Driving to St. Mary's Glacier this weekend I took this shot of Interstate 70 heading to the mountains... (as with most TVGuy photos, clicking on it makes it magically grow...)
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Last week we tackled Channel 2 in our tour of local Denver newscasts.. oh, I'm sorry.. "The Deuce"...
Anyway, as we continue in numerical order, next up.. Channel 4 (CBS)
Location: The TVGuy Mansion, not yet in HD sadly...
Dates: Weeks of May 18th & 25th, 2009.
This Week's Channel: 4 (CBS)
First off, I want to say that a former co-worker and friend of mine, Duncan, is a producer at Channel 4... fortunately, I don't fall in the demographic range his station is trying to hit, namely anyone born between February 1947 and... umm.. well, before there were cars...
Again, we continue on with our old friends Good, Bad and Ugly...
Good: As we all know by now, nothing is more annoying onscreen than the 834 tickers of stock, news, sports, weather, stocks and recipe information that seemingly most stations now feel obligated to put up there... I mean, what on earth am I supposed to be paying attention to??
Channel 4 has stripped it down to the bare essentials and given us 1 thing, and 1 thing only... the forecast for noon, 3pm and 6pm with the time and temperature.
Let me just say... god bless you. Perfection. Simple, EXACTLY why I would turn on the tv in the morning... nothing scrolls on the screen, just the single most important thing a local news source can tell me.. is it going to rain today? Again, thanks. (A little more of this would be great, but it's about all I'm going to sadly get...)
(Okay, I'll throw a few more out there... did the Nuggets win last night? Major Traffic Screwups? Death of a VIP? That's it.. nothing else... just rotate those four things endlessly... thanks in advance..)
Bad: The weather graphics here aren't any better than they were over at "The Deuce"... it's like we're going backwards technology wise... c'mon, have you people seen Google Maps?? Get with the program!
Ugly: Channel 4 "right-justifies" its graphics for the forecast like stations have done for decades.. that is to say, they are pushed over to one side of the screen while the weather person is keyed over them on the other side... unfortunately, Channel 4 never puts anyone over these graphics.. it just looks sloppy and lazy...
Bad: Live Copter 4 is on the scene at 6am to tell us that... well, the roads are pretty clear out here... you know, LIKE THEY ARE EVERY SINGLE DAY AT 6AM.... I hate TV traffic...
Ugly: Our chopper folks tell us helpfully though that you've GOT to be careful out there, because it's SUNNY!!! AAIIEE!!
Look, they invented the sun visor about 12,125 years ago.... we've got it covered... thanks though...
Bad: Our male anchor (I watched for an hour and never saw his name on screen... I have no earthly idea what his first name is.. honest... let's call him "Tank"....) badly needs some hair gel... the top of his head looks like a summer dandelion...
Good: Gotta say, the background graphics used for Channel 4's full screen information is just great... I mean, I wish it was the background for my home computer... really nice, words are easy to read... me likey...
Bad: Having said that, there is no real way to discern what year we're living in while watching Channel 4 news... could be 2009, could be 1992.... it's a crapshoot really...
Ugly: My least favorite affectation local stations have begun in this, the "Age of the Internet"... yes, it's "Viewer Opinions"... the News4 anchors sit and read off their computer screens what some people have "written" in to them in talking about the stories... it's every bit as boring and frustrating as it sounds...
Listen, "Norm from Aurora" needs to get the hell out of my living room... your station has paid you people to have some sort of skill at newsgathering... I DON'T CARE WHAT 2 RANDOM PEOPLE HAVE TO SAY ABOUT A CITY-COUNTY BOARD MEETING.... it's just really lazy and stupid and good lord I hate it just about as much as anything...
As I'm about to find out, my hatred will be compounded by the fact that they do this about 5 times an hour... it's the opposite of news. I mentioned I hate it, right??
Ugly: It's 6:30am, and that means we'll get to the day's top stories and... er... oh god, no... MORE VIEWER INSTANT MESSAGES....
Let me throw one in a little late.. "TVGuy from Denver" thinks Channel 4 has its head up its ass...
Bad: I still have no idea what the first names are of either of our anchors... they have as much chemistry as sulfur and water...
Ugly: Gloria Neal joins us to... ummm.. I really don't know actually, other than to say she sits on set for about 5 minutes talking about one story "in-depth"... I know her name is Gloria Neal because EVERY SINGLE SECOND SHE IS ON AIR HER NAME GRAPHIC IS AS WELL... it's like she's wearing a name tag... I'm utterly baffled... she also says "Honey" about 3,225 times in 4 minutes...
Ugly: I'm told our copter reporter is a "Traffic Specialist"... what a load of crap that is... hey, it gets busy at Rush Hour, then tapers off after that... look, I'm a Traffic Specialist!! Weeee!!
Let's get to the evening newscast, shall we??
Ugly: The 2nd segment begins with an unbelievably cheesy shot of the four anchors sitting around a table laughing and talking as if they were actually friends while we get their first and last names read to us (thank god I know who someone is!!) But it's just crazy cheesy... I couldn't hate it more...
Bad: Tonight's weather graphics are brought to us by the year 1998...
Super Duper Ugly: There really is nothing to comment on with this show.. it's perfectly servicable but is the same show that was done 10 years ago... there is nothing whatsoever to distinguish it from anything else... I'm not convinced the "anchor team" likes each other, or for that matter knows what everyone's name is....
But the worst part about this newscast is the commercial break after sports where the female anchor tells us "We'll be right back"... then the viewer is asked to sit through 2 minutes of commercials and then we get a TEN SECOND last segment where the anchor team says "thanks for watching" and then they are squeezed back to a graphical representation of them on an internet page... which is odd because the web is what's killing this Informational Dinosaur... but again, you asked me to sit through 2 minutes of commercials so you can basically say "goodbye'....?????!??
Couldn't we have covered that earlier? Have some more stories in the other segments? You're asking me to sit through paid ads so you can say "see ya"???
Guess what... I'll join you... to everyone at Channel 4 news I'll say "See Ya"... like, when I'm 67 years old... til then, you're on your own...
TVGuy Rating (out of 100): 17
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Sheldon: I think that you have as much of a chance of having a sexual relationship with Penny as the Hubble Telescope does of discovering at the center of every black hole is a little man with a flashlight searching for a circuit breaker.
--"The Big Bang Theory" (CBS)
1 comments:
that photo can't be real! amazing!
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