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Most Aggravating/Senseless Programming Interruption
- Thread starter Stanislav
- Start date
F
fred flintstone
Guest
You mean like interrupting the climax of a program, five minutes before the local news, to announce that someone near death for days had, in fact, died.Interrupting the season-edning cliff-hanger of Dallas to show some Chinese bureaucrat ordering a CBS producer to turn off the satellite feed from Peking - and dragging it out until Dan Rather could get there, so the guy could tell him personally. Local stations have gotten better. Around here they mostly use crawls and split screens.Most ridiculous of all is Bush wants to make a speech and ALL the networks have to carry it. What are cable news channels for?
Of course, not everybody has cable or satellite, hard as is may seem to believe. But anyway, in the case of a Presidential speech, is it necessary to actually see him speaking -- wouldn't listening to it on the radio be just as enlightening? Why does it need to be on TV at all? I already know what he looks like. It's not like he's going to break into a little softshoe dance at the end of the speech.... :fred flintstone said:
On the local level, I'm sure it's the same everywhere in terms of interruptions, but it's really starting to get ridiculous. I can understand interrupting for tornados (a major concern in my neck of the woods) and the like.But in just the last couple of years, programming is now being interrupted for thunderstorm warnings and my personal favorite: SNOW. Last winter, I was watching a program one night only to see it get interrupted (during a crucuial part, of course) so the local weatherman could tell us we MIGHT get 4-6" of snow that night. It hadn't even started to snow yet. And everyone had been talking about it and stocking up on groceries all day! I say if it's not life threatening, then leave us alone.Hopefully, when the transfer to digital is complete, this will no longer be an issue since all stations will have their own weather sub-channel. The main channel can still run crawls but tell viewers to change the channel for live non-stop coverage
Interesting point. The president speaking on TV, in the mind of the White House circle, gives the often meaningless executive prattle a sense of importance and urgency. It goes to what Marshall McLuhan once said, "The medium is the message." In most cases, radio would suffice, but Capitol Hill seems to take great pleasure in hijacking national television time so we can see as well as hear something we may well could have done without in the first place.
In San Antonio,we get interruptions for quite a few things,most notably weather related. When we get floods like the one we had in 1998,all programming seems to come a halt then,and then every channel now carries all flood coverage,tornado warnings,hurricanes,etc.
One that stands out in my mind happened in the middle of a hurricane:It was either 1977 or 1978. Hurricane Belle (?) was beginning to hit the East Coast and most of the Connecticut television stations were covering it. Due to our location the only station we could clearly receive was Channel 8, WTNH. The did moderate coverage during the 11PM newscast ONLY TO SWITCH TO THE NETWORK MOVIE at 11:30pm! Talk about being stupid! I guess this was before "Public Service" meant something. It was about 20 minutes later we lost power.
The most annoying interruption without a doubt came yesterday here in Denver for the march for immigration. All three network stations, UPN doesn't count, interrupted programming for the march, which I figured they would, so I don't have an issue with that. What I will take issue with is the way the local FOX affiliate covered it. Channels 4, 7, and 9 used a split screen and text at the bottom of the screen to show what was happening, while showing regular network programming on the other half of the screen. A+. Meanwhile Channel 31 Fox, had to completely interrupt programming, go live in studio and do a complete Play-by-play. Yes I know it's an important issue, and I know I live in a state with a large hispanic population, but I think blowing away your whole block of morning programming to show a bunch of people walking down the street is WAY Over the top. However, the part that really upsets me is the fact that there was an anti immigration rally in town yesterday as well, and none of the TV stations stopped programming for that. Television used to have to serve the public interest and they are supposed to give equal treatment to both sides of a story, and that was not done in this case. For that I give all four stations an F. That's why I find it very hard to watch news on TV anymore.
Two big reasons why they didn't interrupt the day before: A) It wasn't the actual "day without immigrants", soit didn't have the news impact. But more importantly...B) It is rare that a local station can do any life local "breaking/cut-in" programming on a weekend during the day. Unless they normally do weekend morning newscasts, your average local station doesn't have a studio crew staffed until AT LEAST 245PM. Even then, it would take a while to get everything warmed up and ready to go on air. Anything earlier on a weekend would require some planning, and overtime. Weekdays, no problem. The studio crews and full weekday compliment of news field crews are already there.
I remember reading a couple years ago that WGNO-New Orleans squeezed the Oscar telecast down to do a split screen to announce a severe thunderstorm......in Memphis, TN.
In the summer of 2003, WFLD in Chicago butted into a Simpsons rerun at 6 pm to cover a press conference announcing that Cubs baseball player Sammy Sosa was being suspended for corking a bat.The Cubs are a big deal in Chicago, yes, but no other station interrupted programming to do this, not even WGN, which is owned by the same company as the Cubs!
K
KML0224
Guest
How was it for Hurricane Gloria in September of 1985? I'm a Connecticut native but I was living in southern Maine when that strom hit. Our power went out that night (the night of the much-anticipated "Miami Vice" second season NBC premiere). It was "only" a tropical storm for us.Bill DeFelice said:
I remember 2 instances from June of 1994. One was NBC cutting into an NBA Western Conference Finals game between the Houston Rockets and Utah Jazz to show O. J. Simpson and the slow white Bronco chase. The other was also O.J. related, when ABC had shown an entire, 18 hole 3-way playoff in the U.S. Open. The playoff had ended in a tie with Ernie Els and Loren Roberts going to sudden death. The 2 golfers were just about to start the first hole of sudden death, when ABC broke in to show O.J. being arraigned at the police station.
Any of the Phoenix stations breaking in with 'STORM TEAM!' alerts anytime there's a cloud in the sky during the summertime. We got along quite well without them until 2-3 years ago.Stanislav said:
A couple years ago I was watching an episode of Recess (Disney Cartoon) on WGGB Channel 40 out of Springfield, Massachusetts when with about 5 or 8 minutes left, they switch over to live coverage of the grand reopening of the Basketball Hall of Fame or something equally stupid. Keep in mind Channel 40 doesn't have a Saturday Morning newscast. Channel 40 is owned by Sinclair, but is one of only a few stations not to have it's news department hijacked by NewsCentral or from what I heard it's called SnoozeCentral.
Channel 18 in Hartford, Connecticut came back from the dead on February 7, 1997. They were being run by a bankruptcy lawyer. For several months they showed the Worship Network 24/7. Then they switched to The Shop@Home Network. One time during severe thunderstorms this was on the screen on Channel 18:You're Watching The National Weather ServiceThere is a Severe Thunderstorm Warning for Hartford County in Effect Until 6:18PM.The audio was from the Shop@Home Network.
I
imhomerjay
Guest
Thanks for picking my favorite pointless disruption--the snow coverage. I understand expanded coverage during the news time slots, and maybe a crawl or one-minute updates on the top/bottom of the hour, but the endless yakking blowing out regular programming is overkill to the nth degree. Another favorite of mine was a split-screen scenario, but still, the station shrunk the network video to the size of a postage stamp, rendering it useless, all to show a live helicopter shot of a horse being pulled out of a lake. Yes, a bleeping horse rescue.Of course the reason I was so upset was the network feed was of Faith Hill performing in a pair of killer jeans, but no matter what it would have been, it was better than watching a darned horse.adam95 said:
F
FreddyE1977
Guest
I was living in Columbus, Ohio in 1992, during the big seige at the Lucasville State Prison. Apparently it was the onlyprison in the United States that did not have premium cable, because allegedly the only stations that were viewable there were the local Ironton, OH PBS outlet, and WBNS-10, the CBS affiliate in Columbus. The prisoners conducting the seige demanded that Bob Orr, the anchorman from Channel 10, be their point man for negotiation, as he was someone they all recognized and trusted from TV. As part of the agreement to end the standoff, the prisoners demanded that each one of them be allowed to walk out of the prison individually and surrender, and that each and every surrender would be broadcast live in Channel 10, to prevent any guard from getting physical with them. As there were several hundred prisoners, this process took several hours, and the entire evening's prime-time linup in Columbus ran with a split screen....regular network programming on one side, and prisoners walking out one after the other with their hands up on the other side. Really disgustingly annoying! Afterwards, Bob Orr parlayed ihis hostage negotiating experience into a sweet gig with the CBS Evening News however.
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