News?

I rarely watch the news. Not because I don't like to know whats going on in the world, but because I think I can find other sources for information in better places than from the TV. I watched the ten o'clock news on KARE 11 to see what exactly the broadcasting station was sending out to its viewers. Here is my log of the first portion of news (it was going so fast that I couldn't time it after the commercial break)

College Grafitti, possibly hate speech message: 1 minute

Armed robbery: 15 seconds

College murder: 28 seconds

Charity for the family of a murdered woman: 5 minutes

Newscaster's attempt at witty banter: 20 seconds

Housefire: 16 seconds

Road construction: 15 seconds

Cholesterol health topic: 20 seconds

Drug recall: 20 seconds

Then there were about 20 seconds worth of previws of what was to come after the commercial break. They mentioned weather getting colder and a dog race that one of their reporters did a special on. They showed greyhounds running a race. After that, Santa Claus came on the screen telling me to buy things.

This small portion of television is completely packed with information concerning mainly the local area. I don't think that the major breaking headlines are going to be played on the 10:00 news, so the intended audience is for people interested in the community that have already seen the headline news earlier in the morning. This kind of news is more entertainment and gossip fuel for local communities and for people who just like to know whats going on outside their door.

The priorities really fit the bill of standard newscasting. Murder, death and crime sell, so even in this small clip, hate crimes, murders and robberies came first. That is how they get you hooked in hopes that you will sit through the rest, and maybe (if they're lucky) they'll get you to sit through the bit about the dog show coming to the Twin Cities.

The editing techniques are fairly simple: throw as many action clips at the audience as nessicary to keep their attention long enough for the information to be passed along. Fires, moving cameras toward a picture of a deceased person and children running around frantically all were part of the imagry presented in this clip. As a whole, I still do not like to watch the news.

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The assignment says that I should list some podcasts, but I don't have an ipod or itunes and I really dont listen to anything on my computer. I do listen to 93X while I'm driving sometimes, but not often because my take on music radio is that the station's purpose is to play a couple of partial songs in between advertising.