This Just In...Local News Is Horrific

While never the bellwether of journalistic insight, local news has, over the past several years, slipped into a desperate, infantilizing coma. It matters not the tricked-up studio, pimped-up Guy Smiley/Cheese Cake anchor team or ginned-up “you should know” topic…your local news is an embarrassment (and the horrors are affiliate-agnostic). Shall we count the ways?

Local Reaction Interviews.
Must every “report” on a murder, sports team loss or election be accompanied by the sub-human “opinion” of the troglodyte next door? When the Philadelphia Eagles lose, I’m actually a bit more interested in gaining insight from coaches who have studied thousands of hours of film than from Joe from Fishtown who spent the last four hours studying the bottom of a beer glass. And then there’s Mary, framed by the gauzy sheen of her screen door, professing surprise that her neighbor was decapitated, “particularly around the holidays.” Really, Mary? Would have been the normal course of business if it happened, say, in April?

The Special Investigation Team.
The glowering looks. The leather jackets. The brick wall background. Yes, this must be the can’t-chain-‘em-to-no-desk special investigation team. They’re walking the beat to root out scofflaws from Ninth Street to Tenth. And if they can’t find any real corruption, they’ll talk a tough game and gussy up drama with grainy videography and whip-pan camera work.

Transitional Banter.
After Jock Itch Joe finishes his sports report, Annie Anchor does not posses the internal fortitude to simply thank him and move on. No, she needs to engage in schoolgirl “reaction dialogue” along the heady order of “Wow, Joe, that hit looked painful!” or “Awww….better luck next time for our team!” This elicits some convivial but uni-syllabic grunt (hardly surprising that extemporaneous wit isn’t the province of lobotomized news personalities), and the cycle goes on.

Weather Coverage.
This category is worth its own multi-page blog entry, but I’ll try to condense the inanity to a few sub-categories:

1) Good weather gratitude. Our jovial “meteorologist” (try getting a degree in that from Harvard) is swathed in “thank you’s” for reading a sunny forecast, much like the 16th century shamans were honored for the patterns of the sun, rain and wind.

2) “Wacky” weatherperson names. Philadelphia has its Hurricane Schwartz; New York has its Storm Fields. Recent events have forced Tsunami Sam to rethink his moniker. Stage names certainly have value for heretofore-unknown actors, relying on the patina of notoriety. But weatherpersons? What exactly is to be served by treating viewers like a cluster of three-year-olds watching characters in Romper Room? (At least Hurricane’s shamelessness didn’t extend to de-ethnicizing his last name.)

3) Bread, milk and salt. In Philadelphia, three inches of potential snow is all it takes to generate state-of-emergency coverage, complete with shots of parked salt trucks, bread and milk aisles, empty racks of snow shovels and other stock footage dredged from prehistoric amber.

4) Seven reporters, Seven miles. During a snow “storm” your local news station bizarrely deploys a multitude of reporters to towns all within a seven mile radius. Turns out, the road conditions are…the same! The snowfall amounts are…the same! And, of course, what roving reporter’s dispatch would be complete without the studio-bound anchor beseeching him or her, with faux sincerity, to “get inside where it’s warm!”? Hey – I didn’t ask Suzie to “brave” the elements, but if frostbite ensues, I’ll at least get a modicum of real news (and entertainment).

5) Tips on beating the heat, useful for those in the womb. Every time the thermometer flirts with the 90° mark, we have to endure such brain-dead “tips” as “don’t wear black,” “get near an open window, or, better yet, seek air conditioning,” and “stay hydrated.” This sage advice is often accompanied by shots of ugly children sucking down ice cream cones. It is to die.