Good News!
I’m in Toronto right now for work. This morning as I got ready to leave, I had on Breakfast Television, which is sort of Good Day Oregon-y, all sorts of local things and people sent out all over town to report.
Well as I was listening/watching, they kept running this periodic segment called “Good News”. Some of it was things going on around town that were happy things, and some of it was viewer mail-We just had a baby girl, I got all A’s, things like that.
It really struck me-considering all the news lately (shootings, wildfires, terrorist plots) that isn’t all that good, it would be really nice if there was balance. Granted we get a bit of a break with Rose Festival (even if you don’t like it at least nobody died) but what about the rest of the time?
I propose that EVERY morning news show in Portland do a Good News segment. It would be great! Instead of finding out it’s going to rain all day (again) and leaving for work early (again) because traffic sucks (again) and after hearing about all the people who got shot or stabbed or died in accidents, by the time you even get to work you’re kind of beat down, and then you have to work all day! Evening news isn’t much better in the cheer department either. So why not, news directors? Start actively looking for good news, not just “look at the waterskiing squirrel” bits that fill in time on slow news days. I mean genuinely good news. No, the absence of bad news (Nobody died on the Sandy River today! Mt. Hood didn’t eat any climbers!) isn’t good news either. Things like Rose Festival events, or someone gives a load of cash to a local charity who can now do some great thing, or kids who do really well in a (non-sports) competition of some sort. If you do viewer submitted, so much the better! Who wouldn’t watch a news show that was truly balanced? If you want more help with this, local news directors, email me. I’ll tell you all about BT and how it’s done.
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“Who wouldn’t watch a news show that was truly balanced?”
Me. I haven’t regularly watched TV news in years…
I haven’t watched it on purpose in a long time either. Would you if it had some good news in there too?
No. Guess I should’ve made that clearer.
I’d settle for just plain real news, instead of the news-flavored programming that all the PDX stations commit.
Considering the local Fox affiliate uses it’s “news” program to promo entertainment shows, I’d suggest we need less fluff, not more. Granted, they also hype the hell out anything gruesome (if it bleeds, it leads), but more fluff isn’t the answer.
Who watches local news? It’s utterly useless. I can’t imagine a worse waste of a half-hour than watching local TV news.
BUT - would you watch it (generic ‘you’ here) if your neighbor were on (for non-COPS reasons, of course)? Your kid’s class? A charity group you’d been working with?
That’s the point BLF is getting at, I think - if it were local, local, local, and NOT just fluffy (not to mention a welcome antidote to the ‘if it bleeds, it leads’ mentality) - is this a way to get the hordes of people who don’t regularly watch local news to occasionally tune in and/or TiVo it?
News is news and shouldn’t be manufactured either way - no mandatory “good news” segments, no “if it bleeds, it leads” segments either.
Armageddon has come.
I agree with RAH.