More news on local businesses.
We’ve got a lot of world headquaters here (BestBuy, General Mills, 3M, Target, United Health Group, Medtronic, Caribou Coffee, etc.) and the only time you see them on the news is if there are layoffs or someone is suing them.
It’s be nice to get regular updates about the companies in your own backyard regarding new products, expansion plans, future hiring needs, current marketing campaigns, tour of facilities, etc.
You can get some of this out of the business section of newspapers but local news never touches it.
For example, Starbucks is pulling out of multiple twin cities locations even in brand new buildings they just put up over the past year due to drops in sales. How are our two local coffee companies (Caribou and Dunn Bros.) doing and are they scouting any of the now empty Starbucks locations to move into?
It seems like all the news outlets cover the same stories from the same perspective; like once a story gets started everyone gets locked into the conventional wisdom. I’ve been hearing over and over how the fall in house prices is a tragedy. I’ve been saving to buy a house. Prices are coming down? Hooray. But it was declared Bad News from the start, and it is always talked about in those terms.
If you’re going to tell me about a pie-eating contest, let me know in advance. Either I don’t care, or I do and I’d want to be there in person. But there’s nothing I really need to know about a pie-eating contest that’s already over.
I love local news. One thing that would make me love it even more is if it included more things that are going to happen in the future.
Some of that is community interest. A lot of times when I see news coverage about community things that have already happened, I wonder why the news didn’t include information about it when it was coming up, so that maybe I could have, you know … gotten involved, or attended.
Politics is sometimes like that as well. Did my Councilperson vote a certain way on a controversial proposal? Gosh, if I had known that vote was coming up, I would have written to my Councilperson. I know there are other ways to keep track of what votes are coming up… but I would like more information about it and how it might impact my own local area. At all levels – what are my elected reps doing at the local, state and national levels.
Oh - another one.
Do not tie a news-story into this week’s network movie of the week.
If the movie of the week is about an asteroid hitting the earth, they don’t need a 5 minute segment on the news with an interview with the local planetarium guy explaining what an asteroid is, what destruction it would cause if it hit our town and ending in a tiny, “but the odds against it are immense” at the end.
You are not there to advertise for the movie of the week.
The crapfest that passes for our local TV news these days is one of my pet peeves. I don’t even bother with it now, because it pisses me off when it’s 6:07 and we’re done with the hard news. If I were the News Genie, here’s what I’d do:
[ul]
[li]Hire only 1 anchor per newscast. More than 1 just encourages “banter” and other annoying behavior. If it’s a gender revolt you’re worried about, hire one of each and let them job share.[/li][li]Limit sports and weather to a total of 7 minutes between them unless the weather IS the news or a home team is headed for a championship.[/li][li]Focus on local/regional stories and leave the national stuff alone. Explained quite effectively above.[/li][li]Abolish any mention of recipes, studies, parenting, hairstyles, or pets. Give an intern a dead trout with which to punish transgressors.[/li][li]Refuse all requests to pimp the network’s prime time lineup during the news. Do you (GenU) even need to ask why?[/li][li]Eliminate location shoots (during the state fair, etc.). It’s just bloody irritating, that’s why.[/li][/ul]
That’s just for starters, but it’s late and I need to go to sleep.
No teasers. If you want to let me know about an upcoming story, give me a headline, like for a newspaper article.
This is a coy attempt to get me to keep watching just to find out what the Hell they’re talking about.
Instead, give me:
That’s better. Now I can decide whether that sounds interesting enough for me to wait around for.
Stupid Teasers were parodied on a “Saturday Night Live” sketch. My favorite was:
In the late '60s early '70s Channel 5 in New York had one of the first one hour 10 pm news broadcasts. They had Gabe Pressman, a well respected reporter, doing NY government news and Victor Riesel, a labor reporter blinded by labor goons doing labor news. That show had awesome news, and a minimum of “ooh, look at the fire” and “something you need to know - 2 people out of a million might be at risk” stories.
This was before consultants got into the act with happy talk news.
I don’t expect much of Podunk-TV, but I’ve usually lived near big cities, where there is actually news to report.
Too true. A few weeks ago I was in Atlanta, and I toured the CNN center. (Advice: don’t bother.) It was a Sunday, and basically Headline news was on a repeating tape loop, and CNN proper was mostly on tape, with one anchor hanging around in case something actually happened.
In fact, eliminate live location shoots entirely unless there is some good reason for it. We get a guy standing in front of a building saying
“Bob, 5 hours ago the deputy assistant mayor gave a news conference here” and then they go to a tape of the news conference. If there is some reason for the anchor to talk to the reporter, do it in the studio. Or use a green screen, like the Daily Show - which is a great satire on this practice.
Excellent list, by the way.
As others have said, eliminate completely any “news” that relates to your station’s/network’s programming line up. I realize that this is probably foisted on the local affiliates by the network, but you guys really need to tell the network that this is NOT NEWS. Ditto shows (like American Idol and Survivor) that somehow, some way are reported on by stations that aren’t even affiliated with those shows’ networks.
Also as others have mentioned, please cover the stories in more depth. Start with who, what, where, when, and most important, WHY. I know you guys just HAVE to be first on scene with a reporter, but please spend some time researching the story before you air it, and at least attempt to answer the obvious questions, even if you have to say “There was no immediate indication by the Department of Homeland Security as to why San Francisco International Airport has been closed”. Really, when you just report two sentences and leave us hanging, we just turn off the TV and crank up the local newspaper’s web site and get the actual story.
And by the way, thank you OP for asking.
[Lewis Black] Back to you, Bob! [/LB]
Ya know, after reading this thread I have come to appreciate our local CTV news in Ottawa a lot more.
Some of the things they do here:
- High school athlete of the week. (Feel good story about little Bobby McKenzie who throws javelins and maintains a 99% average while de-licing old folks on the side.)
- Birthdays and anniversaries for elderly folks. (Celebrating a 90th birthday today is Myrna Schtumph of Schtumphville…)
- One-on-ones with local city councillors and members of parliament regarding local issues such as transit, garbage, sewers, taxes, etc.
- Local sports stuff that would never make it to national news. (Like anything to do with the Senators.
) - Weather. I like the local weather forecast. (It could probably be about 30 seconds instead of 4 minutes though.)
- Local business and stock reports.
Cripes. I like our news more than I thought…
Do your own reporting. I don’t want to hear “The National Enquirer published a story today that John Edwards may have fathered an illegitimate child,” or “according to a report published today on the Drudge Report…” Is that a way of distancing yourself from the underlying story in case it isn’t true? (And if it turns out not to be, will you devote as much time to that?) That someone else is reporting a story is not news.
When John Kennedy Jr.'s plane went down a few years ago, the local stations (and some national ones, I’m sure) were all over it. They had hours of Special Report coverage when nothing was actually happening. At one point, the reporter on the scene at the Kennedy Compound (in the background) had so run out of things to say that she mentioned how many other news outlets were also covering the story, and the cameraman turned to show the line of other reporters and cameramen all in a row. (And probably with equally nothing to say.) The feeding frenzy of reporters is not news. Shake off the herd mentality. Tell me relevant facts or just put on some cartoons.
I quietly hoped that the other cameraman would turn to look at mine, and the whole scene would disappear into a singularity of recursive navel-gazing.
Stations actually do this?!?! Yeesh.
Hoo-hah. It is amazing how interesting bonkus on the conkus is to local network stations the week the network movie is about the tragedy of bonkus on the conkus. I believe that the network sends out the story, so the anchors only need to introduce it and write banter.
If you remember a few years ago there was the scandal about the administration sending out “stories” reported by “reporters” on topics some cabinet departments wanted to push. They got run by lots of lazy, cheap, stations.
Remember, news is no longer a public service. It is a profit center, or else.
Last year on our national/state news, they had a story about a cat being stuck up a tree. And then the next day they had a followup as the cat was rescued from the tree.
For fuck’s sake.
News should be focus on local incidents that affect the wider community. Not those that affect nobody or only a few. It should be just facts, reported sensibly, with no sensationalism or commentary. And stop sending reporters to be live on location when there’s no reason to. A report on a live incident needs someone there, but a report on something that happend 8 hours previously does not need somebody flown in to stand in front of an anonymous building.
Sport should be saved for a separate sport show, and preferably a separate channel altogether.
Stop the wacky weathermen, and instead explain the weather in sensible terms. And stop telling us if it’s the hottest April since 1975, or the coldest October since 1895, because that is a misleading “statistic” that nobody needs to hear.
I would like it if the different stations with news on at the same time to vary their order. If I don’t want to watch sports on NBC, I still don’t want to watch it on CBS or ABC.
I’d like it if the local news covered local news, instead of repeating what was/will be on the national news.
Our local NBC affiliate’s noon news is 90% Today Show rehashes.
I would like it if news channels would not keep repeating pictures for no reason.
Example. They are having an interview with a panel about the presidential campaign. They will show the panel then show a picture of the candidates, go back to the panel and show the candidates again, as if we forgot what Mccain and Obama look like in the thirty seconds since we last saw their picture. They also put a large title bar on the bottom of the screen “Campaign 2008” so we know when we see Mccain and Obama we know why we’re talking about them.
I get Washington, D.C. channels and, as such i get FOX 5 from DC. On channel 5 in the winter, they seem to show three stories and three stories only.
[ul]
[li]holy crap we’re about to get hit by a huge blizzard[/li][li]how the Redskins are doing[/li][li]American Idol[/li][/ul]
I have to agree with the people who dislike sports/entertainment in their news broadcast. I just don’t see the point of including that stuff in local news anymore. Ever since the advent of ESPN Ocho, people who want to watch the game are going to, you know, watch the game. No matter what kind of game it is. No matter when it’s on. My dad watches his old soccer team playing over the internet, and the game takes place six time zones and an ocean away!
But to include it in the regular broadcast? Unnecessary. Sports should be treated like medical stories-- when something big is going on with the local team, cover it then. Otherwise it’s wallpaper.
I do love the idea of a “what’s coming up” part of the broadcast, although I think that might work better on the web. But hey, it’s all coming together anyway
I, personally, hate teasers. They’re useless, and people forget 'em after 10 seconds anyway. And ever since the same group of consultants went to every station on the continent, it makes every station look and sound the same…
As for live hits – it’s the old adage, “Justify your budget.” if you’ve got the tools and you’re not using them, upper management will take them away 