And then there's the cable news networks

I remember when cable news started, CNN to be exact. It was all news all the time. I even visited the CNN building in Atlanta while waiting for a Braves game to start. There was an afternoon talk show, with a live audience, at 3 PM and I sat in on that one and asked a question on live TV. Oh boy! My face was broadcast all over the world! Perhaps that's what brought the station down. Maybe I was the beginning of the unraveling. I dare say I give myself too much credit.

Around the same time that CNN was unveiled, the Ted Turner company (who owned the Braves at the time) followed up with HNN, Headline News Networks, for people who only had 30 minutes to find out every possible news story that was happening around the world within the last 24 hours. A tough task, don't you think? Well, it must have been too tough. Now, HNN no longer has news headlines. CNN no longer has news shows. Of course, we may as well add in FOX News, which came along much later.

The point is that if you are really interested in knowing the news you have no choice but to go to the Internet. Those cable channels no longer broadcast news. They are devoted to providing forums for one hour editorials but some very extreme personalities. In this case, I'm giving them too much credit--some of them don't even have personalities. I like Anderson Cooper well enough. He's a pleasant kind of guy and has a famous mother, Gloria Vanderbilt, but she must have been very overbearing because he is one of the dullest guys on TV.

Contrast that with Glenn Beck. I have some friends and relatives who are Beck fans but he just makes me nervous to watch, even with the sound off. Cooper could put me to sleep at night and Beck could give me insomnia! I used to like Greta VanSusteran until her ratings got too high and they had to boost O'Reilly's (also not a fan) so they ruined her show and made it just another show. Now, let's talk about Nancy Grace. Where do they find these people? I don't know of a single 1 hour comedy or drama show that hasn't had a Nancy Grace lookalike (Boston Legal comes to mind) satirizing her role, which is what she appears to be playing--a role--on her show.

My biggest quandary came when I had started watching a morning news show on CNN years ago with Bill Hemmer. Then he disappeared. And then he reappeared ON FOX! Okay, Bill, make up your mind. You're doing an 'Arlen Specter' here. Bill started out on CNN which became the liberal news network and then went to FOX which is supposed to be the conservative news network. Are you having a problem, Bill? Change of heart as you get older?

I could go on and on but instead I think I'll go watch the only news personality I like on any of the networks: Neil Cavuto. Neil's such a nice guy. He never mentions the fact that he has some serious health problems related to MS and that he's a cancer survivor. He doesn't play victim. He's optimistic even on a day like today when the market is down 374 points. He likes junk food and listens to both sides of an issue without cutting people off. I don't know if I'm any better informed after watching his show but I just like the guy. He's from New Jersey and so am I.

Local news - New revelations

It may sound like I'm obsessing on the boring subject of local network news but I feel compelled to follow up on my earlier post "Taking credit for the news." Keep in mind I normally read, write in my journal or figure Sudoku puzzles (I read it prevents Alzheimer's disease) during the news so I'm not always WATCHING the news; it's more like background noise. I guess I have become somehat of a news analyst--not exactly an analyst of the news itself but of the newscasts.

As I stated in that piece, I have switched to a different station at 11 o'clock while waiting to see what Nightline is featuring, who Jay's guests will be and then most likely switching to the Colbert Report, as long as it's not a rerun. By the way, who reruns shows that are so based on real-time events? That's a rhetorical question--the obvious answer is The Comedy Channel who broadcasts old episodes of the Colbert Report. Isn't that sort of like rerunning the local or national news two weeks after it happened?

Even before I switched, I remember asking myself why it takes two people to read the news. Sometimes the female anchor will read the first line of a story and then the male, says, "That's right, Marti" and continues to read the rest of the story. I shouldn't complain about this considering the problem of unemployment. At least the networks are doing their part to save jobs.

Last night I actually watched the opening of the show on my newly adopted channel. Did you know that the anchors on this new show actually read the news standing up? These two attractive people stand in front of the camera, often in full-length shots, while they read the news? The woman has carefully coiffed flowing blonde hair and great legs accentuated by her high heels, (even though according to John Wiswell they were banned in France due to their negative effect on foot health). The man is quite handsome--unfortunately they don't show his legs, though, and he isn't wearing high heels as far as I can tell.

Can someone explain to me why it adds to a news broadcast for the anchors to be standing up, holding sheets of papers in their hands instead of sitting at a desk with the papers flat in front of them? And why there are any papers anyway when they're reading off of the TelePrompTer? Is this happening in other markets around the country? You probably can't answer that because I'm the only person in the country who still watches local news on television.

I have just one more comment before I let go of this subject forever. The weatherman on this channel reports the weather (again holding papers in his hands) with one eyebrow cocked, chin tilted down, staring up at the camera using a voice similar to one I saw in a John Candy movie years ago. At first I thought I was imagining it, then I thought he was just fooling around. Now I know--THIS IS REALLY HOW HE REPORTS THE WEATHER! Weather in Florida is a joke to begin with because weathermen here have the only job in the country where you can be wrong 50% of the time and still stay employed.

Well, my friend(s), there is only one network station left and I seriously doubt I will even bother to take a peek, although now I'm curious to see what kind of gimmick they've got going on. There's the station that takes credit for the news, the one where the anchors are young and attractive and stand up during the newscast and--yes I will have to find out about the other one. I can't resist. After all, I am a news show analyst now. If only I could get paid for this!

One last footnote, the alligator last night was 11 feet long and trapped only a few feet from a homeowner's front door.

Taking credit for the news

I try not to be a complainer. Really. I don't whine, I don't criticize and I'm tolerant of most human flaws. I stay out of politics and don't discuss religion because everybody has their own perspective and I respect that. But something finally got my goat and I feel the need to say something.

Most people I know don't watch the local news programs--and with good reason. Often the reports are inaccurate or by the time they hit the airwaves new developments have occurred and it's too late to change the TelePrompTer (I don't know why, but John Irving spelled it that way in The Fourth Hand and I defer to his genius and will follow his lead).

It goes without saying--nix that cliche--let me start again. News on the Internet is much more current. It seems to be updated almost before it actually happens. Perhaps some soothsayer is using a crystal ball predicting what twists and turns a story will take. Ah, but I digress--nix that cliche, too.

Back on topic, I am the one person in the Orlando area who still watches the 11 o'clock news almost every night. It's not that I really am interested in who broke into which ATM or drove through a storefront in Marion County. I watch it because John Stewart is a little too animated for me at bedtime and there's nothing else on before Nightline, Colbert or Leno. Each night I have to make the major decision on which to watch after the news. I won't even mention Letterman--oops! I just did. I don't watch him no matter who his guests are.

Since I usually enjoy Nightline I turn the channel to the news that comes on before it. I won't mention the call letters but they start with WFTV. The anchors have been anchored there for so long that they are both about my age and I like that. I've met them at local events and feel like we're old friends. However, they have finally lost one more viewer--ME--and I wonder if they will survive now that I'm gone!

What could have made me change channels, you ask? (Well if you didn't, I asked for you.) It's a simple thing really. Whoever is writing their scripts has decided that the most important word in the English language is "we." Before each news story whichever anchor is reading the first line starts out with the word "we." I'll give you an example. "We were on the scene earlier this evening right after a man robbed a liquor store. We first told you about this story on the 5 o'clock news." Okay, so then why are you telling me that you already told me? If I had watched at 5 o'clock I wouldn't be watching now. Sometimes they even go way out there, "We first told you about this story last July when we were the first ones to report the original story that we uncovered."

"We were the first camera crew on the scene at the school where a bomb threat was called in." Who cares if you were there first? Which is the story--that you were there before the other camera crew or that there was a bomb threat at a school?

By the end of the 35 minute broadcast--which, by the way is something else I don't understand--why is the news 35 minutes now instead of 30?--I think that even Elmer Fudd would be tired of starting words with a 'w'. I told my husband about this and he thought I was exaggerating so he stayed up later than usual to check it out. In the first three minutes of the broadcast, five sentences had started with the word 'we.' Hubby looked at me as if I were a purple pineapple! He couldn't believe that the man he had watched long before he met me had gone down this wayward path. Sad, so sad.

In all fairness, I did write to the station manager before I posted this on my blog. I got no response. I didn't expect one. The wonderful thing in America is that we have freedom of choice and all I had to do was pick up the remote and press a button and there were two, younger, more attractive people actually reporting the news such as it was. It was a slow news days and they spent an inordinate amount of film footage showing a three legged alligator slowly trying to make its way from someone's front lawn back to the lake. It is alligator mating season so there's a story almost every night about these reptiles trespassing on homeowner's property and footage of trappers capturing and returning them to a lake somewhere. But this story was different. No trapper was needed. The alligator was headed in the right direction, moving slowly with its right hind stump toward the camera lens and the anchors saying, "Awwww."

That, my loyal reader(s) is why I switched from one local news program to another. At least this guy and his co-anchor weren't saying, "We watched the gator in awe because we wondered how he had lost his leg and why we didn't have a camera crew on hand when it happened."