Dec. 4, 2013

By Erik Hall
 
The clips of Will Ferrell playing Ron Burgundy while co-hosting the KXMB newscast Saturday night in Bismarck, N.D., made me smile initially.
 
Then I wondered, what was the station thinking.
 
There is little downside to Ferrell or the upcoming “Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues” movie about going on a local TV station and doing this stunt. The upside is the free publicity that has been picked up by several media outlets including Rolling Stone, Time, The Boston Globe and The Associated Press.
 
There is an understandable upside to KXMB of the publicity, but there is a pretty big downside, too.
 
KXMB is saying its newscast is a joke. The network says it thinks little of its anchors. The network says any actor off the street can do the job of a supposedly trained journalist.
 
The network got lucky that there was not serious news that day, which could have turning the Ferrell/Burgundy stunt from entertaining to humiliating.
 
The Associated Press story says there was no money that changed hands, which I found to be a relief. Payment either way would have made the stunt even more questionable and said that KXMB’s newscast is for sale.
 
KXMB sales manager Tammy Blumhagen told the AP that Ferrell wanted to maintain “the integrity of the newscast.” But is that really possible when a stunt is taking place like this. It seemed that Ferrell was not involved in writing the majority of what he read off the teleprompter and adlibbed humor into the script where he could.
 
Ferrell was scheduled to do a similar co-hosting stint Thursday on ESPN’s SportsCenter, but it was announced Wednesday that his co-hosting has been postponed indefinitely because a ruling is scheduled Thursday in the rape investigation involving Florida State’s quarterback.
 
I do not have a problem with Ferrell playing Burgundy on a sports news show like SportsCenter that is light-hearted anyways. But for a network to turn over its primetime newscast to an actor is a farce that I hope to never see again.

Nov. 6, 2013

By Erik Hall
 
Sam Kirkland wrote a story for Poynter today titled, “Despite complaints, comments broadly allowed on many news sites.” He looked at the top 50 news web sites for their commenting practices.
 
I was surprised and excited to read that so many new sites have gone away from anonymous commenting. Kirkland’s story said “86 percent of the 50 websites visited allow readers to comment on stories via Facebook, and two of the top 10 — ESPN and USA Today — require it.”
 
Going to commenters registering with their Facebook account is great and long overdue. It makes people put their name to what they say. I hat anonymous comments. If someone feels strongly about a topic, they should put their name on it if they want to enter the public discourse on a subject.
 
I am not talking about sharing information anonymously with reporters. I am talking about opinion, which is often vitriolic. There is no good reason for opinion to be shared anonymously.
 
Kirkland cites a study from London’s University of Kent that says users are twice as civil online as when they are anonymous.
 
I would like to see more news sites follow the lead of ESPN and USA Today and make their commenters use Facebook. It makes logging in easy, and more importantly, it makes them identify who they are on their comment.
 
Better discourse makes the experience better for everyone, and all it takes to create that better discourse is to end anonymous comments and make users register as who they are and not some fictional screen name. 

Oct. 6, 2013

By Erik Hall
 
The car chase and shooting of Miriam Carey that occurred at the U.S. Capitol on Thursday, Oct. 3, led to a discussion about the coverage the event received on WTEM’s “Tony Kornheiser Show.”
 
Kornheiser, a retired columnist from The Washington Post, asked, “It is immediately tweeted out. Is that good for the country? Is that good for our lives that stuff like, “Shots fired at the Capitol” is immediately tweeted out? The rest of us who aren’t at the Capitol go into a panic. I’m wondering, is this a good thing?”
 
The panel of guests then went into a discussion about the reporting that occurred through Twitter during that day’s events and the panic it created. The early tweets were about shots fired and a Capitol guard being shot. It was a significant amount of time later until the media learned the full story about the shots being fired exclusively by Capitol guards and that the woman was unarmed.
 
I felt the same way the cast of the show felt. The initial tweets coming from that event painted a much bleaker picture than actually occurred.
 
I read tweets about shots being fired, the place being on lockdown and a guard that was working without pay being shot. Then the tweeting calmed down and I was left with this picture of someone running through the building shooting. It was several hours later that I learned that there was no threat being poised to elected officials. It was a mentally unstable woman wreaking havoc with no apparent intention of harming others.
 
I’m left wondering the benefit of tweeting out so little knowledge. This was days after Navy Yard shooting, and this did not turn out to be nearly the same level of threat.
 
Is tweeting something like shots fired at the Capitol beneficial without context? I don’t think so. It scares more than it informs. It is a much different scenario that Capitol guards fired shots than for someone bringing a gun into the Capitol.
 
It is one thing to break into a radio program and or TV program and mention something like that because people listening to radio or watching TV are more likely to stick with that program and see what happens if they are interested.
 
Sending a tweet does not have the same followup. Some people might go follow what that reporter says in their next tweet that comes 20 minutes later, but it is not likely. A tweet goes out there and most people that see a tweet that says “Shots fired at the Capitol” are not going to read the next tweet from that person.
I know I don’t spent more than a few bursts a day looking at Twitter. I feel most people are the same way that they look at Twitter occasionally. That makes it all the more important to have context before you tweet, and I think the Miriam Carey case showed that to be true. 

Sept. 12, 2013

By Erik Hall
 
Growing up in Charleston, Ill., the main local news station was WEIC-AM 1270, and that was the station that broadcast Charleston High School athletics. I remember mom and dad always having WEIC on Saturday mornings to hear about events going on in town that weekend.
 
I have fond memories of listening to other AM radio stations like WDWS-AM 1400 in Champaign, Ill.; WLPO-AM 1220 in Oglesby, Ill.; and the Chicago power WGN-AM 720.
 
All the memories I have of listening to people talk to me over those stations made it disappointing to read about the struggles of AM radio in The New York Times this week. Edward Wyatt’s story “A quest to save AM before it’s lost in the static” talked about the efforts of Federal Communication Commission member Ajit Pai to save AM radio.
 
The biggest problem for AM radio is how much weaker those stations have become because of interference from cell phones and many other electronic devices.
 
There are steps Pai wants to make to save AM radio, but I honestly do not see any of them being successful.
 
It seemed pretty clear from Wyatt’s story that the end is near for AM radio. I think in my lifetime that AM radio will no longer exist. A power like WGN can stick around, but the audiences for smaller stations will dwindle as it gets harder and harder to get those signals.
 
The story makes it sound like the best option for AM radio is to use an FM translator. That sounds like an option I would be fine with, but I think, the FM stations need to be willing to allow talk radio to take a spot on the FM dial. The great radio hosts that I have enjoyed so much have all been on AM — hosts like Tony Kornheiser, Steve Garman, Jim Turpin, Lanny Slevin, Rod Thorson, Nick Digilio, John Williams along with Steve and Johnnie.
 
They talk to you. A good radio host makes you feel like they are speaking directly to you. That does not happen in the same manner with television personalities or writers. Radio makes it feel like a one-on-one conversation.
 
I hope FM radio accepts the talk format, or that would be the great loss in losing AM radio. It would be terrible to lose that one-on-one connection.