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The first big snow in Flagstaff

D

desertv

Guest
Well, the first big snow storm has hit Flagstaff, and the Phoenix media circus has "mushed" up to their usual reporting location.

Why do they prefer the front of the Target or in front of the Circle K on Milton Rd? ::)
 
The location is due to the apex of adrenaline that flows from that very locale! The antapex is just a few yards down the road and is to be avoided at all costs!!! ;D

My heart beat accelerated as I watched the herd of courageous journalists brave the wicked winter weather that has besieged the tiny hamlet known as Flagstaff. Mere mortals would not dare venture out in the midst of the flurry of snow that buried a once proud and vibrant city. Another dark and hopeless winter is upon us!! Thank God for the brave journalists who descended from on high to save us from Jack Frost!!! ::)
 
desertv said:
Why do they prefer the front of the Target or in front of the Circle K on Milton Rd?
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Large parking lot (need room for a big satellite truck, a smaller news vehicle (Nissan Pathfinders, in our case) and to actually set up lights, camera and a place to stand without inconveniencing the people there.

In a heavily wooded area like Flagstaff, the more sky your sat truck can see, the better. Big parking lots give you that.

Decent traffic means getting video and soundbites won't require much travel (the fewer risks you take in a storm about not making it back to the truck in time to edit or go live, the better).

And, since you'll probably be there all day (and all night), having bathrooms and food a few steps away never hurts.
 
Northern Arizona should LOVE the "brave" journalists. It's one of the few times that they actually get any news coverage from Phoenix. Some of the stations used to have a Northern Arizona bureau. :(
 
Does not 3TV still have its news bureau in Downtown Flag? All of their snowcasts seen to be there.
 
And, since you'll probably be there all day (and all night), having bathrooms and food a few steps away never hurts.

The nearby Sizzler and the Denny's are greatly pleased! :D
 
desertv said:
And, since you'll probably be there all day (and all night), having bathrooms and food a few steps away never hurts.

The nearby Sizzler and the Denny's are greatly pleased! :D
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Shame about Village Inn across the street going under. Probably too many years of light snowfall and not enough TV crews.
 
It amazes me that people are constantly bashing the local news but THEY STILL KEEP WATCHING IT. If you don't like something, you don't have to watch it. Get your news and weather from a newspaper or online. It seems that the more someone on here dislikes something, the more they watch of it. I really just don't get it. Let's just end it here. You don't like any of the news anchors (or reporters), nobody has any accurate weather people and all they do is fluff. Oh wait, and they all broadcast from the same parking lot in Flagstaff. Ok, we've got it.
 
I keep hoping some station manager will step up and restore credibility to TV news as it used to exist in the 60's. Ever since "happy news" surfaced at WABC in NYC around 1970 it seems news program have gotten less and less about hard news and more and more about infotainment (and sometimes complete entertainment).

What hard news is presented is usually too short to go into any sort of detail. We get the 'what' and 'where' but not the 'why' or 'how'. With most stations having up to 5 half-hour news programs per day it should be a no-brainer to provide complete stories rather than re-broadcast the same stories from last time or present TMZ-style fluff nonsense.

And I fully realize TV is primarily a visual medium but is it really necessary to have a location truck and crew standing in front of a check-cashing business to report that these are mostly rip-off businesses? And really.....you send a truck and crew to Flagstaff to do a two-minute fluff piece on a snowstorm in the mountains?

The reality is I personally get 95% of my news from the Internet (and print media publishing on the 'net). If the TV is on I sometimes watch the local or national news but usually I've already read about it online. In short, if TV news were to disappear completely tomorrow I wouldn't lose much. It's really pretty useless.

You'll notice I don't criticize the individuals employed to gather, produce or report the news - just the end product. I see no great difference in the talking heads even though some are nicer to look at than others.
 
fenix said:
It amazes me that people are constantly bashing the local news but THEY STILL KEEP WATCHING IT. If you don't like something, you don't have to watch it. Get your news and weather from a newspaper or online. It seems that the more someone on here dislikes something, the more they watch of it. I really just don't get it. Let's just end it here. You don't like any of the news anchors (or reporters), nobody has any accurate weather people and all they do is fluff. Oh wait, and they all broadcast from the same parking lot in Flagstaff. Ok, we've got it.
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Fenix --

Phoenix television news is sadly lacking compared to other similar-sized markets. Perhaps this is due to Phoenix's rapid growth over the past two decades. If you want to see QUALITY news, take a look at Seattle (a similar-sized market). You would be amazed at the difference! Even the Fox station in Seattle is not sensationalist. In fact, Fox Seattle almost looks boring when compared to the obnoxious graphics on Fox 10 Phoenix -- but at least they take a serious approach to news.
 
That's a general difference between North and South in the USA. Rochester NY took a more serious view of news than Phoenix does. It's all about the audience. Strictly opinion, since there's no way it could be verified: if you took the best news crew in Seattle and brought them here with the same news format, it would fail miserably. No one would watch it, unless they spent most of their lives above the 40th parallel. JMHO.
 
That's a interesting observation, Dave. But, respectfully I must disagree. The Dallas-Ft Worth area, when I lived there in the 90's, had some of the most serious and best newscasts in the country. They compared very favorably to NYC-area newscasts. DFW is most definitely in the South. Sadly, Phoenix's newscasts are more on par with, say, San Antonio.
 
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