Comments on: Most Dope Reporters at 6 or 7?

By: chet parker

chet parker — Tue, 25 Apr 2006 02:00:04 +0000

Jaydog – you’re not in any danger of getting into a discussion thats above your pay grade my friend…if anything…discussion of local tv news is “below” the pay grades of most people in here. It really is just a cool place to blow off a little steam and experiencing the joy of discovering that a lot of people share your views…and we can all laugh about it.

I don’t envy you being on the inside of that business because the folks in charge very obviously don’t care about the audience’s perception of their news teams and the product they put on the air each night. If they did, they wouldn’t be forcing salaries in a downward spiral and hiring people who look and sound like they dropped out of high school before learning to read and write well. GM’s like Jeff Anderson at 2, Doug Armstrong at 7, the radio guy at 6 who obviously knows nothing abut TV and whoever is at 12… are all about making profits, not offering quality programming.

The easiest way to hike profits is hire the cheapest people you can find and get them to do the work of two or three people for a minimal amount of money. You can bet your life that Armstrong would replace Dee and Carolyn with much cheaper hires if he thought he could get away with it.

It’s a fact that most people out here in the real world laugh at the local news…you probably won’t ever hear that from people who are talking to you face-to-face and know you’re in the business…but in places like BoiseGuardian you will hear it…and if you could somehow eavesdrop on office “water-cooler” talk without anyone knowing you were in the tv news business…you’d hear people discussing the worst looking, worst dressed, most irritating voice, goofiest hairdo, worst makeup, dumbest remarks, etc. etc…. and you would very rarely hear discussions about the high quality of tv news shows.

But hey, a lot of us work for companies, government agencies or whatever, that are laughable in their practices, so take comfort in the fact that nobody is alone in this cruel ‘ol world and the best thing for all of us to do is have a few laughs…at each other and at ourselves.

By: Sisyphus

Sisyphus — Sat, 22 Apr 2006 21:16:46 +0000

Oh Tam. Dorval? And I was starting to like you.

By: jaydog

jaydog — Sat, 22 Apr 2006 11:13:17 +0000

First, I need to tell you thanks for doing this – the different, and often witty, “slant” on the news. I keep the Guardian in my bookmarks list for a reason — and it’s not to come and say “boo hoo, stop making fun of Robbie, Rick, Larry, etc.!” Apparently that’s the impression I created when I decided to write something on the internet without taking an after-work nap first.

Without getting into a discussion that’s above my pay grade, I’ll say that I definitely understand some of your frustrations about the area’s local TV news – and I’m not the only one. As for being an insider “working to make changes,” I can tell you it’s harder than it sounds when managers/consultants expect you to keep your mouth shut and just live with their decisions when they don’t agree with the proposal, or decide to go a different direction because the work being proposed can’t be completed that particular day.

I guess the deal with me is this: some days I go home wondering if we managed to show anything people appreciated, or just ticked some people off and made the rest laugh at those who are – ahem – “unintentionally funny.”

By: Razzbar

Razzbar — Fri, 21 Apr 2006 23:27:36 +0000

I don’t watch enough tEE-vEE to give a qualified rating, but I’ve seen enough to conclude that they are ALL dopes. When they watch the movie “Anchorman”, they go “yeah…” where others would laugh.

Even worse are the people who edit the videotape and run the board. When you have somebody in the picture talking, let’s hear him, not the anchormodel talking. Sheesh! And you do not need to cut the picture every two seconds.

And the camera operators and directors need to think from time to time, also. I watched one report on the traffic somewhere. A postal delivery truck happened to be at the scene where they were taping, and what wound up on the news was the dweeb in the suit talking about traffic and the road, while all the images were shots related to the postal service; a shot of the truck, the letter carrier’s can of dog spray, a mailbox, etc. No image stayed on the screen for more than say, two seconds. All they would have had to do was put the dang camera on a tripod, use a long lens and just let it roll. The story was about traffic, after all. Incredible.

But then when you see what they pay these people, it’s not surprising. The state job service lists openings all the time, if anybody’s interested in becoming the next Cecil Kurosawa.

By: chet parker

chet parker — Fri, 21 Apr 2006 23:08:41 +0000

jaydog – a rather embarrassing post my friend. Makes you sound like you belong right where you are.
It’s not sad that we come to this page to vent our frustration with the silliness of the programs that are labeled “newscasts” and the increasing silliness of the people who appear on these programs. It’s sad that these programs are all we have to chose from. Thats what is sad. And these aren’t bitter remarks…they’re funny. See, we unfortunately can’t change the newsrooms so we either have to laugh or cry and we chose to laugh.
You’ve got the part right about a lot of people moving here from out of state…and wouldn’t it be nice if when they turned on their tv’s for the first time to watch the “local” news in their new hometown, they saw a real newscast instead of creatures like Larry and the other clowns who bought a little mail-order certificate from AMS so they could call themselves “meteorologists” or kids who can neither write nor read very well, making a joke out of themselves, and therefore, our city! You imply that the youngsters populating our newsrooms are simply “catering” to their audience.
Well that, my friend, is what “we” find offensive…that the people running our local media outlets think we’re that stupid.
Since you’re on the inside, you should be working to make some changes, not trying to convince us that the people wasting all those precious broadcast minutes every evening are hard-working people trying to do a service for the community!!
If you’ve ever watched one of these programs, and you’re legally sane, you’d know that the “local news” on all four of the local stations is often the funniest thing on tv.
I don’t recall much real news being covered on local tv since the channel 2 boys jumped on the crooks at city hall and forced some people to stop lying to the citizens and get rid of some of the trash in city hall.
I really don’t care how many cats are in somebodys house in Twin Falls!!

By: Steve

Steve — Fri, 21 Apr 2006 22:56:25 +0000

Larry Gebert’s “pornstache” – that is RICH! Hahahahaha!

Pornstache – that’s not the kind of car he drives, is it?
(-;

The GUARDIAN might not want to turn this into a Larry Gebert commentary column… but I think the ‘stache goes just about PERFECT with his “Groucho” eyebrows and the ‘do! (I’m waiting for a “Goofiest Hair on Television” reality show. Ol’ Larry could give Donald Trump a run for his money!) I s’pose it says something about KTVB’s loyalty to staff – a lot of TV outlets like to retire their on-air personalities as they get old and/or funny-looking.

By: Tam

Tam — Fri, 21 Apr 2006 20:35:44 +0000

EDITOR NOTE–We have to warn you, this comment has graphic content.

BUT…Ken, the best part of the story was when the newscaster read the story and said “Owners claim this is Idaho’s only legal ‘cattery'”…while showing a taped photo of the business sign that said “Idaho’s only legal CATHOUSE”. Unfortunately there’s likely to be more today, because they only retrieved “half the cats” yesterday and went back for the others. I’m with you…I think I’ll pass. Looking at abcesses and parasitic cat eyes, was just what I needed to choke down my bowl of spaghetti.

By: Ken McDonald

Ken McDonald — Fri, 21 Apr 2006 19:37:36 +0000

I think we may have an all-time winner for the dope award. It has to be Idaho Snooze Channel 7 lead story last night…flooding? No! High gas prices? No. The arrest of the man who killed the 14 year old girl at the party? No….it was “More than 125 cats have been pulled out of a Magic Valley home — many of them very ill. Twin Falls sheriff’s deputies found the felines while serving a search warrant at the Rocky Mountain Cat Resort.”
Just wish they would have had a team report…I saw that and turned the channel to Frasier on Lifetime.

By: Everyone's favorite

Everyone's favorite — Fri, 21 Apr 2006 16:55:42 +0000

Larry Gebert? You cannot be serious!

The man makes up his weather. “Uh, the clouds are going to go around the mountains because they can’t make it over…”