First posted here two years ago, but more true every day.
Some 40 years ago in Tucson NewMexiKen lived across the street from a small supermarket. At the rear of the store they parked a large, flatbed trailer with a wire cage on it. As they stocked the store’s shelves they’d toss the empty cardboard boxes into the cage. Once-in-awhile someone would come by, drop off a new trailer and haul the full one away.
One afternoon around three the boxes caught fire. It was a pretty spectacular bonfire for about five minutes and during that brief time a local news guy happened by (he must have had a scanner to hear the fire call). He took a few seconds of film. We laughed, but sure enough that night on the news there was film of cardboard boxes in flame. If I remember right, it was the lead story.
It wouldn’t happen that way anymore. Oh, TV news would still cover a cardboard box fire, but here’s what we’d see.
A news crew would show up, more than likely after the fire was out. They’d videotape a few seconds of fire engine lights flashing, a firehose leaking, and a soggy, charred mess of cardboard. They’d interview a guy in a tank top, who’d say it was the biggest box fire he’d ever seen.
Then, at 10PM, they wouldn’t just use the video like Channel 13 in Tucson did all those years ago. No, they’d send a reporter and van out to the now deserted store, hours after the fire. The reporter would stand in front of a now even soggier mess and introduce the seven hour old video.
Live, local, late breaking.
If you don’t believe me, I just saw a live shot of an empty trash container tipped over by flooding earlier today.
I have been complaining about this for years. “We’re live at the scene where something happened 9 hours ago, but absolutely nothing is happening now. I’ve just had to drag my news crew out here when we could just as easily say all of this from inside the nice air-conditioned studio.”
I don’t understand why they do this. Don’t fear that it’s just NM – I’ve just come from NY, and it’s what they do there, too.
Up here in Portland every time there’s a remote chance of a gnarly winter storm all the local stations put people at major intersections all over the metro area all day and all night just to report that the waether isn’t all that bad and traffic is flowing normally.
And they will even pre-empt regular programming for hours at a time to report these non-news events.
That and zoo animals. They love their zoo animals.
I’d laugh except it’s true. Sigh.
Cheers, mi3ke