May 06, 2008

1955 Philly Not All That Different

Philebrity posted The Miracle on the Delaware (1955) this afternoon; what makes this short doc/ad/PSA/whatever from WPTZ so incredible is how it spends the entire intro about how incredible the places around Philadelphia are: "Trenton is proud of its past, but even prouder of its future. Wilmington, Delaware. A half-hour ride from Philadelphia, but closer than that in kinship and spirit.... And it's the dream of every little boy to shop at Allentown's Hess Brothers, where a single toy can cost five thousand dollars."

What this sort of reminds me of is how the TV news will focus on the weather of an area when they may not even have more than one reporter there. It's a way to say, "Hey, we cover you, suburbs and exurbs!" without actually having to do any reporting. I mean, the rest of this movie is about the Mummers, football, baseball... other than steel, what much is different? Oh, yeah, the part about church. (Also noted: What's with all the beer ads at the end?)

Okay, I'm off to Hess Brothers.

Noontime Nuggetz: The Miracle On The Delaware [Philebrity]

Posted by D-Mac at 03:34 PM | Comments (2)

August 23, 2006

10-Year-Old Colorado Homicide Philly's Top Story

Will Bunch, "Solving our nation's dilemma: CNN News, CNN Rumor, and CNN Blonde," Attytood, Aug. 18:

So what can be done about this tidal wave of made-up news? Well, we can talk about making it stop until we're blue in the face -- but that's not going to happen. With only three main cable news outlets -- one tied too closely to the GOP spin machine and the other two in a desperate scramble for ratings -- there is simply no way that they will exercise any kind of restraint. And as long as the current crew is running the federal machinery, there will always be an anonymous government official willing to give CNN or MSNBC a "scoop" about exploding Breck at some West Virginia airport. [...]

So it is with news -- there are, it should now be evident, different "formats" of news. For example, right this minute on CNN, about 40 percent of the news is Real News (Iraq, Bush lawbreaking) and about 60 percent is Made-Up News (terror alerts, JonBenet Ramsey). Unfortunately, it's the Made-Up News that gets the highest ratings.

Will Bunch, Daily News, today:

You know what they say: If you can't beat 'em, join 'em.

Answers awaited in Colorado [Daily News]

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May 02, 2006

Get Your Kicks On I-76

I haven't checked in on everyone's favorite consumer advocacy columnist, Herb Denenberg, in a while, so I figured it was time for a look-see.

Today, The Evening Bulletin scribe laments the quality of local television news with the standard cracks: the coverage is slanted toward fire, weather, murder, etc.; you don't learn as much from watching a newscast as you do as reading a newspaper; they bow to advertisers and so forth. Oh, he also says TV news attracts the stupid.

It's a long tradition of print writers to hold television journalists in contempt. It's also a long tradition of alt-weekly writers to hold everyone in contempt. It's a shorter, but no less firmly held, tradition for bloggers to... shit. I don't really know what we do. Perhaps we're in the same boat as alt-weekly writers.

Anyway, either way, yes, I don't necessarily disagree with anything Denenberg wrote today, but I must take umbrage with this passage:

I remember when the Schuylkill Expressway was being partially closed for repair. The station I was at then hyped the story to give the impression that there would be near universal gridlock and a collapse of the transportation system as a result. In fact, the closure created hardly a stir and everyone got to where they wanted to go very nicely.

No. Just no. You can't go drive through a construction-free Schuylkill at 3 a.m. without feeling as if you could kill every other driver around you and it would be justifiable homicide. No way construction suddenly makes everything peachy keen all of a sudden.

The Slow Death Of Local TV News [The Evening Bulletin]

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