Don’t say Facebook or Twitter on French TV, radio

Here is my take on the French ban on saying Facebook and Twitter on television and radio broadcasts (at the Online Journalism Review):

http://www.ojr.org/ojr/people/AaronChimbel/201106/1981/

Duty to cover severe weather even during DWTS

I take great pride in having worked at WFAA-TV, one of the great television stations in this country over the past few decades. During much of my time there I covered severe weather in real-time online and on-air.

So when a major storm began moving through the Dallas-Fort Worth area Tuesday night the first place I turned (even though we were watching another station) was Channel 8. Generally speaking, they do exceptional severe weather coverage. Chief Meteorologist Pete Delkus is usually the first weather anchor on with important weather information and the last to end coverage.

What happened Tuesday was embarrassing. Instead of going wall-to-wall, the television term for continuous coverage, with the severe weather the station instead decided to mostly just show the finale of Dancing with the Stars, one of the most popular shows on television.

But a lot of things are more important than the dancing ability of Kristie Alley and Hines Ward.

During the height of the storm around 8:30 p.m. when there were tornado warnings, meaning the current conditions were capable of producing a tornado, and there were several reports of rotation all of the local television stations, including CW33, were in continuous coverage except WFAA, the former ratings leader in the market. Instead, WFAA did occasional cut-ins or did a split screen with DWTS.

The choice was provide potentially life-saving information to people or show a meaningless dancing competition.

WFAA made the wrong decision.

Why paywalls won’t work and the NY Times mistake

Over in the Online Journalism Review I muse on the mistake The New York Times is making with its plan to charge for online content and why other newspapers should be wary of following.

http://www.ojr.org/ojr/people/AaronChimbel/201103/1954/

When did journalists become cheerleaders?

Television news anchors used to at least pretend to be impartial purveyors of news. Not any more. Now open cheerleading is just fine.

This is certainly not the first case of journalists dressing up in home team garb when talking about a game, but it is simply drives me crazy. Completely bonkers.

Friday, it started with “smack talk” between the morning anchors from Dallas-based WFAA (my former employer) and KHOU, their Houston sister-station to preview the Dallas Cowboys-Houston Texans game Sunday. Both stations are owned by Belo Corp.

The KHOU anchors were all wearing Texans jerseys, which prompted this question from KHOU anchor Vicente Arenas to the WFAA anchors: “Where’s your spirit?”

The WFAA anchors blew it off before maybe the truest statement from WFAA’s Alexa Conomos on the lack of them wearing Cowboys jerseys: “It wasn’t in the budget.”

At this point I’m not totally angry. My former employer, the great WFAA is still holding on to some sense of dignity. I should have known better.

Monday, after the Cowboys dominated the Texans 27-13, WFAA succumbed to the idiocy, complete with Cynthia Izaguirre wearing a ridiculous cartoon foam Cowboys cowboy hat.

The nonsensical smack talk continued.

Maybe it’s better this way. There is no doubt where the anchors stand or where they are told to stand and viewers have a good reason to change channels or just turn the TV off.

Mashup example

Here is an example of a Google map mashup:

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Converging on campus

I have an article on TCU’s efforts at convergence in this month’s Convergence Newsletter: http://sc.edu/cmcis/news/convergence/v7no6.html

Fox News’ Digital Divide

This is interesting. I almost never go to Fox News on the web, but visit CNN.com all the time:

From Media Week:  Fox News’ Digital Divide.

Texas Rangers saga shows dilemma for newspapers

For more than 15 hours Wednesday Texas Rangers fans were fixated on a courtroom in Fort Worth.

The bankrupt baseball franchise was up for auction. Hall of Fame pitcher Nolan Ryan, the team’s president, the front man for one prospective ownership group and Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban leading another group.

It was a huge story that led local newscasts and was prominent on local news websites all day. The tweets flew. Blogs were pounded out.

But here’s the dilemma for newspapers: the announcement that Cuban’s group would stop bidding, thus making Ryan’s group the owners of the Texas Rangers didn’t come until about 12:40 a.m. Thursday, well past normal newspaper deadlines.

The next day, one local newspaper had results on the front page and the other had a vague explanation that the auction could go all night. It didn’t even go an hour into Thursday.

The Fort Worth Star-Telegram got it right. The Dallas Morning News looked silly.

This shouldn’t really be a surprise.

The Dallas Morning News relies on The Fort Worth Star-Telegram for its Rangers coverage (although the DMN does have former Rangers beat writer Evan Grant on as a blogger now, but he was in Seattle with the team).

This arrangement is part of a deal where the Star-T covers the Rangers and Texas Motor Speedway for both papers and the Morning News covers the Mavericks and Dallas Stars for both.

The papers also share arts coverage.

Make no mistake it is a financial decision and the results mean the next day for the people who expect to get the news. If they can’t rely on that they really don’t have an incentive to keep buying the paper.

Are apps the latest saviors?

http://www.broadcastingcable.com/article/438649-Stations_Turn_Apps_Into_Cash.php

Oprah anchors the news, again

Oprah is in Dallas and, in what is surely a ratings stunt, anchored the 5 p.m. news for my former employer, WFAA-TV. (Watch an excerpt here.)

The “Queen of Talk” said it was the first time in nearly 26 years she’d anchored the news.

What bothers me about this is that Oprah is so far removed from being an objective, impartial purveyor of information. She campaigned for the president and now that her ratings, particularly in DFW, are down she’s sitting next to Gloria Campos in a effort to recapture some ratings magic.

It won’t work, at least not long-term.

Her ratings — and thus the ratings for WFAA’s 5 p.m. news — are down, likely in part because of her backing of then Senator Obama, and a tired format lost amid her other interests.

WFAA President Mike Devlin has been clear he is not happy with Oprah’s ratings and the subsequent decline in ratings for the 5 p.m. news, so the easy tactic is to resort to gimmicks.

It bothers me. It probably bothers viewers too.

The news is supposed to be about the news.

Gimmicks work, but only in the short-term. What made WFAA the dominant ratings leader in DFW for more than two decades was a commitment to the news. Doing news the right way and for the right reasons.

Now were left with gimmicks and ratings for a day, but don’t expect the 5 p.m. news or Oprah’s 4 p.m. lead-in to see a sustained spike.

Gimmicks don’t work.