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Wildfire coverage..whats your take?
- Thread starter Slambang
- Start date
Oddly enough I was reading about the coverage on the RADIO side of things in the L.A. area on the thread linked below; the discussion turned from just the radio coverage to informative posts regarding the coverage offered on the L.A. T.V. stations. (In case the link doesn't work, just go to www.radio-info.com and go to "BOARDS" & select "RADIO-INFO BOARDS - subset "LOS ANGELES" - select "KFI WAITS UNTIL 1130AM TO GO ALL-FIRE COVERAGE".)
http://www.radio-info.com/smf/index.php/topic,113880.0.html
http://www.radio-info.com/smf/index.php/topic,113880.0.html
The coverage is the same as it always is, sensationalized tripe that commands me to turn it off after 3 minutes. Don't get me wrong, I'm not heartless. I feel genuinely bad for those that have lost their homes but with every channel over the weekend showing the same thing there's a point where it's no longer news and simply a gratuitous image dump of expensive houses burning.Slambang said:
Robnoxious said:
The problem is that most of the desk anchors and field reporters today are just not that good at running commentary with live events. After a couple of minutes they run out of gas and begin saying the most inane stuff. The KTLA news talent are probably the worst offenders (although Pat Harvey over at KCAL can get unintentionally silly at times as she grapples for words).
What I think would serve everyone well, especially the beleaguered viewer, is to break away from the live coverage by reporting another story or two in the line up and then get back to the live event.
This allows the anchors a break as they read from prompters, something they do best, while new information on the disaster can be gathered and then reported.
They can still do a picture-in-picture of the event along with a crawl containing any pertinent information (like evacuation centers, numbers to call, etc.).
Sometimes just moments of silence on the part of the news talent can be the best approach, letting the images from their helicopters do the speaking.
Although wildfires are something that definitely should be covered on a moment-by-moment basis, I don't think the same should hold true for car chases. I don't want other news pre-empted because some moron insists on speeding across L.A. County with a pack of cops behind him (unless it's an OJ-type situation that is tied into a bigger tragedy).
C5
My favorite moment was the KTLA reporter highlighting firefighters were removing valuables from endangered buildings and placing them outside. Look, free stuff!
An informative news crawl with current road closures, evacuation hotline numbers and locations would have been more than sufficient and welcomed to the 99.555% of the LA Metro not directly affected by this event. Chances are the people most affected by the fires were not parked on the couch watching t.v. anyways. They were busy either packing up for evacuation or outside surveying their own personal situation with a garden hose.Carmine5 said:
It's interesting that the only thing over the weekend that finally broke some channels away from their fire coverage was for football. Not one informative word about the fires was uttered when the NFL games started until their completion. No news breaks, no info crawls... nothing. I guess nothing happened during those 3+ hours that was an imperative must-know-now thing.
I understand the need for local news to inform the public in the event of disasters but at a certain point the majority of the audience becomes numb and would rather watch something else. Los Angeles news would be completely insufferable if we had common weather events like tornadoes and hurricanes.
As I watched over the past weekend on the internet, Heres my quick takes:
A) I have to say that CBS2/KCAL9 held their own. They pooled resources and were both professional and prompt with their reporting of the fires
B) NBC4, in particular on saturday, decided to make it their job to field calls from people to find out if their houses burned in Yorba Linda, which turned me off. They're supposed to report the news, not field calls from homeowners or their relatives.
C)ABC7 switching to NASCAR on sunday and pushing coverage to their digital wasnt the best move, IMHO. Im sorry, but natural disasters do take precidence over a car race.
D) KTLA 9 dropped the ball alltogether. I watch them via DISH and there was NOTHING concerning the fires on saturday or sunday during the day, instead they thought reruns of punk'd or syndicated programming were more important than peoples lives. They used to have a great news department, now its just a joke. I wonder if Hal Fishman is spinning in his pine box with the way it was handled....
A) I have to say that CBS2/KCAL9 held their own. They pooled resources and were both professional and prompt with their reporting of the fires
B) NBC4, in particular on saturday, decided to make it their job to field calls from people to find out if their houses burned in Yorba Linda, which turned me off. They're supposed to report the news, not field calls from homeowners or their relatives.
C)ABC7 switching to NASCAR on sunday and pushing coverage to their digital wasnt the best move, IMHO. Im sorry, but natural disasters do take precidence over a car race.
D) KTLA 9 dropped the ball alltogether. I watch them via DISH and there was NOTHING concerning the fires on saturday or sunday during the day, instead they thought reruns of punk'd or syndicated programming were more important than peoples lives. They used to have a great news department, now its just a joke. I wonder if Hal Fishman is spinning in his pine box with the way it was handled....
I was in the EOC most of teh afternoon on Saturday. We had 4 TV's going and finally settled on 2, 4, 7, 9, 11 and varied as they went to sports. What was impressive was the pictures in HD. What was not impressive was the lack of detail such as where exactly WAS the fire they were showing. What ever happened to maps? We had to get our OC maps from the Register Internet news site.
With four sets going, I noticed that ther was a lot of sharing of real time pictures amongst the stations carrying coverage. I am not talking about co-owned 2 and 9, but say 2 and 7, or 4 and 7. My guess is that it was a cost saving measure.
With four sets going, I noticed that ther was a lot of sharing of real time pictures amongst the stations carrying coverage. I am not talking about co-owned 2 and 9, but say 2 and 7, or 4 and 7. My guess is that it was a cost saving measure.
ercjncpr said:
I do give credit for KTLA making some effort for their recent breaking news coverage, as not too long ago past they became the channel not to go to for breaking news events of this nature. However, as had been pointed out, KTLA wasn't quite steller with their coverage, having dropped their fire coverage for more pressing television, like Punk'd.
At the height of the fire it's bad form for some of the channels to switch over to sports. As some of us know, sports brings in a lot of money, fire or not. For weekend sports coverage to be dropped it takes a mega disaster; the fires were quite bad (perhaps the worst in L.A. city since 1961), but not bad enough.
...and that is too bad.
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