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More dumbing down the news

ihEARDtHAT

ihEARDtHAT

We have all heard the marketing phrases that local TV news believes brings in the viewers. A weather report from the "Chief Meteorologist" must be a better forecast that one from just a regular meteorologist. To get the viewers to pay attention you have to use the phrases "Breaking News" or "Live" to make it better.

Now I see some of out local stations having a reporter file a story from the "news room" adding that it is a "Live" report and always adding the "LIVE" graphic to the screen. Really? Will the next gimic be a "live" report from the weather center, traffic center or sports center?
 
This morning an unnamed TV station in Phoenix spent the majority of its non-news time reporting about the rain. We had live reports from a real live reporter standing in a puddle of water. We had live and recorded shots of real live raindrops. We had shots of.....omigosh, are those CLOUDS!!! We had the tower cam focusing in on the humidity in the air and explaining how it isn't really dust. And we had the remote guy provide a quick and dirty explanation of what to do if the remote truck is hit by lightning ("bunny hop away quickly!")

The highlight was one of the hosts quipping "I wonder if they do this when the sun comes out in Seattle".
 
Being from Seattle, I can attest to the fact that they start doing insipid weather-related stories when it gets very warm (above the low-90's for them) or very snowy in the winter (generally 1 to 3 times per year). While not exactly "the sun coming out", it's roughly similar to Phoenix getting rain...

That said, this on-going coverage of "rain" is getting a bit ridiculous...but I guess when you have 5.5 hours of morning news time to fill, it's relatively easy to fill the time with "rain" coverage.

@iht, I'm also noticing a trend of "look-live" reporting. In other words, a reporter acts like they're reporting live from somewhere, when in fact it's recorded.
 
My favorite is when local TV anchors interview a "live" guest who is sitting in the station's newsroom. Just once, I want to hear them say, "John Doe joins us lives from our newsroom. But we can't let him on the set because we believe he has scurvy."
 
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