When News & Marketing Cross Paths
Happy Monday folks. I hope all had a good weekend. I had a glorious weekend as finally after months and months of anticipation, football arrived back on Sunday’s! Life can now begin again for many of us.
During the NFL season, one of my favorite things to do on Sunday’s is hang out and watch football, bust on friends about football and pretty much just take in hour after hour of football. It’s a great life I know. Anyhow, during yesterday’s games, I saw something interesting that I thought I would discuss.
I live in Raleigh, North Carolina and over the last week or so, the news stations here have been consumed with a tropical storm named Gabrielle. This storm had the same odds of hitting us bad as I have hitting the lottery, but even though the odds of this storm even making it to shore let alone coming up here were slim, the news stations I guess had nothing else to report so they rode Gabrielle until she was dead and buried.
On Sunday, the storm came as close to the NC coast as it was going to get and the only weather it brought was some rain to the coastal towns which they along with us needed. No big winds, no hail, no flooding, just your ordinary run of the mill rain shower. HUGE news I know. Yesterday as I was hanging out watching football, I was amazed to see that not only once but several times, the local TV stations here broke INTO football coverage to pretty much tell us that absolutely nothing was going on.
I was amazed that there were a couple of news directors actually saying, “Let’s break into network coverage so that our “meteorologists” could report that the coast is getting rain and for 99.9% of our viewing area, we will see absolutely no change in the weather whatsoever.
“We are interrupting your regular scheduled program to tell you that we have absolutely nothing to report. The storm that we hoped to God would come a shore unfortunately did not, so um, there is nothing to worry about and the sun you see outside your window should stay just like that, well, I guess until it is time for the sun to go down…..”
As I was watching these idiots trying to be relevant, I was wondering, what happens when there actually is some kind of weather emergency? How much trust will I have in you when in times that I do not need you, you chose to stick your nose into my life? It reminds me of the boy who cried wolf. After the boy falsely cried wolf a couple of times, people did not believe him when he actually was telling the truth.
What do you think? Am I making a mountain over a molehill here?
You’re not making a mountain over a molehill.
It’s so annoying when they do this, and it happens far too often.
It’s almost as bad as during March Madness and CBS decides that some game far away is more important than the local teams we actually want to see.
Hey Cord,
News is a mass appeal program where ratings are dutifully monitored.
Much of the disinterested coverage ends up a reflection of where the largest group of people are ready to place their attention.
Is the news f*ckep up or the people watching it? Or might it be both…
I also live in Raleigh and around the water cooler today we joked about how the news stations made up there ‘dangerous sounding’ music to coincide with the big, “STORM WATCH 2007″ moniker they kept flashing. Then they would cut to a guy in full armour out at the Outer Banks and in the background you had families playing in the ocean and some having a picnic. It was almost as stupid as cutting into a live feed from the Durham jail where Nifong was re-emerging from his 24 hour meditation. I am sure he learned his lesson now that he was sentenced to such a long and lonely session by himself.