Re: "American Idol" And Fox 25 News
> Yes, longtime WBZ-4 political reporter John Henning was
> quoted in that article, but WBZ may not have "planted the
> story". Indeed, the idea of doing it may have started with
> Herald reporter Jesse Noyes.
>
> Perhaps Noyes was timing various local TV newscasts for an
> article which would have looked at how much time Boston's
> local TV stations devote to various kinds of news (crime,
> national news, accidents, sports, weather, etc.). When Noyes
> noted that most of Thursday's (August 18th) 5 P.M. news on
> WFXT-25 was devoted to coverage of a singing contest at a
> local furniture store whose winner would get a guaranteed
> audition with the "American Idol" judges on the 31st at
> Foxboro's Gillette Stadium, Noyes realized that this was a
> story.
Keep drinking your Kool Aid, Joseph...
>
> Remember that this was just a singing contest in advance of
> the August 31st Boston "Idol" auditions at Gillete Stadium.
> I wouldn't be totally surprised if, with the exception of
> five minuts or so of news/weather/traffic at the top and
> bottom of each hour, the August 31st edition of "Fox 25
> Morning News" is otherwise All-"Idol"-All-The-Time.
> Likewise, except for a few minutes of news/weather/sports,
> the 5 and 10 P.M. newscasts that day might also be
> All-Randy-Paula-And-Simon-All-The-Time.
>
How's Survivor or Big Brother agonizing tie-ins on 4's 4th place
news any different? If 4 wasn't so stressed about Fox25 sitting
right on their tail in the morning and now in the late afternoon,
their news dept. wouldn't bother commenting on competition in print.
Should I post daily ratings to prove to you how you don't know(most
of the time) what you're talking about?
> What WFXT should do instead of devoting the great majority
> of airtime on it's August 31st newscasts to "Idol" auditions
> at Foxboro, is to pre-empt "Seinfeld" and "The Simpsons" at
> 7 and 7:30 P.M. respectively to produce and broadcast a
> one-hour special on the Boston auditions. The special could
> be extensively promoted on the air in the days prior to
> broadcast. That way, the amount of coverage of "Idol"
> auditions on the station's other newscasts might be a minute
> or so during each half-hour of the morning show, and a
> couple of minutes during both the 5 and 10 P.M. newscasts.
> That's about how much time the story should get based on
> it's news value.
>
They're not pre-empting anything. There'll be vert heavy coverage
on all the regular news blocks on 31st plus all lots of special reports
in the days leading up to it. The Idol auditions at Foxboro are going to attact nearly 20,000 people. It's a lot more people than run the boring Boston Marathon.
4 is going to make their blockbuster shake-up announcement in the next few days. It's going to rock the market...for about 4 minutes. Then it's back to covering missing white females in Aruba.
