KION's Center for Investigative [In]Action

First off, I've been more than a little amused by KION's "news". Whether it's newlyweds Marc Cota-Robles and Jasmine Viel's Ron Burgundyesque vocal delivery and cooler-than-thou "He's Marc, I'm Jas, here's the news" nightly intro, or the overall sense that their newscasts smack of something just slightly more polished than a community college's Video Production 101's newscast exercise, there's usually something for me to laugh at or shake my head towards.

A recent favorite is KION's dripping-with-self-importance "Center for Investigative Action", complete with Law & Order-reminiscent intro (think "In the criminal justice system, the people are represented by...") and posedown. To wit:

Can't you just hear the Law & Order "dah-dah" sting?

In any event, I wanted to see their "CIA" inaction in action. Their most recent bit of vigorous truth-pursuing was the following report: Editor's note: Shortly after posting this blog entry and video, KION's "CIA" section no longer has video clips. If/when the video returns, I'll re-link the video to this entry.

So it was an adequate story of the proposal to avoid prison overcrowding by releasing lower-tier inmates in California. Ducky. What was so hard-hitting about this piece? What exactly did they uncover that wouldn't have been discovered if the "Center for Investigative Action" hadn't gotten involved?

Know your role, would-be Sam Waterstons and Mariska Hargitays. You're a small-market newscast, and unless you actually perform some investigative journalism, you look like small town posers. I dare any of these intrepid reporters to put stuff like this on their résumé reels when they apply for jobs in bigger markets. Or perhaps they already have and that's why we're stuck with them.

PS: "Attorney" is usually spelled with "ey" at the end, not "attorn".

"Vet Cemetary"? [sic]

For those not in the know, TV newscasts are, generally speaking, an extremely stripped-down barebones production. An industry that once employed many folks (smaller markets like Monterey/Salinas often provided entry-level folks an opportunity to get their foot in the door of broadcasting) now gets by with the least amount of resources possible, thanks mostly to technological advances that eliminated the need for several positions. A studio crew used to be made up of, again generally speaking, a producer, director, technical director (the person who operated a switcher, or video mixer), a graphics operator, at least one videotape operator, an audio mixer, camera operators, a teleprompter operator and stage manager. These days with the exception of national TV news outlets, most of those positions have vanished. Camera operators have been replaced by robotic cams operated by the director. Graphics ops are gone; producers, writers and/or reporters now input graphical info into a central "hub" that tells a computer what graphic/information to insert in a telecast, and when to insert it. Anchors now input their own scripts into the same hub, eliminating the teleprompter op. Even TDs are going by the wayside...replaced by the same hub that is programmed/operated by the director to follow a newscast's format that also determines what video sources (cameras, recorded reports, graphics, etc) to air and when. Not every TV station follows this exact example...this varies from station to station.

So it is with this disregard of fellow humans that I happily point out when an extra set of eyes might have averted on-air mistakes...including two items from a recent KION newscast: 1) The spelling of "cemetary" despite the correctly-spelled sign in the story to help them; 2) An executive producer or even producer should have the admittedly-subjective conclusion that the title "Vet Cemetary [sic]" sounds too much like "pet cemetery". The last item is splitting hairs, perhaps, but the serious subject of the story calls for better judgment.

Spell check much? KION's chronic misspeller strikes again.

ESPN Central Coast Makes Bold Prediction

I like where ESPN 630's ("Sports radio for the Central Coast) head is at,  but isn't it just a tad little early to declare the winner of the 2011 MLB season?

Central Coast Media Snarkiness

Welcome to my new blog, "I Am Carl Thormeyer's Raging Bile Duct". I've been meaning to create a blog focusing on the foibles of our local media outlets for some time and have finally gotten around to creating it.

Why, you may ask, am I picking on affable KSBW weekend meteorologist Carl Thormeyer to begin with? Simply put, I'm not. As the figurehead of this blog, Mr. Thormeyer gets a free pass from my nonsense (not that I'd pick on him anyway). If you're confused as to the title of the blog or background image, it is in reference to the 1999 Brad Pitt/Edward Norton cult hit Fight Club.

See/hear/read something worthy of scorn in our Monterey/Salinas/Santa Cruz media? Let me know!