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On The Air

By Brian Filed in Links, Media Tagged with , , , , July 13th, 2011 @ 11:51 am

This is all kinds of awesome sauce: WGBH has announced a massive project to digitize a portion of their immense video library of news broadcasts from 1959-2000, including clips from the archives of WHDH and WCVB, as well as Cambridge Community TV. WGBH had its own local newscast for a number of years, which is a little unusual for a public television station, and there are still a lot of locals who would love to see it back. This, however, is pure heaven for broadcast history enthusiasts, as much for the snapshots back into the past of local TV as much as American history. For the time being, the other major local station, WBZ, is not involved in the project, but here’s hoping that they’re able to include them as well. Considering how poorly local television is usually documented, this is nothing short of amazing.

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Wowie Kazowie!

By Brian Filed in Videos Tagged with , , , , , May 14th, 2010 @ 12:06 pm

If you were a small child in the Boston area in the 1960s, as I was, you knew that 4:30 every afternoon was time for Bozo. Many local television markets had their own versions of Bozo the Clown, the most famous probably being Chicago’s “Bozo’s Circus”, which ran on WGN for 40 years, but Boston’s Bozo, which starred local television legend Frank Avruch, was almost as popular and very widely distributed around the country. Recently, the always-wonderful showbiz industry blogger Mark Evanier dug up this excellent YouTube video with several minutes of high-quality film clips of Avruch and the show, including an appearance by a young Carroll Spinney, who went on to become the Muppeteer behind (well, inside, actually) Big Bird. In the Spinney segment, he does a thing where he writes a child’s name on a piece of paper and turns it into a drawing. I remember this part of the show vividly from my own daily viewing because I always wanted to have MY name turned into a picture, and they never seemed to have a kid named Brian show up on the set.

I really enjoyed watching this video, and I hope anyone else who remembers watching this as a little kid has a chance to enjoy it, too.

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Don Kent

By Brian Filed in Links, News Tagged with , , , , March 2nd, 2010 @ 1:34 pm

The Boston Globe reports that long-time Boston television weatherman Don Kent has passed away.

For some thirty years, when New Englanders wanted to know what the weather forecast was, the ultimate voice of authority was WBZ’s Don Kent. Though he was not trained as a meteorologist, Kent was a self-taught weather expert and brought professionalism to a job that, as local television news became more and more formulaic in the 1970s, was so often used as “comic relief” or as an excuse to put a pretty girl in a tight dress on screen for five minutes to point at a map. Kent didn’t do goofy shtick, wear loud suits, or make happy talk. People knew that they could watch him on TV or listen to him on the radio and get a reliable forecast. These days, television weather forecasts dazzle with technology, though they over-sensationalize severe weather situations, but the model of using knowledgeable forecasters is a direct legacy of Don Kent’s career.

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And That’s The Way It Is

By Brian Filed in News Tagged with , , , , , , , , April 10th, 2008 @ 2:35 pm

Yesterday, the Wall Street Journal broke a story that CBS and Katie Couric have started talking about the possibility that she would give up the anchor spot on the CBS Evening News after the 2008 elections. It’s not the first time this story has made the rounds, but this morning the story was being picked up by other media outlets and appears to have the stink of credibility to it.

The TV news industry blog TVNewser has been chiming in with insider dirt and industry speculation since the story broke yesterday. This post considers who the likely contenders are to take the anchor seat and gives the inside edge to Harry Smith, with Bob Schieffer as a possible dark-horse. This post considers the timing of the story in the wake of last week’s big round of layoffs at CBS O&O stations, many of which saw long-time anchors and other celebrity on-air talent get the axe (here in Boston, for example, WBZ fired sportscaster Bob Lobel, entertainment reported Joyce Kulhawic, and anchor Scott Wahle, all veterans). And this post talks about what might happen for Couric if she steps down — it’s practically a given that she would be made a regular on 60 Minutes, but there’s talk she could jump to CNN and replace Larry King.

CBS News is having a bad couple of weeks. Earlier in the week it was revealed that CBS was considering outsourcing some of its newsgathering operation to CNN, though they later very publicly backed away from that. Paying a mega-star anchor bajillions to host a dud newscast is very hard to justify when you’re firing staff and trying to outsource your basic news operation. Given the now-very-public discussions, it wouldn’t surprise me to see her bail even earlier than November from the nightly news, do 60 Minutes for a short face-saving amount of time, then leave CBS entirely.

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But What If I Don’t Wanna Watch It?

By Brian Filed in News Tagged with , , , December 28th, 2007 @ 1:32 pm

Tom Brady

Is this really necessary?

I am surprised that ABC, FOX, and the other broadcast networks haven’t been screaming bloody murder DEMANDING to be able to show the game. It’s the MOST IMPORTANT THING IN AMERICA, after all. Any minute now I expect CNN to stop their coverage of the assassination of one of the world’s most important political figures to go balls-to-the-wall with this story. And believe me, if she hadn’t had the lack of consideration to get killed two days before the big game, they would already be there.

Word has it that Osama Bin Laden is about to issue another videotaped message demanding that Al Jazeera be allowed to cover the game so that he and the boys can watch it up in the mountains of Pakistan, where General Musharraf keeps them safe and well-supplied with satellite TV. He will also demand that the Patriots’ cheerleaders appear wearing burqqas and that the “Star-Spangled Banner” be replaced with “Death To The Infidel!”. I understand that the NFL is ready to concede on the anthem, but NOT the girls.

I have no ill will against the Patriots. I think it’s pretty incredible that they might be able to go undefeated. But even the 2004 Red Sox didn’t get this much coverage. I shudder to think of what this might bode for the Super Bowl should the Pats go all the way.

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Something Else To Freak Out About, Film At Eleven

By Brian Filed in Blogs, Links Tagged with , , , October 22nd, 2007 @ 12:20 pm

Wolf! Wolf!

I enjoyed this post by Nashville-area blogger Lindsay about the over-reliance of local news media on fearmongering (via Brittney Gilbert).

She has first-hand knowledge of the subject, having been an on-air television reporter for a number of years, and I have to say I am with her 100%. For a long time, these stories were more or less limited to sweeps periods — the teaser promos would draw people to the newscast for ratings, but the overall newscast wouldn’t be anywhere near such a fear-fest. But, especially since 9/11, the shift in tone of local newscasts to a steady diet of outrage, paranoia, “empty calorie” news (Hey, another moose in someone’s pool!), and daily reminders of things you have to be afraid of has gone way beyond the pale. Sadly, we invite it on ourselves to the extent that people will choose to watch prurient and sensational programming over more measured coverage, but the push-me-pull-you dynamic between viewers and broadcasters is a sort of mutually-assured-destruction scenario. Somebody needs to back down first, and that somebody is the local news media.

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The FARK Station

By Brian Filed in Media, News Tagged with , , , , July 6th, 2007 @ 12:13 pm

channel7.jpg

Hey, local-area readers — is it me or has Channel 7′s 11:00 p.m. newscast turned into a live version of FARK?

I know that it was Channel 7 who dumbed down local news in general when Ed Ansin bought the station back in the early 1990s with their “if it bleeds, it leads” approach to news, but since he bought Channel 56 a few months ago and rolled the newscast into both stations (56 at 10:00, 7 at 11:00), it’s like they just threw out any semblance of a “newsroom” and just cherry-pick stories off of goofy Internet news sites. Especially if there’s video. Some nights the LEAD STORY will be some lame-ass piece of satellite video of something that happened in Ohio or Alabama or some other place thousands of miles away. For me, though, I think they crossed a line on Wednesday night when they ran JibJab’s “Star Spangled Banner” video as news.

Lately, I also notice that they’re trying to have the anchors and reporters shtick it up with dialog and little bits of stage business. Last night they tried it with their “story” about the study that showed that women don’t really talk that much more than men by trying to get Randy Price, the male anchor, to say he’s interested in talking about “sports and carburetors” with other guys. Unfortunately, a) Randy is totally unable to ad-lib and 2) he’s gay, so the whole thing went over like a lead balloon (that’s not to say that gay men can’t be interested in sports and carburetors, but ol’ Randy ain’t fooling anybody).

I can’t really explain why we watch Channel 7 except that I have some deep-seated thing about watching NBC News (even when I was very little I was a big fan of the Huntley-Brinkley Report), and it has carried over to usually watching the local NBC station newscast. Of course, years ago that meant watching WBZ, who still have the best news programming in this market (perhaps even one of the best in the country), and there’s no reason we couldn’t switch except that we’re middle-aged and set in our ways about these sorts of things. But, sheesh! When I can predict the order of news stories on their program based on the most number of comments on FARK, it’s getting a little out of hand.

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