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WHEC'S EPIC BLUNDER-COVERAGE YOU CAN'T COUNT ON!

P

prompter

It's taken me three full days to recover from the heinous error I saw while getting ready to watch WHEC's 7:00PM newscast
the day after Election Day. I swear I saw this: the first item out of the gate in the show open was Rich Funke's narrative talking about
President-Elect Barack Obama's historic win on Tuesday night----the video WHEC showed while Funke was reading this was that of
a local African American on the ground being cuffed by Rochester police. It has to be the biggest screwup this tv market has seen in years.
No mention of it here---maybe I was hallucinating, but I swear I witnessed this. Having said that, Channel 10's Election Night coverage was disjointed and quite frankly, hard to watch. Can anyone verify this awful blooper from Wednesday night or am I going nuts? I know what I saw
and it sickened me and I have to believe they took a few phone calls on that one.
 
Hadn't heard about that one! The edit tape was probably cued up to the wrong countdown, and the old video left over on it.

I've noticed WHEC going down the same old path they did years ago -- more tabloidish, using more stingers, horrible writing...Their second story Saturday night at 6 was a "this just in to our newsroom" story, though it had happened while there was still plenty of daylight. You know they added that line because consultants tell them to give every story an edge, like it's breaking news. They're getting deeper into that "we just got off the phone with...." style of presentation. Really? You waited until 5 minutes before the show to make the call?!
Their coverage of an angry dude with a gun somewhere in Greece Friday night (who never fired any bullets) was so flimsy, even my 11 year old daughter saw through it. She said "nothing happened! Why is it a story?!"
 
Local television news, if you want to call it that, is horrible in Rochester. I'm sick of this "Breaking News" crap all of them are pulling. If there is a car accident with no injuries, that is "Breaking News." If a vacant house catches fire, that's "Breaking News."
It more like "breaking wind" to me.
 
Trying to make this a racial issue is just stupid. Sounds like a simple mistake--wrong tapes are rolled all the time on all the stations. Had the video shown a white guy in handcuffs while Funke talked about a white guy like Bob Duffy being re-elected, would you have cared enough to post?

Rolling the wrong tape is hardly a "heinous error".
 
Sounds like a simple mistake to me. After all we are all human.

Having said that I emailed Channel 10 to inform them of a spelling mistake in a news headline on their website. They spelled Chaos incorrectly. No biggie!

But the reply from 10 was to bounce my email back to me. :eek:
 
Rochwatcher said:
Trying to make this a racial issue is just stupid. Sounds like a simple mistake--wrong tapes are rolled all the time on all the stations. Had the video shown a white guy in handcuffs while Funke talked about a white guy like Bob Duffy being re-elected, would you have cared enough to post?

Rolling the wrong tape is hardly a "heinous error".
Click to expand...

If they'd rolled a video with a white guy in handcuffs while Rich Funke talked about John McCain, I'm guessing that prompter would have recovered in only TWO days...
 
Rochwatcher said:
Sounds like a simple mistake--wrong tapes are rolled all the time on all the stations.
Click to expand...

It may happen all the time; this just happens to be one of those instances where it looks particularly embarrassing. You have to admit, depending on which wrong video airs, sometimes the wrong video at the wrong time can look really bad (or sometimes hilarious - like a pie eating contest while talking about a new kind of diet).

What's amazing is that wrong video still happens -- even when there should be at least a few people in the control room who could notice it on the deck monitor. Or better yet, when stations use servers instead of tape, it's a lot harder to be cued up to the "wrong countdown" when the only video in the server is the video that's supposed to be airing.
 
Didn't see their 7pm that night (does anyone watch their 7pm?), but they did have video of a suspect on the ground getting cuffed from a shooting that day.

When it comes to the dreaded "breaking news" stuff, I'm very conservative with it. I used it last night on the Geneseo student story because we had confirmed it within that half hour, so I felt it was worth using. Otherwise, I don't like it. If I have to use it, I only use that one time when it's actually breaking. Otherwise, I go with "developing" or simply don't bother.

The level to which 10 has taken their breaking news animation (and now whole graphics package!) is absolutely sickening. And insulting to anyone with half a brain. They used a breaking super on a story at 11pm Sunday. The same story was on their 6pm show and there was no breaking graphic on the earlier show. Ridiculous. They should be ashamed of themselves.

It'll be interesting to see how the November sweeps go. 8 actually had a quality block today, devoting 10 whole freakin' minutes to the Midtown story. It actually became overkill, but I had to admire their moxy (Kevin at the weather board with the city's animations, team coverage, web comments, live talkback with the mayor). It actually started to go around from impressive back to being a little silly.

I mean c'mon, they're just proposals that probably won't look anything like they do now. That is, even if they're built. The way Paetec's stock is dropping, I can see their HQ being a portable tent before too long.
 
Like I noted in my initial post, I was watching at the time and thought maybe I was hallucinating. If there is some
sort of visual of this on the web somewhere, can someone link it up here? If 8 had done something like this--say a
year ago or so, folks would be hammering them, and rightly so. 10 seems to get a free pass on this kind of thing.
What was the blowback on East Avenue? If this happened in other newsrooms, Commander Walsh would have
scolded one of his Jerry's Kids and sent them to the gulag for a month. Mr. Dawe would have summoned a post-mortem
holding said individual highly accountable. What did 10 do? Maybe I'm a curmudgeon and just overreacting. Okay
I must return to my game of backgammon.
 
prompter said:
If this happened in other newsrooms, Commander Walsh would have
scolded one of his Jerry's Kids and sent them to the gulag for a month.
Click to expand...

gee whiz prompter, you think that anyone above or below the line on Humboldt listens to what Commandant Walsh says, or that they care about anything more than their stock price? Which, last I checked, was worth about a double cheeseburger.
 
prompter said:
Like I noted in my initial post, I was watching at the time and thought maybe I was hallucinating. If there is some
sort of visual of this on the web somewhere, can someone link it up here?
Click to expand...

Prompter wasn't hallucinating. I've seen it now too and now everyone can take it home just in time for the holidays.

It's on FaceBook here, but you'll need to be a member to see it. It's almost worth registering just to be able to see it. That's what I did.

Jennifer Johnson's reaction is hilarious. Get ready to laugh. ;D
 
Spit Take

Sxottlan is dead on. THAT'S comedy gold!!! Jennifer Johnson should submit that for a NY State Emmy in the "Comedy Sidekick of the Year" category.
 
Sxottlan said:
Prompter wasn't hallucinating. I've seen it now too and now everyone can take it home just in time for the holidays.

It's on FaceBook here, but you'll need to be a member to see it. It's almost worth registering just to be able to see it. That's what I did.

Jennifer Johnson's reaction is hilarious. Get ready to laugh. ;D
Click to expand...

Being already a Facebook user...

:eek: :eek: :eek:

I wonder if the person who did that is still employed there...lol... ::)
 
OMG :eek:

Please tell me that video ran just once and wasn't repeated with the same intro on other newscasts?

I'm surprised that the Rev. Franklin Florence and the local chapter of the NAACP hasn't held a news conference to complain about this.
 
What was the fallout over at 10 once this aired? Someone has to have the skinny. I know the other stations in town
would have held the culprits highly accountable. If one of Jerry's kids did this, a public flogging would have been held on
Humboldt Street.
On another front---did anyone catch the Newsblues blurb today about Newports TV holdings, how employees under
personal services contracts are being asked to forgo their raises which have been written into their contracts? Hpw bad
is it over at WHAM-TV. Every station in the tv business gets their turn in the barrel. 8 certainly had theirs---10 has been
spared (to this point) and 13 seems to be on deck. Anyone have any information?
 
prompter said:
If one of Jerry's kids did this, a public flogging would have been held on
Humboldt Street.
Click to expand...
What do you mean by that? Wrong video gets rolled on 8 plenty of times and no one is held accountable. Really, it's just a common error that had some unfortunate (and HILARIOUS) timing.
 
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