Tuesday, May 24, 2011

Nightly News Promotes Oprah

In case anyone needs further evidence that Nightly News is a joke, here it is. NBC did not air a Nightly News broadcast on Saturday, because they needed three hours to cover a two-minute horse race. So when Nightly News came on the air Sunday, it was their first newscast in 48 hours. And what did they choose to spend time on? A story about the new "Hangover 2" movie and a story about Oprah's last show. Sunday's Nightly News devoted a total of five minutes--nearly a quarter of the broadcast--to these two stories. Now we all know that Nightly News rarely covers an entertainment subject unless they are promoting the interests of NBC Universal or Comcast. So while "The Hangover 2" is a Warner Bros. movie, it's obvious that NBC Universal has a hand in there somewhere. For one thing, the capuchin monkey that appears in the film is currently performing at Universal Studios Hollywood. So by hyping the film, Nightly News is helping to draw visitors to Universal Studios. And let's not forget that the film will eventually be appearing on Comcast's Pay-Per-view channel. So promoting the film is a great way for Nightly News to boost their parent company's PPV revenue. Smart.

And what about Oprah? Why did Nightly News air a 2:40 "news story" about Oprah's last show? Because if viewers want to see Oprah's new network, OWN, they have to subscribe to Comcast. So by promoting Oprah's network, Nightly News was promoting a channel that is helping to line Comcast's corporate pockets. Well done, Nightly News producers.

On Friday's story about how the Louisiana Dept. of Wildlife and Fisheries is handling the flooding in that state, we saw an interview with someone who was identified in a Nightly News graphic as "Randy Pausinn". His name is actually Randy Pausina, and he's the Asst. Secretary of the DWF. On Sunday's story about Pres. Obama's attempt to mediate the Israel-Palestine conflict, Martin Indyk was described in a graphic as a "Former U.S. Anbassador". So how does one get appointed as an "anbassador"? I guess you have to know some very "inportant" people.

Why is Nightly News constantly misspelling names? This rarely happens on ABC's World News or on the CBS Evening News. But it's a frequent occurrence on Nightly News. Obviously, the Nightly News producers don't care very much about accuracy--certainly not as much as their counterparts at ABC and CBS. There's a word for this type of carelessness. It's called "sloppy". Nightly News is a sloppy broadcast and they employ sloppy producers. If they can't even spell names correctly, how are we supposed to trust them with the important stuff. Answer: We can't.

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