Sunday, May 1, 2011

KTVU experiences a hellish 10 O'Clock News night of Bin Laden announcement

From a lot of readers: KTVU had a ton of technical glitches and screw-ups Sunday night on what figured to be one of the biggest news stories of the year, maybe the decade.

We're talking of course about the killing of Usama bin-Laden.

I didn't see any of the Channel 2 news. Mostly switching from CNN and NYTimes on-line and over to ABC and the other networks.

One friend in the biz said the glitches were so abundant they almost wreaked of sabotage. I'll make some calls.

8 comments:

  1. Figures... Liberals mucking it up.

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  2. At least they were covering it. KRON was showing infomercials until the last minute and then had to use CNN's coverage. During the Great Santa Cruz Tsunami of '11 they were all over the boat floating around but they missed the biggest news story of the decade last night.

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  3. Rich Did you hear Dan Dibby response to Bin Laden this morning on KNBR? He said he was watching NBA basketball and didnt want to watch it.

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  4. I did watch Channel 2 last night and it was a real cluster. It would not be the highlight of Ken Wayne's or Heather Holmes's careers.

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  5. It was an embarrassment.

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  6. Happened upon this as well while channel surfing. Whoever was firing the still shots and and audio was asleep at the wheel. You could see the ire on H.H.'s face rise...the funniest moment was an inexplicable cut to her co-anchor in the middle of a story while she continued reading. NOTHING went right and the relief when it was time to cut to commercial was palpable. Truly embarrassing.

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  7. What are Ms. Holmes's qualifications for news reading?

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  8. Didn't see the coverage on 2, but you DO realize virtually all the major (and some minor) news shows are automated. For a basic, scheduled news show, formats tend to be cut-and-dried, almost template-like. Some automated systems (such as KTVU's) are unforgiving when it comes to getting on the air ASAP, and just flying by the "seat of your pants.". What took, say 10-15 engineers/staffers years ago now is done by 2 or 3 overworked people. I think people are a little too quick to judge on-air talent and behind the scenes people when stuff like this happens.

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