Lane, the doe-eyed, genuinely beautiful newsbabe they brought in from who knows where (New York? Miami?) to anchor the 6:00 and 11:00 shows (with a coanchor they stole from the NBC afficilate when the elder stateman type they stole from the ABC affiliate [the 700-pound gorilla of the local news] didn’t work out) – Alicia Lane, I say, announced last night that despite her intensely private feelings about her divorce (“yeah, I remember it had just happened when you came to Philly, you were devastated” chimes in the coanchor), is going to discuss the pain of divorce – nay, the agony of divorce – with Dr. Phil (whose show, completely coincidentally, is aired every day at 5:00 here on the CBS affiate, after the 4:00 news with the ex-ABC guy but before the 6:00 news with Alicia and Larry – who, BTW, is married to the anchor on the FOX affiliate, with whom he just had a child – but I digress) every day this week. Again, it’s a complete coincidence that Dr. Phil is doing divorce right now on his show – apparently he’s going to declare some troubled marriages worth saving, others not, as he works with a series of couples. But anyway, Alicia and Dr. Phil are going to sit down and she’s going to spill her guts about her three-year marriage to some pretty boy, the breakup of which was so devastating to her when she left to take a job as anchor on the CBS affiliate in the fifth-largest TV market in the county.
I can’t remember whether this is the channel that last week was running “Do You Know Where Your Panties Have Been?: A Hidden Camera Investigation” – apparently buying unbagged underwear is a really bad idea.
So what’s your local news doing in honor of the festive spring sweeps period?
What most people don’t realize and will of course be revealed in the last 45 seconds of a 4-part story to drag our attention and patience out to it’s most thin and taut limit akin to emotional taffy pulls at the county fair is this:
She’s the sister of Lois Lane, cousin of Lana Lang. She’s also got a thing for chunky boys in red underpants. She’s never been comfortable with this craving, and after 3 years of begging her now-ex-husband to wear his red Jockeys ( which she hand-dyed because it’s a part of her SuperHero Compulsion ) on the outside of his Today’s Man seersucker double-breasted suits, she divorced him in a fit of pique.
She’s the woman you see standing across the street from Walt’s King of Crabs at 3rd & Catherine, clutching a huge pair of bright red Jockeys and muttering about how there is not only a decent man in Philadelphia but it’s also getting harder and harder to find a nice place of steamed mussels these days.
She makes for riveting television. Pop-riveting, I’d say.
On Sunday, the usually pretty sober Fox (yeah, Fox!) affiliate in the San Francisco Bay Area ran a shocking report on loud noises that could be hazardous to your health! Yes, the local BART trains, freeways, lawnmowers, leaf blowers, jackhammers at construction sites are all really loud!
The local CBS affililate sent a reporter to Rwanda for a 10 year after report. I didn’t watch, but presumably that’s some rare quality sweeps programming…
Yeah, I’m waiting to see the news commercials for overblown special reports about completely obvious things. The report fiddlesticks mentioned is the only one I’ve noticed so far.
The ABC affiliate here is really good at this. We’ve always called it “Channel 7 Death News”. Lots of reports on the dangers of household chemicals, radon, etc. used to frighten people and draw ratings.
BTW – did you know that Joey Lawrence and his mop-haired brethren are from Philly? I did – and I wish I didn’t, just as I wish I didn’t know all that soap-opera crap in my admittedly rantular OP – and that I didn’t know that not one but two NBC10 guys have had to leave town after sex scandals. (Jerry Pennacoli, rumored to have had one of those hamster encounters you hear about from time to time, can now be seen on Extra or some show of that ilk, and I can never look at him without thinking of teeny little rodents struggling to escape.
I would dearly love to have all the brain cells devoted to knowing this crap back, so I could use them for something more edifying.
It seems like last night at 11pm, local (Los Angeles) news stations were competing with each other to see who could show more footage of wildfires consuming homes, crashing news helicopters, and sexy porn stars talking about how HIV testing will ruin their industry (complete with duelling, strategically pixellated, 1-second jump cuts from real porno movies).
There’s something special about LA news. It’s just so incredibly over-the-top all of the time. It’s amazing. Whenever I go down that way and end up watching a broadcast I’m just in awe. I can only imagine what sweeps are like.
New York seems to run a close second from what I’ve seen.
Not really in the same league, but I blinked when I heard this news teaser the other day (paraphrased to the best of my memory): “This empty toilet paper tube could prevent your baby from suffocating! Tune in at 11 to find out how.”
A couple of years ago, a local station did a big “exposé” about the evils of .50 Sniper Rifles.
I think the station was worried about street gangs getting them, or something. You know, with all the problems we’ve had with trained gang snipers and their $6000+ weapons, assassinating people from two miles away?
