Josh Rogers
JMC 3063
Newscast Critique
News 9 at Noon
I just want to forward this with an apology I didn’t get it done sooner. I haven’t had enough time to watch an entire newscast, let alone take notes about it and critique it. That being said, I don’t think I ever quite realized how quickly thirty minute newscasts go. They packed so many stories in such a small amount of time; I think they left out a lot of important information. I’ll break down my thoughts about each block first then the newscast as a whole.
The show leads off with breaking news about a car wreck and gas leak on SE 29th and Midwest Blvd in Midwest City. It transitioned nicely to their next story, which was about a fire in Del City. Breaking news to more breaking news…I don’t have an issue with it. This next transition and story I have a huge problem with, though. They jumped straight from a fire to saying they have more details about Bob Barry Jr.’s death, but they hardly had any. At this point, what they reported was common knowledge to their viewers. Even if it wasn’t, though, they spent around 20 seconds on it. The story went by so fast, the only piece of information I could process, let alone read from the graphic, was that Gustavo Gutierrez had been deported three times. I honestly have no idea what else Robin said because they spent so little time on it. After that, they went to a package about Dzhokhar Tsarnaev’s sentencing. The package was well done, but there was no anchor tag. It went from CBS’s reporter straight into a 3-minute weather segment, because in Oklahoma, we care more about weather than about real news. After the weather, they went to their “Crime Tracker” segment, telling one story (this is four minutes into the newscast, by the way). Their next story was about a car that crashed into a church, but they didn’t really mention this wasn’t part of “Crime Tracker.” That’s a small detail, but still a bit annoying. The next transition was well done. They went from the church wreck to talking about the South Carolina tragedy. They talked about the victims being laid to rest this week and how Senator Pinckney is going to lie in state in the South Carolina Capitol rotunda. This led to the Alabama governor ordering Confederate flags removed from capitol grounds (another nice transition), then to Louisiana Governor Jindal entering the presidential race (an okay transition, but not the best they could’ve done). The last two stories are about the NSA and the government changing their policy on families negotiating with terrorists. The stories can go together, but their transitions just weren’t very good. Finally, after a quick tease, we’re in our first commercial break. Eleven stories in nine minutes doesn’t seem like much in the world of news, but they went by so quickly they left no real impact about what’s happening.
The next few blocks—if you can call a minute on air then three on commercial a block—were rather pointless. There was a package about the NY escapees, then after a ten-second weather tease, commercial. Three minutes of weather (side note: why do we need two full weather segments?), a quick kicker about a dad catching a baseball while holding his baby, then commercial. A package that lasted under a minute, quick weather tease again, then commercial. Then the tag of the newscast consisted of the dad catching the baseball—again—a “Fishing with Lacey” photo and finally the nine-day forecast. Again.
The timing of this newscast made absolutely no sense to me. Why frontload the show and rush through all of the actual stories, have TWO FULL weather segments, and have seven minutes of commercial within twelve minutes of show? It felt like whiplash, honestly. I don’t understand why this is okay and why the producer thinks that their viewers will appreciate it. Just because it’s noon doesn’t mean the quality of the newscast doesn’t have to be up to par.