The Three-Ring Circus of Local TV news
By Adam Croftcheck
It doesn’t take much for an individual these days to find out what is going on the world. The outlets for news are at an all-time high: radio, Internet, newspapers and, television. Every night, thousands of individuals tune into their locally scheduled news stations to find out what is happening in the neighborhood and the world, yet every night seems to be the same breaking news: countless amounts of violent deaths and crimes, followed by other media scares.
Every night, some individual has been slain in the streets, murdered in cold blood, but that is immediately followed with the weather or a bear running through someone’s yard. The whole idea is one immense, festering distraction that we can’t seem to take our eyes off.
Let’s begin with the largest ring in this circus, the local news stations. What was once a viable source of information for many has now been transformed into a spectacle that is hilariously ridiculous and yet morbid. Speaking from my own experiences, my mother and father both partake in viewing various local news stations each night so they can retain some information about what is happening and what will be happening in the world in which we exist.
I have on multiple occasions, in the company of my parents, observed these local news stations to be able to outline a formula that is the local news. The first segment of this formula focuses around the morbid murders and accidents that have happened either locally or within another state.
Usually, these news stations will focus on the local murders and freak accidents but if the death toll is high in another state, the news will cut right to that and will focus on it for more than half the duration of the allotted news time. These are only rare occurrences, though, so usually, the news starts with lots of shootings, stabbings, men beating their wives to death for not making a TV dinner and so on and so forth.
Then we have the immediate follow-up with accidental deaths or fires, in which someone or groups of people have died. The next ingredient added is robberies and stealing. The occasional rape story will be told or the story of a local bus driver who has physically assaulted yet another child on the bus.
Following various debaucheries and crime, the weather is discussed and/or other bizarre, yet pointless, stories that really do not merit the term, “news.” The reporting, for example, will fall along the lines of “A man was shot and killed today near the McDonald’s here in such and such county. Police have yet to make an arrest. Residents of one local community spotted a bear in their backyards today.”
This sudden transition makes absolutely no sense. The station just broadcast a piece on a brutal murder and yet it makes no effort to warn individuals watching that there is a killer among them. Instead, the station follows up with this random story of how a wild animal wandered too close to someone’s backyard. The homeowner probably wasn’t even home to see it.
The local weather follows. If the conditions are expected to be inclement, the local news stations will go out of their own way to make the weather the largest story during the broadcasting time. In some cases, they will even push aside the first ring of crime and death to make the weather the star of the show.
The bumbling weather people appear front and center, only to inaccurately forecast the weather, which then sends many viewers into a panicked frenzy. For years, I have watched individuals scurry to the local food suppliers to buy an excessive amount of eggs, bread and milk, as if these three supplements are going to sustain them for the rest of their days.
The stations make each snowstorm we encounter seem like an apocalypse. Another annoying feature of the local weather is what I liken to the “weather bait” scenario. During the segments in which the news is broadcast, the stations add previews of what the weather announcers are going to say. The stations don’t give the full weather report at once; they bait people into watching the other unnecessary news reports. This technique only seems to be excluded whenever the weather is so inclement that it becomes the top story of the evening. Of course, it’s always entertaining to see the on-scene news reporters running around in this weather, showing us what we can see for ourselves, just by simply looking out the front door.
The next performance is the sports section of the news. Here, in Pennsylvania, the Steelers are a hot topic of discussion. This is evident by the amount of minutes local news announcers use to talk on and on about the team. Although some discussion is natural and I even daresay positive for this area, after many minutes of discussion, though, the Steelers’ talk simply feels like celebrity gossip and unnecessary opinion. Is it not enough that a number of ESPN channels already are in existence and for 24 hours a day discuss nothing but sports? World news and out-of-state news also air on a host of channels, but neither gets as much time as sports does on the local news channels.
Despite this negative nitpicking of the local news stations, I still believe they are a necessary evil. Not everyone has access to the Internet or a newspaper and not everyone has basic cable or a number of channels. Thus, the only means these people have to know what’s going on in the outside world is the local news stations.
I simply wish these local news stations weren’t such a colossal waste of time. It would be nice to come home and simply get the news one needs to hear as opposed to hearing about the countless violent deaths and crimes, followed by other media scares. Sadly these reports of murder and crime are a staple in our society. Doing away with them would be a rather extreme measure.
The best solution would be to broadcast these crimes appropriately and fairly. One murder should not outweigh the other. In fact, all crimes reported should have appropriate time and length. Weather, Sports and Entertainment also should receive such equality; a healthy balance should be implemented, rather than one report getting more attention than the others.
With the Internet now becoming the top resource for news and entertainment, maybe one day, local TV news stations will become a relic of the past and individuals will simply pick, via the Internet, the newsworthy articles they decide are worth their time.
Read more about Adam Croftcheck on his blog.
It doesn’t take much for an individual these days to find out what is going on the world. The outlets for news are at an all-time high: radio, Internet, newspapers and, television. Every night, thousands of individuals tune into their locally scheduled news stations to find out what is happening in the neighborhood and the world, yet every night seems to be the same breaking news: countless amounts of violent deaths and crimes, followed by other media scares.
Every night, some individual has been slain in the streets, murdered in cold blood, but that is immediately followed with the weather or a bear running through someone’s yard. The whole idea is one immense, festering distraction that we can’t seem to take our eyes off.
Let’s begin with the largest ring in this circus, the local news stations. What was once a viable source of information for many has now been transformed into a spectacle that is hilariously ridiculous and yet morbid. Speaking from my own experiences, my mother and father both partake in viewing various local news stations each night so they can retain some information about what is happening and what will be happening in the world in which we exist.
I have on multiple occasions, in the company of my parents, observed these local news stations to be able to outline a formula that is the local news. The first segment of this formula focuses around the morbid murders and accidents that have happened either locally or within another state.
Usually, these news stations will focus on the local murders and freak accidents but if the death toll is high in another state, the news will cut right to that and will focus on it for more than half the duration of the allotted news time. These are only rare occurrences, though, so usually, the news starts with lots of shootings, stabbings, men beating their wives to death for not making a TV dinner and so on and so forth.
Then we have the immediate follow-up with accidental deaths or fires, in which someone or groups of people have died. The next ingredient added is robberies and stealing. The occasional rape story will be told or the story of a local bus driver who has physically assaulted yet another child on the bus.
Following various debaucheries and crime, the weather is discussed and/or other bizarre, yet pointless, stories that really do not merit the term, “news.” The reporting, for example, will fall along the lines of “A man was shot and killed today near the McDonald’s here in such and such county. Police have yet to make an arrest. Residents of one local community spotted a bear in their backyards today.”
This sudden transition makes absolutely no sense. The station just broadcast a piece on a brutal murder and yet it makes no effort to warn individuals watching that there is a killer among them. Instead, the station follows up with this random story of how a wild animal wandered too close to someone’s backyard. The homeowner probably wasn’t even home to see it.
The local weather follows. If the conditions are expected to be inclement, the local news stations will go out of their own way to make the weather the largest story during the broadcasting time. In some cases, they will even push aside the first ring of crime and death to make the weather the star of the show.
The bumbling weather people appear front and center, only to inaccurately forecast the weather, which then sends many viewers into a panicked frenzy. For years, I have watched individuals scurry to the local food suppliers to buy an excessive amount of eggs, bread and milk, as if these three supplements are going to sustain them for the rest of their days.
The stations make each snowstorm we encounter seem like an apocalypse. Another annoying feature of the local weather is what I liken to the “weather bait” scenario. During the segments in which the news is broadcast, the stations add previews of what the weather announcers are going to say. The stations don’t give the full weather report at once; they bait people into watching the other unnecessary news reports. This technique only seems to be excluded whenever the weather is so inclement that it becomes the top story of the evening. Of course, it’s always entertaining to see the on-scene news reporters running around in this weather, showing us what we can see for ourselves, just by simply looking out the front door.
The next performance is the sports section of the news. Here, in Pennsylvania, the Steelers are a hot topic of discussion. This is evident by the amount of minutes local news announcers use to talk on and on about the team. Although some discussion is natural and I even daresay positive for this area, after many minutes of discussion, though, the Steelers’ talk simply feels like celebrity gossip and unnecessary opinion. Is it not enough that a number of ESPN channels already are in existence and for 24 hours a day discuss nothing but sports? World news and out-of-state news also air on a host of channels, but neither gets as much time as sports does on the local news channels.
Despite this negative nitpicking of the local news stations, I still believe they are a necessary evil. Not everyone has access to the Internet or a newspaper and not everyone has basic cable or a number of channels. Thus, the only means these people have to know what’s going on in the outside world is the local news stations.
I simply wish these local news stations weren’t such a colossal waste of time. It would be nice to come home and simply get the news one needs to hear as opposed to hearing about the countless violent deaths and crimes, followed by other media scares. Sadly these reports of murder and crime are a staple in our society. Doing away with them would be a rather extreme measure.
The best solution would be to broadcast these crimes appropriately and fairly. One murder should not outweigh the other. In fact, all crimes reported should have appropriate time and length. Weather, Sports and Entertainment also should receive such equality; a healthy balance should be implemented, rather than one report getting more attention than the others.
With the Internet now becoming the top resource for news and entertainment, maybe one day, local TV news stations will become a relic of the past and individuals will simply pick, via the Internet, the newsworthy articles they decide are worth their time.
Read more about Adam Croftcheck on his blog.