Wednesday, March 16, 2005

Live, local and broken

It's always interesting to watch as a popular product loses goodwill among consumers. Here's an example. People used to trust their local TV news more than their local paper. But according to this, the two are now even. Not a good sign for local anchors. The study also found that viewers think their local TV news is less biased than papers, but this is easily explained. Local TV news has simply quit covering politics. How can you detect a political agenda in an uninterrupted parade of consumer awareness stories? The constant presence of knitted-brow reporters solemnly investigating the pros and cons of botox probably has something to do with the loss of credibility too.

Which brings me to Channel 11's Bennett Cunningham. Each sweeps period, he shows us every filthy restaurant in the city. This week, he introduced us to a woman whose hair fell out after a visit to a styling school. The man clearly believes that the purpose of every report is to make viewers hurl. Stop it!

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