Priorities
It’s 9:15 Pacific Daylight Time, and as I write this, I’m watching the fire right now, the fire that you all will be reading about in the morning. It’s located smack dab in the the middle of Los Angeles, between the Hollywood sign and the Griffith Park Observatory.
And yet, only one Network channel is interrupting their programming to cover it: KTLA, the CW. Which is how we even knew about it: we were watching one of the last two episodes of Gilmore Girls. That was how we knew the fire that had started in the mid-afternoon had flared up from minor annoyance — stupid ashes falling on our heads as we were walking from our cars and the whole apartment smelling like smoke — to potentially major disaster. Hopefully it won’t be.
We can see it from our apartment — it is, of course, beautiful in its apocalyptic intensity, and no threat to us personally.
Chances are, however, you have no idea that it’s happening: FOX is running House and CBS is running The Unit and NBC is running Law & Order Criminal Intent (with David Cross!) and ABC is running Dancing with the Stars (though they have a crawl running under Nelly Furtado, whoops its gone!), and while the coverage itself is somewhat inane, this fire is threatening a pretty populated urban area and an iconic structure.
Unfortunately, it happened during May sweeps, and I guess that only Gilmore Girls and Veronica Mars were low-rated enough to interrupt for it.
So it would seem to be news, but CNN is re-running Larry King and Headline News is re-running Glen Beck and FOX News is re-running Hannity and Colmes and MSNBC is re-running Keith Olbermann.
So maybe it isn’t really big news. I dunno.
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4 Comment(s) so far
1. Kirk wrote on May 9th, 2007 at 6:33 am
When Paris Hilton is in danger they’ll interrupt their regularly scheduled programming. Until then they have commercials to sell.
2. Terri wrote on May 9th, 2007 at 2:06 pm
Personally, I was proud of all the other non-KTLA stations for not interrupting programming for “breaking news” that broke 7 hours before. I trust that anyone with eyes, ears or a nose that was in close proximity to the fire was well aware that there was a fire, and the 2 hours of KTLA coverage of the “breaking news” covered absolutely nothing that couldn’t have been wrapped up in two minutes. It may seem callous and uncaring towards people who might have been directly affected by the “breaking news,” but I trust they were too busy evacuating to be watching TV anyway.
3. Jim wrote on May 10th, 2007 at 12:36 pm
Terri,
You’re absolutely right. Once you know that a fire exists, that’s pretty much all you need to know. After all, fires don’t move or expand or change or flare up or anything. They just sit there, burning. Nothing to see here, move along.
And yeah, people who could see and smell it really don’t have any questions about whether or not it might close roads that they use or affect buildings they might be going towards or people that they know who live in the area of the fire.
Who needs to know any of that stuff? I’d much rather be watching that dancing.
4. When Is FREE Video-on-Demand Not Free? | Medialoper wrote on May 16th, 2007 at 8:39 am
[...] Look, if my lame-ass cable company (rhymes with non-starter) told me that they were going to be offering me TV Shows on Demand, my first question would be “how much does it cost?” Because I understand that they need to make money, and I’m willing to occasionally pay for a show that I somehow missed the first time around because my TiVo fritzed or it was pre-empted for sports or breaking news. [...]