From WJAR
Full story at: WJAR
I’ve never heard of a TV station doing this. OK I know newspapers print OBITS and death notice, but there seems somthing “off” about this. Like it’s not dignified or something. I don’t know why, I don’t like, it’s really not all the that different from a newspaper obit
How do you all feel?
Note: I put this in Cafe Society 'cause it’s about TV but feel free to move it
Are they just trying to fill air time? I remember driving through some nowhere town where the local station was reading police reports. I’m not talking about news about a bank robbery, I’m talking about, “And the vehicle struck, a 1993 Ford Festiva, received $1300 in damage. The driver of the other vehicle, Ms. Lisa Tannenbaum of Nowhere, Arkansas, received a citation and was blah blah”.
It was weird.
-Joe
Well, if the obits are the Irish sports page, I guess this is the Irish version of Bob Lobel… (insert tongue-wagging emoticon here)
Nothing new here, I remember ‘Radio Obituaries’ in the Bay Area in the 1980’s.
Alex Bennet did them with musical backgrounds - a classic example was ‘Ding-Dong! The Witch is Dead’ when Margaret Hamilton passed away.
My semi-educated guess is that it’s a way to squeeze out a little more advertising revenue.
“At this time, only funeral homes will have the ability to submit an obituary listing. . .” I think the funeral home will then receive a bill, which of course it will pass on to the bereaved family.
The station is sticking the obits on to the end of their noon news. A local midday newscast has a lot of air in it, and it’s easy to knock 5 or 10 minutes out of it if something lucrative comes along. One of our local statins has been running 5-minute infomercials at the end of their noon news.
Those little 3 and 4-line funeral notices the newspapers publish? Guess what, they’re paid for, too. Just like the classified ads. Here’s the disclaimer from the Providence Journal.
The newsroom reads those before the pages go to press, to look for good story leads. Often someone in the advertising department will have a contact in the newsroom to call when something promising comes in.