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New England Cable News Blew It!

J

Joseph_Gallant

Tonight (October 25th), there was a pair of mass shootings in Lewiston, Maine. At this writing, 22 people had been killed and perhaps 30 other persons were injured or wounded (sadly, both numbers could increase in the hours ahead). As I write this, a "person of interest" has been identified, but he isn't yet being called a suspect by Lewiston police and has yet to be arrested. A "shelter in place" order has been implemented in Lewiston.

It will likely end up being New England's biggest news story of 2023.

One would think that New England Cable News, which serves all of New England, would have been all over this story, perhaps utilizing reporting from WCSH-6 in nearby Portland, as NBC/Universal owns NECN, and WCSH is an NBC affiliate, which probably ran continuous coverage that NECN could have picked up.

But in the hour between 10 and 11 P.M. tonight, NECN was running the usual lifestyle shows they normally air during that hour (although at one point I checked, they did run a crawl).

In other words, NECN blew it.
 
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Joseph_Gallant said:
I don't know for sure. I do know that ABC affiliate WMTW-8 did, as it was streamed on their website and I watched some of it.
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There's still radio coverage out of Portland. on several stations. I'm listening on WHOM. The same coverage is on three other stations via the Audacy app. It's not news coverage, strictly speaking, as these music stations have no news departments. What's going out over the air sounds like disc jockeys watching TV in the studio while checking out internet news sources and Associated Press, then telling listeners what those sources are reporting. At least three stations in Portland are playing music on autopilot.
 
seems like theres some assumptions in Josephs post, as usual...... theres pl;enty of coverage on their website. I'm sure theres a reason they didnt have something on at 10 or 11pm, maybe they had it on later after scrambling together some stuff.

Overnight breaking news coverage can be a little late to start sometimes
 
By the end of the 8 PM hour, WCSH live coverage was being carried nationally on MSNBC.

No excuse for NECN not to have it two hours later, other than the reality that NECN is on its way out of business as a breaking news source. If NBC in New York had access to the WCSH feed, so did NECN in Boston.

Now... WGAN? It had a pre-recorded local newscast at 9 with nothing about the shooting, and then into Mark Levin. I didn't stay tuned to see when/if they finally broke in. That's more of a problem in my mind.
 
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fybush said:
By the end of the 8 PM hour, WCSH live coverage was being carried nationally on MSNBC.

No excuse for NECN not to have it two hours later, other than the reality that NECN is on its way out of business as a breaking news source. If NBC in New York had access to the WCSH feed, so did NECN in Boston.

Now... WGAN? It had a pre-recorded local newscast at 9 with nothing about the shooting, and then into Mark Levin. I didn't stay tuned to see when/if they finally broke in. That's more of a problem in my mind.
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The demise of NECN is so sad to watch. Its always been my favorite of the 24-hour newschannels for the longest of time but its sad to see it decay.
 
Keep in mind that the "demise" of NECN is really part of the change happening as subscriptions to cable TV drop, and streaming rises. It's also part of the transition away from linear real time TV. So what I noticed is that while there may not have been the kind of traditional long-form news coverage of this disaster, there was a lot of text and video content at the website. The long form coverage that I watched on MSNBC utilized some reporting from the local affiliate. But it was largely speculative about motives from outside experts who didn't have any localized information.

What I've also noticed is a huge redeployment of NBC News employees, most likely based in Boston, to Lewiston. They must have at least a dozen on-air people, including reporters, producers, and anchors, on the ground there, as well as technical and administrative staff. So while the subject of this thread is NECN Blew It, what we've seen today has been an all hands on deck approach to covering an ongoing story. The killer is still on the loose. They don't know where he is. That makes coverage of this story potentially dangerous. But I think at this point, they are better informed to report on what's happening than they would have been in the hours immediately following the shooting.
 
blackgold said:
I remember in the 1990s when NECN carried paid programming on weekend afternoons. What a bunch of idiots!
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There was nothing wrong with that back then. They must've dropped it by the early 2000s with live or repeats of "New England Midday". I still have one of NECN's old schedules in text from those days.
 
Did NECN ever have to deal with major New England news happening on a weekend afternoon while it was running its infomercials? What was its response? Or has nothing that couldn't wait until the station returned to news programming ever happened on a weekend afternoon?
 
IMHO....NECN should have had its name changed to "BACN".....for BOSTON AREA CABLE NEWS!!!!
Fully 90+% of their content was news within 20 miles of the Hub!!!!
So....."NECN" didn't cover Lewiston in a timely fashion??? I'm NOT surprised!!!!:(
 
chitchatjf said:
NECN is not the station that it used to be.
Comcast locally moved rthe SD feed from ch 6 to Ch 48 HD remains on 840 and 1127
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Where I live (Norton), NECN is on channels 8 and 809. Not sure why it's prioritized (with respect to channel numbers) in my area but not where you live.
 
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