TV sweeps and your hard-hitting local I-team

Who was the dude on Fox 59 in the mid 90s that wore a Crocodile Dundee-style hat? Russ McQuaid? His "reports" were unintended comedy at their finest. Is he still on?

Meanwhile, in my small-market town, you get the best of both worlds. Stupid news stories combined with inexperience/incompetence because they pay about $6 per hour. Pure awesome.

 

Holy Shit?!? Russ McQuaid!!! I knew him in college and he was a foof then!

 

A quick Google check indicates that our man McQuaid still works at the Indy Fox affiliate.

What color is his rainbow? The color of ... success.

Or brown, based on the stupid hats he wore/wears.

 

iPods are all the rage these days, but could they be killing you? We'll tell you after the break.

 

Your baby might be dying without any symptoms. We'll tell you what to look for, right after this.

 

Is it any wonder that submissions to IRE's annual contest are on the decline?

 

This is more like it. Finally, one of the local affiliates comes up with something decent. The Cincinnati NBC station chimes in with this:
http://www.wlwt.com/news/17974270/detail.html
Checking up on local charities and what their execs make. The angle: Where does the money you donate to local charities go?

Way to go, WLWT. Finally, some actual journalism.

Forgot to add earlier this week that another station in town did a report on a emergency dispatch mixup that led to firetrucks showing up about 30 minutes after they were called. Exact same addresses were involved, in townships near each other. Could have been a decent story... except that it happened a year ago and was already completely dissected by both daily newspapers and reported heavily by all four local TV stations. Really groundbreaking stuff, there, ABC affil. :

 

I disagree -- it's a pretty lightweight treatment of what has the potential to be a good story. They even attempted to give some perspective to the salary numbers -- comparing them to CEOs in the private sector -- but it didn't support what they were getting at. And it didn't even address what the important number is for charities: what percentage of donations go where they need to go. Instead, they went with the cheap and easy "wow, look how much these people make!" approach.