He's Just A Local News Guy

Local news stations where I've worked in my illustrious past always have a reel of their anchor going ballistic or mispronouncing their own name (that one's true, I swear) or basically acting badly in some capacity on camera. It's usually some hidden tape that gets passed around and watched on a boring Friday afternoon.

Bill O'Reilly is just a local news guy who got lucky. All these guys are pompous, think they know better than everyone else, and aren't blessed with talent so much as drive. And they treat their staff horrendously.



He's just an a-hole local news anchor. Nothing more.

Cable News Drives The Boat

Some bloggers are pushing this report of sagging ratings for the cable nets - in the midst of this election year - as evidence of traditional media decline. I'm not so sure. First of all I think that a lot of people have primary fatigue, though the year-over-year decline suggests there's something bigger at work.

But here's the thing. Cable news impacts the nightly news. A lot of the commentators are the same, and NBC, for example, has pretty much the same staff. As we saw with the ABC debate, the network news isn't exactly better at rising above the fluff. Cable news also impacts the morning news. It's not the viewership so much as who watches, and what happens on the casble nets rises up to that morning agenda. And most important, cable news impacts the LOCAL news. Local news outlets have virtually no budget for stories of national significance. Lots of them re-air things from CNN or NBC News or their national outlet. People like Fox News' Chris Wallace do news hits on morning stations all over the country. So what the cable nets are covering impacts practically all broadcast news outlets. And Americans still get the majority of their news from television, even though that's changing.

And what are the cable nets covering? A pelican getting stuck in a tree, which suggests that the local news is bouncing back on cable news, too.

People are dying in Iraq. You need a credit check to buy gas. Your home belongs to the bank now. But stop the fucking presses, ‘cause there’s a pelican in a freakin’ tree!

Doesn't cost any money to run a local news feed. That's the point here. It's all driven by money. Talking heads are cheap. Re-running local stories is cheap. Journalism costs. They don't want to spend it.

On The Ground In Vegas

We just arrived on the Strip about 20 minutes ago. We'll be at campaign events for Obama and Clinton tonight, and out at the caucus sites tomorrow (Mittens Romney will be out at a caucus site at 7:30am, so that could be fun).

I find it instructive to watch the local news reports on caucus eve. Despite what you'd think, there's been about 3 minutes of coverage of the caucuses in the last half-hour. They've actually devoted more to the local women's roller derby team than the caucuses. (ah, local news). One station had an end-of-the-newscast story where the reporter showed a bunch of pictures of the candidates to people on the street and asked them to name them. It wasn't pretty.

When people say they don't know who'll show up to these caucuses, I believe it. It doesn't seem as central to the local scene as, say, the Danny Gans show.

One thing I did notice on the news: Nevada's unemployment rate is up to 5.8%, the highest rate since April of 2002. I've heard that it's been a bad winter in Las Vegas, which may impact the desire of people to caucus if it means missing their shift at the casinos. (By the way, the casinos made $25 billion last year, so they're not exactly hurting; but the employees aren't doing all that well.)

Obama and Clinton both have ads up; Clinton's has this old NFL Films music on it, and it's a little surprising that they went el cheapo on the score).

More later...

You Don't Need A Weatherman To Know Which Way The Wind Blows

When I wrote the earlier piece today about California suing the EPA over granting a waiver on tailpipe emissions, I noticed a lot of comments in the linked article from denialists, touting that "The head of the Weather Channel thinks global warming is a scam... how could it be true if the founder of the Weather Channel doesn't believe in it?" This appears to be a new denialist talking point. John Coleman, the founder in question, wrote a piece for a global warming skeptic site calling it a scam. It got the full Drudge treatment, and wingnuts are engaging in a link-fest.

John Coleman may be the "founder of the Weather Channel," but he's actually just a hack weatherman in San Diego:

John Coleman has been a TV weatherman since he was a freshman in college in 1953 and TV was brand new. He still loves predicting the weather and relating to the television viewers. "I also love working at KUSI NEWS", he adds. "It is a rare thing; a locally owned and managed TV station. And, there are dozens of wonderful people who work here."

John has predicted and shoveled his share of snow. He has been a TV weatherman in Champaign, Peoria and Chicago, Illinois; Omaha, Nebraska, Milwaukee, Wisconsin and New York City. For seven years he was the weatherman on "Good Morning, America" on the ABC Network.

It's basically like turning on scientific thought on climate patterns over to Willard Scott, or someone else who's been reading a TelePrompTer all their life.

In fact, Coleman likes to call being a TV weatherman in San Diego "outrageous scam," meaning that, in his mind, he has something in common with global warming.

Coleman ran the Weather Channel for a year. He's no longer involved in any way. And they've embraced science at this point, making the fight against global warming part of their mandate.

What's hilarious is that the right-wing, constantly trumpeting the death of the MSM and questioning every word out of the mouths of the "librul media," is now embracing a LOCAL TV NEWS WEATHERMAN as the last word on global warming. As long as he is saying what fits, I guess...