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Reacting to the news about TV News.
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Right on! I say this every day when I watch KTLA in Los Angeles. Last week, they had a viral story about an Amazon driver crapping on someone's property on Mother's Day. The reporter was standing on a sidewalk on that street doing live hits every hour that afternoon when the story was shown over and over again. That's how he spent the entire afternoon? Just waiting for them to come back to him each hour?
Ditto at night when they're standing in front of a closed, darkened building at 11 p.m. and I'm like, "Why is he/she still out there?"
Literally, right now at 11 p.m., they have the reporter doing a live hit in Palm Springs at the fertility clinic in the dark of night. Why? There's nothing happening there, she's not showing us anything in the moment. She's standing across the street and all we're seeing is cars going by behind her. All B-roll was from the daytime. The anchors didn't ask her questions, there was no purpose for her being out there live more than a day after it happened. If it was same day, sure. Tonight? No.
When I was a student intern at CBC (Canada) in 1999, I remember the reporter I was partnered with questioned why she had to do a live hit for a story about a kid that said he was accosted by cops. There was no violent beating, nothing noteworthy, no relevance to her going across the city and standing out in the freezing cold to set up the story the anchor was intro'ing anyway. It lent nothing to the storytelling. She set up talking points that were covered in the taped story.
