KARE 11 News at 10:00
On Wednesday night the 8th of November I watched KARE 11's ten o'clock news broadcast and kept a viewing log in which I recorded the types of stories that were aired as well as the duration of those stories. In going back over my log after the broadcast was over, I was relatively surprised to find out just how the evening news was divided up. Despite starting off in a fairly promising fashion by jumping right into midterm election results from the day before, it didn't take too long for the content to dramatically drop off in quality. In fact, the only really substantial news that I recieved the whole night came within the first six minutes of the broadcast. The opening story, which lasted a grand total of two minutes, was about the resignation of Donald Rumsfeld. Once this story was neatly wrapped up, the broadcast covered the concession of Mike Hatch to Governor Pawlenty for the governor's seat. This story only lasted one minute. From this story, the news anchors smoothly transitioned into a three minute piece on what type of relationship the reelected governor would have with the state's legislature. Would he be faced by an atmosphere of bickering or one of bipartisanship, and how would he manage the challenges of such a divided group? The news then moved into a 30 second piece on Walz's successful upset of his incumbant opponent, and then another 20 second piece on voter turnout. Unfortunately, this was all of the political coverage I saw in the entire program. KARE 11 then did a quick 25 second piece on a woman who lost her life in a household fire in Anoka, and it then moved into some advertising hooks about what I would see after the commercial break.
The very next story after the commercial break, and clearly the feature story of the night as presented by KARE 11, was a human interest story that lasted three minutes and twenty seconds. It was about a woman who was courageously losing weight with the help of her co-workers and community. In all, it was nothing too interesting or earthshattering. KARE 11 then proceeded to do a 30 second plug for its website and another 30 second plug for another human interest story to be aired on an upcoming night. They then wasted 30 seconds by showing the results of local pictures sent in of the evening sunset, and then gave three minutes of weather. Another commercial was then aired.
After the commercial they went straight to the sports desk where six stories were spit out in about five minutes, and then another commercial was shown. When they came back they showed the Daily 3 and the Powerball numbers for the day and did a 15 second spot on the opening of the Macy's holiday display in downtown Minneapolis.
My initial reaction after analyzing this program was that I felt cheated out of valuable information. I had just spent a half an hour being advertised too or being passified with fluff. There was very little valuable content to this broadcast, and the pressing issues of the election, which I wanted to know a great deal about, were gently brushed aside. Thus, the selection of material for the broadcast was seemingly based upon what would make people feel good about themselves as many of the controversial issues were disregarded. Even the interplay between the broadcasters themselves had a feeling of superficial comfort to it. By joking and teasing one another in a wholesome fashion, it felt like they were trying to act a television family that would include me as one of its members. In terms of beliefs and attitudes, not enough information was presented to allow me to change my previous beliefs and attitudes about the stories, and for that matter, not enough was presented to even allow me to agree wholeheartedly with what was being shown. In all, I got very little out of this program and I feel like in the future my time will be better spent researching periodicals that contain the information that I am seeking or by wathcing a more credible news source such as Jim Lehrer.
On Wednesday night the 8th of November I watched KARE 11's ten o'clock news broadcast and kept a viewing log in which I recorded the types of stories that were aired as well as the duration of those stories. In going back over my log after the broadcast was over, I was relatively surprised to find out just how the evening news was divided up. Despite starting off in a fairly promising fashion by jumping right into midterm election results from the day before, it didn't take too long for the content to dramatically drop off in quality. In fact, the only really substantial news that I recieved the whole night came within the first six minutes of the broadcast. The opening story, which lasted a grand total of two minutes, was about the resignation of Donald Rumsfeld. Once this story was neatly wrapped up, the broadcast covered the concession of Mike Hatch to Governor Pawlenty for the governor's seat. This story only lasted one minute. From this story, the news anchors smoothly transitioned into a three minute piece on what type of relationship the reelected governor would have with the state's legislature. Would he be faced by an atmosphere of bickering or one of bipartisanship, and how would he manage the challenges of such a divided group? The news then moved into a 30 second piece on Walz's successful upset of his incumbant opponent, and then another 20 second piece on voter turnout. Unfortunately, this was all of the political coverage I saw in the entire program. KARE 11 then did a quick 25 second piece on a woman who lost her life in a household fire in Anoka, and it then moved into some advertising hooks about what I would see after the commercial break.
The very next story after the commercial break, and clearly the feature story of the night as presented by KARE 11, was a human interest story that lasted three minutes and twenty seconds. It was about a woman who was courageously losing weight with the help of her co-workers and community. In all, it was nothing too interesting or earthshattering. KARE 11 then proceeded to do a 30 second plug for its website and another 30 second plug for another human interest story to be aired on an upcoming night. They then wasted 30 seconds by showing the results of local pictures sent in of the evening sunset, and then gave three minutes of weather. Another commercial was then aired.
After the commercial they went straight to the sports desk where six stories were spit out in about five minutes, and then another commercial was shown. When they came back they showed the Daily 3 and the Powerball numbers for the day and did a 15 second spot on the opening of the Macy's holiday display in downtown Minneapolis.
My initial reaction after analyzing this program was that I felt cheated out of valuable information. I had just spent a half an hour being advertised too or being passified with fluff. There was very little valuable content to this broadcast, and the pressing issues of the election, which I wanted to know a great deal about, were gently brushed aside. Thus, the selection of material for the broadcast was seemingly based upon what would make people feel good about themselves as many of the controversial issues were disregarded. Even the interplay between the broadcasters themselves had a feeling of superficial comfort to it. By joking and teasing one another in a wholesome fashion, it felt like they were trying to act a television family that would include me as one of its members. In terms of beliefs and attitudes, not enough information was presented to allow me to change my previous beliefs and attitudes about the stories, and for that matter, not enough was presented to even allow me to agree wholeheartedly with what was being shown. In all, I got very little out of this program and I feel like in the future my time will be better spent researching periodicals that contain the information that I am seeking or by wathcing a more credible news source such as Jim Lehrer.
posted by nbuck at 11:48 AM
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