Raw, but c*nsored blabbing and blogging of a young journalista
and local news producer in Southern New England.
email topstorylive % at # gmail + dot = com

Sunday, June 27, 2004

Fake pages can be Funny

Making fun of Internet Explorer is always good for a laugh. Take a look at this page at Something Awful.

Something Awful also apparently won its way into Wil Wheaton's heart by doing a total sendup of WilWheaton.net. It is priceless. But poor Brice Beckham! (to be picked as the butt of this joke)

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... Scribbled by Bill T ... 6/27/2004 12:20:00 AM ... Email this entry ...
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So-so

Gee, I pushed everyone to go see the latest on the site and now I can't think of anything new to do. Such is immobility.

I have been told that one of the words I used in my Shameless Self-Promotion doesn't really exist: "libidinous."
I checked it out at Merriam-Webster.com, and it turns out it does so exist. (You just have to SPELL it correctly.) I might not have been fully aware of what it meant when I used it but I didn't make it up. Ha HA!

It means LICENTIOUS or LEWD (when it comes to me, "inappropriate" comes to mind here) as well as LUSTFUL. We won't go into that bit.

I have yet to put the Pride Squiggle sticker on my car that I bought two weekends ago at Boston Pride. I also desperately need to clean up the apartment. And I need to call Adrienne because she's in Boston and I need to go see her while she's in New England instead of in Iowa. Let's see what else. Doctor's appointment tomorrow is confirmed. Still need to send Dad the Father's Day card and thing (relax, I called him and talked to him and my mother at length on Father's Day. They were happy).

Need to watch some Netflix. I swear I've had Catch Me If You Can on the coffee table (read: college foot locker covered with books and periodicals) for like a month. It's not good when your DVD viewer is also your computer. Should I register for, I mean, put on my Amazon.com Wish List, a blender, a DVD player, a new larger television, or more than one of the above? I'm probably going to save up and buy myself a new television one of these days, so not that. Maybe a blender. I should save up for a DVD player too.

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... Scribbled by Bill T ... 6/24/2004 10:43:00 AM ... Email this entry ...
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TopStoryLive: Setting Trends, Ahead Of Its Time?

If you read a CableNewser Exclusive: Coming July 12, A New MSNBC Daytime, you might think Rick Kaplan of MSNBC (what do they call it over there? MS? versus the CNBC or the Network?) was Googling me. Okay, my one-time thought of a big wheel newscast of the day's events isn't exactly what insiders are describing to CableNewser; it's more focused on in-depth to the Nth degree, and doing Every Single Thing And Angle on the quarter-hour's top story. That's in daytime. Interesting. My proposed format was more implausible and starting the entire hour at the location of the day's top story, and moving on from there in a sort of pyramid 10pm-style-hour format (by the end of the newscast you would have gotten to the sports and entertainment and kickers, maybe re-capping the top story at :58). And Kaplan wants to do it ALL DAY instead of just that one hour a la Keith Olberman's "Countdown."

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... Scribbled by Bill T ... 6/22/2004 01:08:00 PM ... Email this entry ...
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Correct One For The Gipper

Okay, I have been informed by my father that I confused Knute Rockne (portrayed by Pat O'Brien, no apparent relation to the Access Hollywood co-anchor) and George "The Gipper" Gipp, which Ronald Reagan portrayed. See the proof at IMDB's entry for "Knute Rockne All American".

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... Scribbled by Bill T ... 6/22/2004 11:34:00 AM ... Email this entry ...
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I'd better watch my *ss

Oh dear. People are actually seeing the thing.*

The lovely folks of the Hooker Street Band say a fan passed on my review to them. And they actually invited me to a show. What the hell!?

Trouble is, I haven't checked my Yahoo email in upwards of a month. And the show was in May. Oh dear. Sorry, May Sweeps was busy.
My apologies. Well, in return I must insist on buying a CD. And I'll have to go in search of the next gig.

(They also inform me that Hooker Street is actually in Allston, MA, off of North Harvard. Of course it had to be a Boston thing. 8^D )

*i.e. this BLOG

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... Scribbled by Bill T ... 6/19/2004 05:30:00 AM ... Email this entry ...
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Who needs drugs...?

...when you can have Munchies brand junk food mixed with Snyder's Snaps and River Queen Salted Mixed Nuts (At Least 50% Peanuts), plus Poland Spring Lime Essence Sparkling Water at 5:00 in the morning, booming thunder and lightly pouring rain, when you've taken your medication four to five hours late (because you were asleep at the time) and are feeling edgy to The Beatles' "Day Tripper"?

....Wait, now it's "8 Days A Week..."

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... Scribbled by Bill T ... 6/19/2004 04:51:00 AM ... Email this entry ...
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Where can I live in Greater Providence?

A young lady named Louisa recently emailed me out of the blue asking me where she could find apartment listings for the Providence area online... or more specifically, where newspapers had apartment listings online. Gotta love getting emailed out of the blue out of the AOL Member Directory.

But seriously, folks. I have tried things like apartments.com and homestore.com when looking around the area, and the best-laid out ads on there are usually a pretty good indicator of what to expect. (The less organized the ad can sometimes mean the less organized the landlord, wouldn't you say?) I've also been referred to a number of building management companies in the area. Three or four names you can do a Google search for are:
Bilodeau Property Management
Clarkin Corporation
Picerne Management (which also encompasses Providence Properties or East Side Properties, which may be a little more pricey -- certain things like parking and such might *not* be included in rent)
Ferland Property Management
Equity Residential

Some of these companies have web sites (the addresses escape me right now), others you may be able to find with yellow pages listings online.

I don't know if the Providence Journal (projo.com) or the Providence Phoenix (providencephoenix.com, I think) have apartment classified ads online.

Understand however that under no circumstances is this an endorsement of any of these services or companies. You are reading this advice at your own risk.

Enjoy!

Labels: Originally published

... Scribbled by Bill T ... 6/19/2004 04:34:00 AM ... Email this entry ...
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Is he dead yet?

For all those producers, reporters and managers who contributed to the Reagan orgy last week, myself included, here lies The Reagan State Funeral Drinking Game. (Thanks to Wonkette of the Gawker Network.) I'm going to have to remember to print this out and put it up at work and maybe even put copies in everyone's mailboxes.

I read a great deal about Ronald Wilson Reagan last week. We all did. I was lucky enough to be part of the gunshot and bloodstream of coverage on Saturday June 5th.

I walked into work, subbing on the 10pm. We had a full complement of weekend evening newscasts. One of the first things I saw in the news that day was that Reagan was close to death and a pitch reel was on CBS Newspath. At 6 that alone was ready to be a developing story. Then the AP flash.

"He's dead!" I exclaimed. Not in a surprised fashion, more like, "Okay, we knew it was going to happen, now we have to rip up the A-block and start over." The poor 6pm producer was fit to be tied. Thank God I wasn't in her shoes. Man, if this had happened in a similar fashion on the morning we would have been either had our butts handed to us by the more competent and staffed competition or gone on late.

I hacked a 3-plus minute network obit down to about 2:14. No lengthy soundbite from the man himself or details of his "Star Wars" program. Sorry, Gipper.

At ten we repeated that. The justification... It's the weekend. We got nothin' in the house when it comes to help. The anchor judiciously called for some update of the story from six. Begrudgingly with the subtext that she was right, I pulled a little SOT from the Shrub and threw that on after the net package.

(Then of course most of the rest of the newscast was a nightmare, a cluster f**k, a disaster, a train wreck, whatever you want to call it. And a good deal of it had nothing to do with me. Suffice it to say one of the stories I'd teased most of the evening got put in the catapult and thrown into the Susquehanna River -- note that I refer not to the Woonasquatucket, Moshassuck, Providence, Charles, or anything in New England. That's how far it went. I'm at the point where we blow the raspberry and move on, but this is all another story.)

In case you didn't realize, there was a S**TLOAD of coverage of Reagan's death. We were burying that man for days. First there had to be this, then that, then a memorial in California, then a memorial in the Capitol, then the viewing here, then the viewing there, like the Scarlet Pimpernel, and then back to California for yet more memorials. And so bloody much of it was televised. Were people trying to make him into another bloody John F. Kennedy? Jesus.

A colleague pointed out to me the overcoverage, and reported that the network news anchors, except Peter Jennings, agreed that there was too much Reagan, as reported in ShopTalk. The article cited likely noted that the networks were blowing it out because the cablers could, and so felt it necessary to keep up with the cablers. The Price is Right, The View, daytime scheduling went south like a Confederate soldier. CBS stations produced a noon newscast one day just in case the network's coverage ended before 12:30. It didn't, and so that newscast and the sold spots went down the tubes too. (Less writing for the later newscasts, and more "New at 5.")

Monday morning I think we did something. We would have been remiss if we didn't at least mention it. I don't remember if we did anything in the morning Tuesday or Wednesday. The other dayparts as has been mentioned were of course all over it like stink on a dead whale. Thursday we did a little something, but not a big something. Through scheduling changes at almost the last minute I didn't have a morning reporter, and considered taking a network package on Reagan or something. I decided not to even though it may not have been the right decision. Still, I'd probably make the same decision again. Because the next day my anchor (who bemoaned not having taken the network package on the day we had no morning reporter) got the orgasm of coverage she wanted.

We did the regular open, I found a little prepro of Reagan's name and dates (1911-2004 or whichever), and before the audio operator left after the 11pm I asked her if she had a little nice music cart. Somewhere we found a little piece which worked very nicely. Then we went to live pictures of the Lying In State and the font: MOURNING IN AMERICA. And the anchor text reflected that, the anchor reading over would say "IT'S MORNING IN AMERICA," just like the old commercials. I think this was the first story/script I wrote that day, bang it out quick and then it's done and move on. I specifically decided to refer to Ronald Reagan as a man who was "REVERED AND REVILED." Because, you do realize, some people don't like him or what he did. That's no reason not to memorialize him like we were doing, but it deserves mentioning somewhere. If we were going to have our blowout I was going to do it my way. Show 'em we've got teeth, and a big dick to choke on.

Then of course one of those pesky anchors changed "REVERED AND REVILED" to something like "THE 40TH PRESIDENT." Cannibals.

Still, they liked it, and so did I. I won't mention that we didn't get the newscast on the air until 5:16 in the morning, picking up from where we would normally be had we started at the usual time, because one of the technicians was late. Nothing to do with me, thanks. So what? Who needs to play Peoria or the 100-series markets when you have crap like this that goes on at a flagship station?

I got a phone call over the course of the week that I answered when of course I was too distracted to give it a decent amount of attention, of a viewer who bitched and moaned about how this sort of coverage was not given to Richard Milhous Nixon when he kicked the bucket. I couldn't remember when Tricky Richard had gone to the great polling place in the sky, and I think when I looked it up it was 1994. The caller had a great hue and cry all by himself about how the coverage of Reagan was demeaning to the memory of President Nixon.

"If I wrote a paper," said the caller, "would you let me go on television and read it?"

I wish to God I could remember my response. Obviously it would be a very nice way of saying get stuffed.

In light of all the bull of the overcoverage -- the coronation of the former president's death -- and the making him look good as opposed to noting his screwups, including the Iran-Contra affair, William Shakespeare was alluded to somewhere in my readings, and the quote "The evil that men do lives after them; The good is oft interred with their bones." Instead, wrote perhaps George Will in Newsweek, the good was living on after Reagan, and the evils of trickle-down economics that never worked and the sweeping of AIDS under the carpet would be buried, drowned, and swept away in a sea of shots of Ronnie in a cowboy hat, denim jacket and jeans, hanging out on his chosen home on an estate in The Golden State.

I love having fun with slugs. Not those things that have feelers or antennae and creep along leaving a trail of rhetoric in their wake; the "name" of a story when you refer to it internally in a newsroom is called a "Slug." "What are we calling this?" you'll say, and someone will say BREAKING ATWOOD FIRE, or LAFFEY'S ANNOUNCEMENT, or JOHNSTON FATAL AX (short for Accident, which I try not to use because Crash is preferred by some -- because calling a car crash an Accident could be premature. What if it wasn't an accident and he/she/it/they crashed on purpose?).

Friday, I slugged the top story package FAREWELL ALL-AMERICAN, referring to Ronald Reagan's old role of Knut Rockne.

But even before I knew the man was dead, I had slugged the "developing story" VO of his ill health on Saturday night in the 10pm show like a famous movie of his where he co-starred with a chimpanzee.

The slug: BEDTIME FOR REAGAN.

A bad choice? Hard to say. Does it mean I killed him or predicted the man would die before the day was out? This is highly doubtful and we should eliminate this possibility right now. Whatever it meant, I re-used it to slug a different version of the top story on Friday.

Goodnight, kiddo. You had a good one. Now go away.

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... Scribbled by Bill T ... 6/13/2004 12:16:00 PM ... Email this entry ...
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Spot The Loony!: Fortified Bulldozer

Rocky Mountain News: "GRANBY, Colo. - An armed man barricaded inside a fortified bulldozer went on a rampage Friday, firing shots and knocking down buildings as he plowed down the streets of this Colorado town. "

Impressive. I may just have to pull the VO for that tomorrow to see if the feed services got video of that. How screwed up is that?

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... Scribbled by Bill T ... 6/05/2004 12:28:00 AM ... Email this entry ...
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From the "It's only TV" department: Dr. Phil Is Not Counseling

Someone that some grossly underpaid and overworked Associated Press newswriter termed a "Mental Health Activist" says "Dr. Phil" needs to expressly state that he should not be taken seriously in place of counseling.

Read the short piece here, courtesy myway.com.

Personally, I don't think that WATCHING Dr. Phil (McGraw) is any replacement for actually being COUNSELED by Dr. Phil McGraw. Or any other mental health professional for that matter.

What little I've seen of Dr. Phil shows he has a way of shouting at people and pressing them into a certain action or way of living. He seems to figuratively "take people firmly by the arm" and bring them around to a different way of thinking, get them out of a bad rut in their lives. Which can, for some people, be painful.

If I want that done to me I should have that done at me personally, not watch it happening to someone else. That's either passive or voyeuristic. Something like that should not happen vicariously.

So it's only TV, but Neal David Sutz appears to disagree. And he has a valid point because television has a tendency to be taken as gospel, because it's hard to stop it and question it when it keeps going on ad infinitum.

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... Scribbled by Bill T ... 6/04/2004 11:38:00 PM ... Email this entry ...
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