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Saige Copeland vs. George Zimmerman

Then some silly media critic would have said NBC was 'behind the times' and wrote a terribly long rant which came down to 'NBC cares more about selling dolls than justice'.

Frankly, the movie's been out on DVD for two weeks, using the stupid selling tactic Nick and The Hub uses that never works that a kid will want to watch the movie over and over again because you weren't smart enough to set the DVR. Still, yes, they could've waited or just delayed whatever was rerunning after the movie for a few minutes.

Worse though was ABC, which had a series finale for their bomb 666 Park Avenue broken by the verdict. That was a little more annoying when every other cable network had it.
 
NBC had a choice: air the end of the movie or the verdict. They could not do both. The timing was bad, but that was not NBC's fault.
 
tested said:
NBC had a choice: air the end of the movie or the verdict. They could not do both. The timing was bad, but that was not NBC's fault.
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Very poor judgement on NBC's part. The verdict did not affect anyone in the TV audience and could easily have waited.
 
landtuna said:
tested said:
NBC had a choice: air the end of the movie or the verdict. They could not do both. The timing was bad, but that was not NBC's fault.
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Very poor judgement on NBC's part. The verdict did not affect anyone in the TV audience and could easily have waited.
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Well, not a significant number.

However, if you read the article I linked to, they say young girls were watching family-oriented programming and should not have been subjected to this trial.

One thing I haven't seen in the coverage: this only happened on the East Coast. What happened in the West?
 
vchimpanzee said:
Well, not a significant number.

However, if you read the article I linked to, they say young girls were watching family-oriented programming and should not have been subjected to this trial.
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What constitutes "young girls"? Most kids, girls included, have been exposed to the realities of people shooting people at a very young age. My generation learned it from Westerns. Today's kids learn it from news stories. Unless they were related to Martin or Zimmerman it didn't affect them.

I agree that NBC (or any broadcaster) needs to take into consideration their current audience before breaking into a story which doesn't qualify as "family friendly".
 
The west coast aired the movie from 8-10 pacific, which is 11-1 eastern....long after the verdict.

The thing is, NBC HAD to take the verdict live. Failing to do so would have done severe damage to their reputation by subjecting them to days and days of criticism in the media and the accusation that they care more about a movie than their commitment to public service...etc. It would have been awful.
 
tested said:
The west coast aired the movie from 8-10 pacific, which is 11-1 eastern....long after the verdict.

The thing is, NBC HAD to take the verdict live. Failing to do so would have done severe damage to their reputation by subjecting them to days and days of criticism in the media and the accusation that they care more about a movie than their commitment to public service...etc. It would have been awful.
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Horse hockey.
 
tested said:
The thing is, NBC HAD to take the verdict live. Failing to do so would have done severe damage to their reputation by subjecting them to days and days of criticism in the media and the accusation that they care more about a movie than their commitment to public service...etc. It would have been awful.
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A 30 second special report at 9:59:00 EDT would have done the job.

VO: This is an NBC News Special Report
Anchor: From New York, I'm Harry Smith. You're looking at a live scene from Samford, Florida, where the jury in the George Zimmerman murder trial has just returned a not guilty verdict on one count of second degree murder and one count of manslaughter. More tonight on your late local news and continuing coverage now on MSNBC.
VO: This has been an NBC News Special Report.
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Heidi all over again.

NBC should have run a crawl announcing that the verdict was coming in and told people MSNBC would have it live. The the actual verdict on the crawl.

And, yes, a :30 update would be sufficient. But the newsies love to chatter.
 
FredLeonard said:
Heidi all over again.

NBC should have run a crawl announcing that the verdict was coming in and told people MSNBC would have it live. The the actual verdict on the crawl.

And, yes, a :30 update would be sufficient. But the newsies love to chatter.
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Uh no. Telling viewers to tune away from the affiliate is a sure-fire way to anger the affiliates.
Look.. in an ideal world this verdict wouldn't have been built up to the kind of event where the networks were promising to break in whenever it happened. But that is what happened. NBC had to do what they did.
 
PTBoardOp94 said:
tested said:
The thing is, NBC HAD to take the verdict live. Failing to do so would have done severe damage to their reputation by subjecting them to days and days of criticism in the media and the accusation that they care more about a movie than their commitment to public service...etc.  It would have been awful.
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A 30 second special report at 9:59:00 EDT would have done the job.

VO: This is an NBC News Special Report
Anchor: From New York, I'm Harry Smith.  You're looking at a live scene from Samford, Florida, where the jury in the George Zimmerman murder trial has just returned a not guilty verdict on one count of second degree murder and one count of manslaughter.  More tonight on your late local news and continuing coverage now on MSNBC.
VO: This has been an NBC News Special Report.
Click to expand...
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I agree that 30 seconds between shows would have been adequate. But then the report would likely be running during ad time and the networks would rather offend viewers than to offend advertisers.  ::)

I've seen it happen with other news reports as well where the networks will interrupt a show in progress with some report and rattle on for several minutes that could have been run on a trailer instead. But they'll manage to end in time enough to get in the advertising.  ::)

With all the news networks on cable there is no news event that the networks can't run a trailer for instead of interrupting regular programming, unless it's something truly major like the death of a president or a 9/11 type disaster.
 
tested said:
Uh no. Telling viewers to tune away from the affiliate is a sure-fire way to anger the affiliates.
Look.. in an ideal world this verdict wouldn't have been built up to the kind of event where the networks were promising to break in whenever it happened. But that is what happened. NBC had to do what they did.
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Had to? Was somebody holding a gun to their heads?

Who cares if affiliates get upset? NBC owns most of the important ones, anyway. Besides, I'm sure the affiliates were thrilled handling all the viewer complaints they got.

The basic issue is newsies are arrogant and completely self-absorbed. They interrupt programs like lawyers chase ambulances, with no regard for what they are interrupting and no thought that people might be involved in what they are cutting off. Newsies think people should only care about news. So they cut off the ending of a show to chatter, rather than wait a couple of minutes. Remember a few years back when CBS cut off the climax of a show at 10:56 to report somebody died in Spain - like it couldn't wait for the news at 11. Or CBS cut off the season ending cliff-hanger of Dallas to show the Chinese government shutting down their bureau (they got so many complaints on that, they had to re-run the episode the following week and apologize). Or ABC decided at the last minute to move a serial drama to nine, so they could do an instant news special at ten - like everybody should be tuned in constantly and know when they change the schedule (they had to re-run that episode, too, due to all the complaints).

News divisions abuse their authority and should not have the ability to interrupt network programming. The networks today have multiple satellite channels available. Newsfeeds like this should be on a separate satellite channel. If the network is worried about affiliates, let each affiliate decide to interrupt programming, if they want. But no! Newsies get off on interrupting. Power! Hubris! Makes them feel important! As Mick Jagger sang half a century ago, "Nobody cares what they're saying."
 
A couple of years ago, we had a major storm roll through the area while March madness was on. Our CBS (Newschannel5) affiliate did not break away from coverage of the games, but ran crawls across the bottom of the screen directing viewers to go to Newschannel5+, which at that time was only available on cable, for weather coverage. So I had to switch to other channels for weather coverage, since I do not have cable. Not long after that, I wrote to Newschannel5, asking them to make "the plus," as it is colloquially known, available as a subchannel. Not long afterwards, they did. This was right near the beginning of the digital age.
 
Firepoint: Good point. Stations aren't doing much with their sub-channels and putting breaking news on would be an excellent way for them to be used. Stay with the scheduled program on the main channel and go with wall to wall coverage on a sub-channel (as well as any affiliated cable news channel). Give viewers a choice.

But newsies don't like viewers to have a choice. That's why they run presidential speeches, debates and what not on all the terrestrial channels.
 
The real tragedy is that my local paper didn't have a word about the verdict.

There's such a thing as having too early a deadline. I'm not one of them, but some people expect their papers to be out there first thing in the morning. Personally, I'd rather have a late paper with a full story. Of course, I no longer keep stories like this for posterity like I once did. I've got too much stuff.
 
vchimpanzee said:
The real tragedy is that my local paper didn't have a word about the verdict.

There's such a thing as having too early a deadline. I'm not one of them, but some people expect their papers to be out there first thing in the morning. Personally, I'd rather have a late paper with a full story. Of course, I no longer keep stories like this for posterity like I once did. I've got too much stuff.
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The verdict came down around 10am. Most newspapers go to press around 3am. Some big city newspapers may have one or two earlier editions but the edition that gets delivered and goes to local news boxes and stores would be the one with a 3am deadline. Maybe if you're in a small town, the paper comes in from "the city." Sure it costs money to re-do the paper late in the evening but to pass on a story like this is inexcusable.

Just curious: What paper was this? I hope not the McClatchy papers (Charlotte Observer and Raleigh News and Observer), which have very good reputations.
 
vchimpanzee said:
The real tragedy is that my local paper didn't have a word about the verdict.
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I would have called that "a relief" instead of "a tragedy"
 
FredLeonard said:
Heidi all over again.

NBC should have run a crawl announcing that the verdict was coming in and told people MSNBC would have it live. The the actual verdict on the crawl.

And, yes, a :30 update would be sufficient. But the newsies love to chatter.
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AIUI Heidi didn't interrupt the Raiders game on the west coast. And once again the best coast gets both. Yet another reason to live here. :p :D ;)
 
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