David Johnson
In a column on notorious anchorwoman Alycia Lane, Philly Inquirer columnist Karen Heller says that “in local TV, sadly, looks are everything.” Cory hooked into the story of Lane being accused of slugging a cop earlier, discussing the nature of crime and celebrity in newscasters, but we didn’t get the sticker shock of Lane’s salary that Heller provides: $700,000.
The price of one pretty local talking head could buy a lot of serious backpack journalists who can actually do their own credible reporting. The conversation has been hot in my offline circles, so I thought I’d bring it to my favorite online forum. The rise of Internet newscasting and the influx of foreign news products like BBC with more stripped-down productions are revealing that the arms race in American broadcast news has led to an evolutionary dead end where glitz is beating substance to the detriment of the product. And said glitz is so expensive to produce, it isn’t going to be pretty when the leaner operations start becoming more substantial. We lostremoters always praise sites who change to cleaner and simpler redesigns, but we never praise broadcasts for that because they just keep going chyron crazy and slapping on more makeup and adding more “centers” via the magic greenscreen.
LR buddy Michael Rosenblum says the first step is admitting you have a problem. Can we get a New Year’s resolution to curb the madness?
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