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No News is Good News?

September 15, 2010 / / 0 Comments

This bulletin just in to the local newsdesk. CBS is planning to air a program called Survivor: Nicaragua. It isn’t a new show. It isn’t a new idea. A new setting and cast maybe.

Why does it merit coverage on the local news program?

The average newscast has about seventeen minutes to report everything that happens, once the commercials, sports, weather, and happy talk are subtracted. Last night we got a forty-five second promotion for the next night’s primetime offering instead of news. (I’m sorry, but being old school, I don’t count Survivor: Nicaragua‘s debut as news.)

I’m also crusty enough that I don’t consider what other people are thinking about the news as news either. (This blog – OBVIOUSLY – isn’t news. Just an opinion.) Another news item was knocked off the broadcast so we could all hear Soonermom’s thoughts about singing the national anthem at OU games. Important stuff. And it isn’t enough to hear only her feelings on the subject. We’ve got to wait while the anchor reads the deeply held beliefs on the subject from three or four other viewers who ran to the computer and submitted through the internet. Letters to the editor, modern style.

After every second or third news item, the anchor explains that you can get the rest of the story on the internet. Why bother turning on the television? There isn’t enough time on the newscast to include the news, because time must be allowed for showing the anchorpeople riding in parades or judging chili-cookoffs. And extra time has to go to that perennial top story, in which the Department of Transportation spokesman stands out in the windy construction zone explaining once again that the expressways are under construction.

News flash… We know that already. Not new. Not news.

Whew! I feel ten pounds lighter after airing that rant. We now return you to your regularly scheduled blog.

Broadcast news that is truly entertaining:

The Wisdom of Age

September 13, 2010 / / 0 Comments

Don’t think I’m claiming it. Still looking for it here. (Found the age part, still looking for the Wisdom.)

I hear people say, “Ahhh, if I had it to do over again, I wouldn’t change a thing.” Patooty.

Like the time facing a plate of smelly shrimp and eating them anyway and spending the weekend on a different kind of chair while recovering? That’s one no-brainer change. Speeding through the school zone was bad the first time. Why repeat it? Leave the house for your own wedding ten minutes before the scheduled start? Not the best way to start a new life-chapter. I’d change that.

Wouldn’t change a thing? Patooty-tooty.

Lots of things could be better if we knew then what we know now. The trouble is, if someone told us back then, we wouldn’t have believed it. Life’s best lessons are those learned the hardest.

I loved watching the little grandbabies the other night. Small enough to stay out of trouble, but big enough to cry tears that roll down beautiful cheeks to land on the back of your hand. I wanted to save them in a jar so as to never forget the moment. No one is happy when Mom and Dad leave. It takes time to get over it.

I’m still learning that, too. I picked up several great lessons from the babies. I also discovered some lessons have already been learned. I do possess patience, despite what you may have thought. Tears aren’t forever either. (About two minutes and a set of car keys work wonders…)

Bookstores offer a lot of perspectives on things. Especially for owners on Monday mornings when the clouds promise raindrops that could be saved in jars.

Your change could add up to profits from the past! Try Careers for History Buffs and Others who Profit from the Past by Blythe Camenson:

Say it ain’t so, Joe!

September 9, 2010 / / 0 Comments

Some things you just don’t want to hear. The kid pleading with Shoeless Joe Jackson to deny that he took money to throw the 1919 World Series.

He said it weren’t so, over and over. Said it in a court of law and anyplace else someone might hear. A jury found him innocent. He did deny that a kid ever said such a thing to him. The story persists, mostly among old-timey baseball fans. You whippersnappers are saying, HEY! Isn’t Say it ain’t so a song by Weezer? To which we reply, HEY! Isn’t Weezer an old guy with allergies so bad he can’t blow the germs off the corndog he just dropped in the dirt?

Food Network Magazine reports that 25% of chefs they surveyed admitted to cooking something that had been dropped on the floor. I worked in a bicycle shop that was kept so clean I might have eaten off the floor. Restaurant floors? I don’t think so. I’d never heard of the five second rule until I owned a restaurant (supposedly, if a dropped item was picked up before five seconds passed, it was still clean. Germs being pretty slow and all). I’ve seen people blowing on their dropped item, using that sterilizing exhale technique, but it’s not for me.

I didn’t even let my restaurant employees JOKE about a five second rule. A good reputation is earned over time but lost in an instant. (Sort of like paychecks at the Cherokee Casino.) The price of something dropped isn’t worth the cost of goodwill lost. It applies to more than just restaurants and dropped food. Speaking of Goodwill, that’s where they should drop off that that creepy plastic-headed royal racing around in the Burger King commercials, Talk about a dying ad campaign. Would you like flies with that?

I’d like to hear the ad agency exec pitching some of the ideas that get made into commercials. “It’s going to be great! We’ll have a giant yellow bumblebee with dark menacing eyes and a Spanish accent. He’s wingless, sort of, and kinda hovers around stoked up on mometasone furoate monohydrate. You’re gonna LOVE it!”

The voice? Say it ain’t Antonio…

Get in the ad men mood (no Weezer though):

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