# What's the most "Slow News Day" story you've ever seen? **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [June 14, 2023, 10:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-most-slow-news-day-story-youve-ever-seen/985526 "2023-06-14T22:11:38Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Asuka](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/dec6dc/32.png) [@Asuka](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Asuka)\ **Post date:** [June 14, 2023, 10:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-most-slow-news-day-story-youve-ever-seen/985526/1 "2023-06-14T22:11:38Z")
Basically the front page top headline newspaper story, the live coverage on TV news, or the very first news story you see on a website, happen to be the most baffingly boring news story you’ve ever seen take center stage. I remember when the space shuttle Endeavour was being driven on the back of a truck in SoCal to be taken to the California Science Center. It was a really cool sight and all, but literally EVERY single local news in Los Angeles decided to air live coverage of the Endeavours journey for a solid 4-5 hours as it slowly made its way across the city. There was literally nothing to watch on local TV because every single channel was just doing live coverage of it like it was a national emergency. My other favorite (I used to have this screen shotted) was back in 2014 apparently things were doing so well in America the literal top news story on CNN was an opinion piece about an overweight woman who got naked for some CNN pictoral and was telling her story about she finally appreciated her naked body. They took a Lifestyles piece and decided to make it the very first thing you saw visiting [cnn.com](http://cnn.com), you mean there wasn’t ANYTHING else going on in the world at the time? ---
**Author:** ![Mangetout](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mangetout/32/19_2.png) [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)\ **Post date:** [June 15, 2023, 6:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-most-slow-news-day-story-youve-ever-seen/985526/2 "2023-06-15T06:14:35Z")
Not sure if this qualifies as it probably wasn’t front page, but: Owner of seaside hotel complains to local council about banks of sand accumulating on beachfront terrace. The name of the beach where this happened is: Sandbanks. > **['It's soul destroying': Hotelier fumes as sand keeps blowing onto terrace](https://www.bournemouthecho.co.uk/news/23434726.sandbanks-hotel-owner-blasts-council-sand-clear/)** > > A HOTELIER has blasted the council for not clearing a build up of sand on the beach after it continuously blew onto his hotel’s terrace. ---
**Author:** ![kaylasdad99](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kaylasdad99/32/3398_2.png) [@kaylasdad99](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kaylasdad99)\ **Post date:** [June 15, 2023, 6:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-most-slow-news-day-story-youve-ever-seen/985526/3 "2023-06-15T06:38:59Z")
Some fifty years ago, the South Bay Daily Breeze had an above-the-fold feature (with photo) about a local man trying to start a new personal grooming fashion trend: he grew his ear hairs really long, and used his earwax to form them into cool little curls that he called “stingers” growing out of his ears. ---
**Author:** ![solost](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/solost/32/11776_2.png) [@solost](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/solost)\ **Post date:** [June 15, 2023, 12:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-most-slow-news-day-story-youve-ever-seen/985526/4 "2023-06-15T12:16:12Z")
Not a news story, but you know how you open a Google search page and it’s often celebrating the anniversary of someone or something with a customized Google doodle? Once they were celebrating the 150th anniversary of the mechanical 3 hole puncher, and I thought jeez, Google must really be running out of anniversaries to celebrate. ---
**Author:** ![Skywatcher](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/skywatcher/32/254_2.png) [@Skywatcher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Skywatcher)\ **Post date:** [June 15, 2023, 12:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-most-slow-news-day-story-youve-ever-seen/985526/5 "2023-06-15T12:36:56Z")
[The night that the local Fox affiliate decided to give more coverage to the dangers of broken balloons rather than the Aurora Borealis being visible this far south.](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/its-november-sweeps-time/92287) ---
**Author:** ![Mortimus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e36b37/32.png) [@Mortimus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mortimus)\ **Post date:** [June 15, 2023, 4:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-most-slow-news-day-story-youve-ever-seen/985526/6 "2023-06-15T16:21:42Z")
One day our assignment editor told me I needed to find something to fill about 1:30, so I did this: [Executive Detour](https://youtu.be/_N4vsHJPAtQ) ---
**Author:** ![Chefguy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chefguy/32/138_2.png) [@Chefguy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chefguy)\ **Post date:** [June 15, 2023, 4:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-most-slow-news-day-story-youve-ever-seen/985526/7 "2023-06-15T16:25:16Z")
Every year around Christmas, the local news in Anchorage would lead off with a story about lines at the post office. It’s still a running joke with us: “A train wreck? Yeah, well that’s no post office story!” ---
**Author:** ![Spoons](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/spoons/32/3141_2.png) [@Spoons](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spoons)\ **Post date:** [June 15, 2023, 4:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-most-slow-news-day-story-youve-ever-seen/985526/8 "2023-06-15T16:42:00Z")
A couple of weeks ago, our local TV news led with a report on how the city was building a new playground in a downtown park. I can’t remember what the rest of the newscast consisted of, but I do recall that nothing in it rose to the level of excitement caused by the building of a new playground. Yawn, indeed. ---
**Author:** ![Gyrate](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gyrate/32/3588_2.png) [@Gyrate](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gyrate)\ **Post date:** [June 15, 2023, 4:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-most-slow-news-day-story-youve-ever-seen/985526/9 "2023-06-15T16:45:27Z")
[Football manager eats crisps](https://www.standard.co.uk/sport/football/former-manchester-united-boss-david-moyes-eats-crisps-with-supporters-after-being-sent-to-stands-9978803.html) Was on the front page of a couple of media websites for a short while ---
**Author:** ![Ulfreida](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ulfreida/32/8014_2.png) [@Ulfreida](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ulfreida)\ **Post date:** [June 15, 2023, 4:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-most-slow-news-day-story-youve-ever-seen/985526/10 "2023-06-15T16:57:19Z")
Every day is a slow news days here in the hinterlands, where the top stories are things like _(insert name of tiny town) election has three uncontested seats,_ and _Kiwanis Club honors retired school nurse at monthly gathering at grange hall._ When my barn was hit by lightning and burned to the ground it was front page news. Ditto when a lady ran into a parked police car in front of the library. ---
**Author:** ![bump](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7c8e57/32.png) [@bump](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bump)\ **Post date:** [June 15, 2023, 5:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-most-slow-news-day-story-youve-ever-seen/985526/11 "2023-06-15T17:23:58Z")
Usually around here when there’s a slow news day, you get all sorts of sappy human interest stories. I get the impression that every so often, they turn the reporters loose to do these stories, and then run them when they’re short on actual news. In a metro area of about 7.6 million people, there’s _always_ some kind of story of someone beating the odds from cancer, disabling injuries, drug abuse, and so on. Every now and again, when it’s _really_ slow, you get the stories about super-centenarians and other more mundane and/or stranger stuff. ---
**Author:** ![Kent\_Clark](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kent_clark/32/105_2.png) [@Kent\_Clark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kent_Clark)\ **Post date:** [June 15, 2023, 9:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-most-slow-news-day-story-youve-ever-seen/985526/12 "2023-06-15T21:54:30Z")
In the summer of 1973 I was interning at Midwestern TV station that had an hour-long newscast at 6:00 p.m. One lazy August day we put the newscast together and realized that we barely had enough to fill a 30-minute slot, much less an hour. I learned there are many, many ways to fill time in a 60-minute newscast if you really have to, including: Make the weather and sports segments a minute longer. Hell, make them two minutes longer. Give a 60-second recap at the bottom of the hour, in addition to the regular recap at the end of the show. Add extra stories from the network feed. We did all that and the re-timed newscast was now 42 minutes. Lather, rinse, repeat. Throw in an extra sports segment in the second half of the program. Turn the national/international news segment from one-sentence stories to five-sentence stories. Give the weathercaster even more time to to explain that weather all over the U,S. was basically hot and dry. In the end we filled the entire hour, but I swear the anchor was sweating through his shirt by the end. During that same 1970s timeframe I worked at a radio station, and the news director’s favorite trick on a slow news period was just to announce, “There’s more trouble in Northern Ireland” and play whatever story CBS News came up with. ---
**Author:** ![Mijin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mijin/32/9369_2.png) [@Mijin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mijin)\ **Post date:** [June 15, 2023, 10:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-most-slow-news-day-story-youve-ever-seen/985526/13 "2023-06-15T22:36:46Z")
BBC \*national\* radio news. A pretty long segment about how one of the public pianos in Tokyo was being removed because of some people playing too loudly / badly. They happened to mention at the end that there are still numerous other public pianos in Tokyo, including one in the same train station, just not in such a central location… It was at the end of the news, but still, WTH. ---
**Author:** ![Asuka](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/dec6dc/32.png) [@Asuka](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Asuka)\ **Post date:** [June 15, 2023, 10:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-most-slow-news-day-story-youve-ever-seen/985526/14 "2023-06-15T22:47:37Z")
I just remembered my father had a framed photo of him on the front page of our local newspaper, he was being interviewed in uniform in the photo attached to the top news story. The local top news story? “City clears local park of unwanted vagrants” Literally the police got rid of all the homeless people and prostitutes all hanging out at a local park which was a high traffic area for drug use and sex work. My dad was a mail man with a stop there so they interviewed him and he was directly quoted as saying… “Yeah ever since the police and city came I’ve stopped seeing all the hookers hanging out by the side of the road”. ---
**Author:** ![Dr\_Paprika](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dr_paprika/32/3042_2.png) [@Dr\_Paprika](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dr_Paprika)\ **Post date:** [June 16, 2023, 12:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-most-slow-news-day-story-youve-ever-seen/985526/15 "2023-06-16T00:43:46Z")
I was on vacation in a small town which gets very little rain. The sun shines brightly almost every day. But today was unusual, the sky was dark and covered with clouds. There was a light breeze. Rain started to fall, but very moderate by Canadian standards - typical spring day. I decided I would need to put on a light windbreaker to walk to the gym. Visibility was normal. I put the hood up and it stayed in place without tying it. Walking to the gym, a few people were running around and quite agitated. There was the occasional puddle and some light gusts of wind. When I arrived at the gym, my shoes were slightly damp but could still easily be used. One of my regrets is not buying a local newspaper the next day. The headline was “Chaos in the streets!” and it showed a picture of a tree. Some leaves and a few branches had blown to the ground. It was hard to understand the fuss, but if you are not used to bad weather maybe it doesn’t take much. Comedians on the radio joke about some southern American states shutting down after an inch or two of snow, or people in the cul-de-sac buying out local supplies of bread for a day or two of predicted slightly bad weather. So maybe it’s like that? ---
**Author:** ![Quondam\_Mechanic](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/quondam_mechanic/32/3404_2.png) [@Quondam\_Mechanic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Quondam_Mechanic)\ **Post date:** [June 16, 2023, 12:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-most-slow-news-day-story-youve-ever-seen/985526/16 "2023-06-16T00:50:58Z")
Years ago, I was visiting a friend in a small town in Ohio. The local paper had a story on the poor turnout at a cow-chip bingo charity event. ---
**Author:** ![Smapti](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/smapti/32/17938_2.png) [@Smapti](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Smapti)\ **Post date:** [June 16, 2023, 1:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-most-slow-news-day-story-youve-ever-seen/985526/17 "2023-06-16T01:52:10Z")
Today must be a slow news day, because the above-fold headline on CNN right now is about a college student’s viral TikTok video. > **[Summer intern's commute goes viral: She flies from South Carolina to New...](https://www.cnn.com/2023/06/15/business/tiktok-summer-intern-commute/index.html)** > > Typically, college interns find cheap places to live for the summer. One woman is going to great lengths to do that. ---
**Author:** ![suranyi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e36b37/32.png) [@suranyi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/suranyi)\ **Post date:** [June 16, 2023, 3:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-most-slow-news-day-story-youve-ever-seen/985526/18 "2023-06-16T15:03:20Z")
A front page, top of the fold, story in our local newspaper about canned mouse now available as cat food. ---
**Author:** ![Jackmannii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jackmannii/32/311_2.png) [@Jackmannii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jackmannii)\ **Post date:** [June 16, 2023, 3:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-most-slow-news-day-story-youve-ever-seen/985526/19 "2023-06-16T15:52:39Z")
When I was in radio, there was a news staff tradition on desperately slow days of taking national stories and looking at their nonexistent local manifestations. For example, we’d get an area health department spokesman to explain that no, the Worrisome Communicable Disease hadn’t yet come to Center City, or that local people weren’t dying from huffing spray insecticides. We called those No Parrots Died stories, after the Monty Python News For Parrots routine (“No parrots died today on the M4 motorway”). ---
**Author:** ![Shoeless](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/shoeless/32/7099_2.png) [@Shoeless](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shoeless)\ **Post date:** [June 16, 2023, 5:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-most-slow-news-day-story-youve-ever-seen/985526/20 "2023-06-16T17:06:42Z")
A few years back one of our local TV stations had a story about some old deaf and blind dog who was being trained for something, I don’t remember what, maybe as an emotional support animal? It really was a slow news day kind of story that would normally go unnoticed, except for the typo in the chyron: “Blind, dead dog learns new trick.” [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-most-slow-news-day-story-youve-ever-seen/985526.md?page=2)