Fox Business anchor or porn star?

I’m not making this up. Radar Magazine has posted a quiz that pokes fun at the cable news industry and the sudden abundance of hot anchors. You may have heard about Radar when they fabricated presidential candidates in sexually suggestive poses. Go ahead and test your knowledge. (Via TVNewser)

5 comments October 26th, 2007

FEMA fakes press conference (can you believe this?)

This is stunning. On Tuesday, FEMA gave reporters a 15-minute notice that it was throwing a press conference about its response to the California fires. How it improved since Katrina. Because of the late notice, reporters called in to a conference pool, but there were also people in the audience who asked questions to the man at the podium, Deputy Administrator Harvey Johnson. Questions like, “Are you happy with FEMA’s response so far?” Turns out, the people in the audience were FEMA’s own public affairs personnel!

After getting ripped online for the stunt — even the White House had some choice words — FEMA apologized today, asking reporters not to focus on this massive breach of trust but on all the good work it’s doing in Southern California. So I have a question. Why should we believe anything you say now? (Thanks, Tim!)

10 comments October 26th, 2007

San Diego residents rip TV fire maps

Anyone who’s worked in local TV news knows that tracking a fire’s progress on a map is a very difficult proposition. First, fires are fickle. Second, the information is usually not readily available. Now multiply this by a bunch of fires with massive evacuations and 24/7 live coverage, and maintaining accurate fire maps is extremely difficult.

But San Diego is a great case study: how maps can be more important than live aerials, and how the web can help. Here’s what one person had to say about the TV coverage there: “My home may be on fire. I cannot get through on 211 (fire information line). After trying several websites, not one of them would load…. I resorted to calling the newsroom of EACH TV outlet. I pleaded with them to put up a map. I saw a freeway map depicting little flames at several points…. I explained that while talking heads in front of ferocious flames made for great television, what the public needed was INFORMATION…. Where were the maps? Please tell me that you didn’t unload $750,000 for a graphics system that can’t do maps!… Finally, after two or three days, we saw newsreaders holding up Thomas Brothers guides, and pointing with their fingers to affected areas.”

In this story, maps are more important than live chopper aerials. The scale of the fires was simply too extreme for chopper aerials to provide meaningful information. But all the stations went out of their way to pool chopper resources. One San Diego resident suggests that TV stations pool their map resources. “Create a ‘war room’ with MAPS. Keep the maps up-to-date as you can: active fire lines, firefighting unit deployment, evacuation areas, wind directions and speeds. SHOW THE MAPS.”

What a great idea. The LA Times and KPBS did just that online by creating Google Maps that could be distributed anywhere. (Google even highlighted both of them on its main Maps page.) Pooling this is easy since you could have multiple contributors coordinating updates on a single Google map. Then you display the map live, on the air, zooming from fire to fire, street to street. (Google has TV licensing agreements, but I’m sure in this case Google wouldn’t have minded if San Diego stations put them on the air without an agreement.) Here at KING, we have a deal to use Microsoft’s Live Maps on our air.

In short, maps and the visual depiction of data on TV is a critical component of breaking news coverage, and it’s best organized if the same mapping can be ported to the web and updated automatically. Many times, it’s even more important than good video.

7 comments October 26th, 2007

KGTV ‘digital correspondents’ cover fire

The San Diego fires took their toll on microwave receive and relay sites, limiting local TV stations’ ability to send back live shots while covering the story. KGTV recently switched to a one-man-band newsgathering approach with 27 “digital correspondents” armed with Panasonic AG-HVX200 P2 camcorders, Apple MacBook Pro laptop computers, Apple Final Cut Pro and Verizon broadband wireless Internet cards. When they were able, the digital correspodents met up with either one of three microwave trucks or three temporary microwave relay stations. When those weren’t available or out of range, some were able to file reports on the laptop’s webcam (using iChat) via the Verizon wireless broadband cards. KGTV tells Broadcast Engineering that the quality was not nearly as solid as a microwave shot, but it gave the station more reach on the ground. (Thanks, Greg!)

2 comments October 26th, 2007

Diller: Media companies still ‘don’t get it’

Barry Diller said today’s major media companies still don’t get the internet — with the possible exception of News Corp. Diller said media execs should invest heavily in R&D in technology even if Wall Street might punish them for overspending in the short run. And he said companies should build new products online from scratch, and praised Time Warner’s TMZ.com as an example. Sounds like good advice to me.

2 comments October 26th, 2007

Comedy Central serious about Colbert run

Well, at least serious enough to have the lawyers look into it. Meanwhile today, Colbert has surpassed the 1 million friends mark on his “1,000,000 Strong For Stephen T. Colbert” Facebook group. So who’s behind this strategic effort to engage potential voters? A 16-year-old high school student named Raj. Now there’s even a poll suggesting that Colbert could be a presidential frontrunner in a month. What is this, Man of the Year?

Add comment October 26th, 2007