Sinclair gives me gas, and not the useful kind like the old service stations

I’ll say it now, and I’ll say it loud – the concept of “liberal media” is a myth!

Many different faces all saying the same thing

If anything, we’re more likely to have a trivial media – over-anxious to feed us details about every stupid pseudo-celebrity and gory homicide, rather than report details about issues that the corporate execs who run many news organizations these days likely think are “boring!!!,” and also downright costly to cover.

Won't be Chicago's 'very own' much longer

SO WHEN I read this week of the reaction of Baltimore-based Sinclair Broadcast Group, Inc., officials who said that all print news media are biased and that their collection of television stations are the only ones they trust to tell the “truth,” I couldn’t help but think that somebody is feeling a tad insecure about their status.

Or lack, thereof.

Although I suspect their lack of a corporate thick skin is going to result in many more diatribes by this entity – which is the one that is in the process of acquiring control of WGN-TV and the other television stations across the country that used to be known as Tribune Media.

Is broadcaster defaming oil company's name?

You’d think that Sinclair officials would be used to this. Although the company thus far has focused its properties on the South and in smaller media markets – the ABC affiliate in Springfield, Ill., is the only Sinclair-owned entity I’m aware of anywhere near Chicago.

WITHIN THE NEWS business, Sinclair has long had a reputation for the commentaries they put together – then expect ALL of their television stations to air unedited. I don’t doubt that for the Smith family that owns controlling interest in the company, their ability to get their ideologically conservative viewpoint out IS their primary reason for being in the broadcast news business.

And now that they want to buy up the old Tribune TV properties, they will have themselves in the New York, Chicago and Los Angeles markets – along with many other major cities across the country.

Its been a long while since Sinclair operated anywhere near Chicago

Their grasp over the nation will grow significantly (what’s the figure, 72 percent of the U.S. public will have the option to get their “news” from Sinclair-owned stations). Which has some people scared and hoping that the FCC is somehow capable of thwarting the deal.

But with the FCC a part of the federal government now under the control of President Donald Trump – who recently Tweeted us to say how much he approves of Sinclair’s spin of the news – I’d say it’s highly unlikely any federal regulators would do a darned thing to interfere.

PERSONALLY, I THINK the only people who complain about “liberal media” are the ones with such ideological hang-ups of their own that what they really want are “far right” programs to the exclusion of all others. It says more about their own leanings than anything that is wrong with what exists on television.

The idea that so much ideologue tripe is being spewed (and that there are those who think alternatives ought to be prohibited) is something that gives me gas.

And not of the type that is pumped into our automobiles at Sinclair Oil stations across the country – although not anywhere in the Chicago-area any longer (they only have three stations in Southern Illinois and four stations in Indiana – one of which is in Indianapolis.

Whenever I hear the Sinclair name, it has brought to my mind the green dinosaur that is part of the Sinclair logo.

BUT NOW, IT threatens to bring to my mind the nonsense being repeated everywhere – such as in that recent collection of commentaries aired on assorted television stations by many different broadcasters, but all containing the exact same wording regardless of where it was aired.

I’m sure it will be just a matter of time before someone on WGN (which for years has been “Chicago’s Very Own") will wind up having a Baltimore-prepared commentary for them to broadcast; informing us of how irresponsible and reckless Chicago is on whatever issue that Trump happens to have buzzing about in his pea-sized brain that particular day. As though we Chicagoans ought to feel shame at our opposition to this Age of Trump we’re now in. Rather than continuing our resistance.

Will broadcaster suffer a similar fate?

If we’re lucky, perhaps the Sinclair overbearing attitudes will have a similar effect as the end of the 1990’s-era children’s show “Dinosaurs.” In that show, Earl Sinclair (a dim-witted dinosaur nowhere near as lovable as Dino from “The Flintstones”) inadvertently caused the environmental calamity that brought on the Ice Age and made dinosaurs extinct.

Maybe enough dim-witted commentaries that go against the mood of the nation (Morning Consult’s latest poll has Trump with a 54 percent disapproval rating for March – and 60 percent in Illinois) is what will turn the viewing public against watching Sinclair-owned television properties or trusting anything they have to say,

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No news ‘anchor’ won’t bother me

On the one hand, I once remember hearing about someone in management at a news organization complain that the company would be so profitable on its current revenues, “if only we didn’t have to pay for reporters.”

On the other, I got a kick out of reading Variety, where television executive Lee Abrams saying, “we’re trying to get away from Barbie and Ken sitting behind a desk chit-chatting with each other with their nice teeth.”

ABRAMS IS THE senior vice president and chief innovations officer for Chicago-based Tribune Co., who is developing the idea known as “NewsFix” – which I would guess is meant to be the 21st Century take on a newcast format.

It is being mocked because Abrams’ format calls for no news anchor. There won’t be some perky blond paired up with a man (either an older white man to give a sense of experience, or a minority to provide a sense of ethnic balance) sitting behind a desk while giving us introductions to stories that were written by someone else.

We have had jokes that it will be an empty set. No people. Maybe even no reporters. The perfect cost-efficient newsroom run by nobody.

Actually, what it seems like is that the “anchor” will be reduced to just a voice, who will read transitions from story to story, which will largely consist of video clips. It seems like the idea of actual people putting together the news is what he wants to eliminate.

VARIETY (THE LONG-time newspaper of the entertainment industry) says Abrams in part is trying to create a newscast that replicates the experience one has when they log onto a computer and use the Internet to try to find out information about events taking place in the world today.

They skip about and go from story to story, often from site to site – incorporating various news organizations. The “anchor” that puts these stories into a coherent picture is the person’s own mind because they have a certain logic as to why they look for one story, then try to find something else they think is relevant, then perhaps stumble onto something unexpected while looking for yet a third news item.

It sounds like chaos, but I’m sure officials are figuring it will appeal to those people who want to think they’re not relying on anyone else’s news judgment but instead employing their own to make sense of the society around them.

If anything, it will take more news judgment on the part of television stations that use this new format to make the randomness of an Internet news search appear to be organized, rather than truly confusing to people.

IT JUST WON’T give people who work in television news broadcasting as much face time.

I’m sure that will be a blow to some professional broadcasters who went into television because their ego is assauged by the thought that everybody can see their face and that they have the potential to become mini-celebrities.

Yet I have to admit I don’t care.

The emphasis on the visual, no matter how trite, is why I never got into the idea of working in television news. There are times when I find the Barbie-like look of the female anchor that has become a part of every news equation these days to be a distraction from the content of the news copy she is reading.

WE DO RUN the risk of turning news shops into places where deep, booming baritone voices prevail, and those who can’t sound like the “voice of God” while reading the news will get weeded out of the news business – no matter how much they comprehend the copy that is before them.

There is one thing to keep in mind. Tribune Co. broadcasting may be Chicago-based, but we’re not going to see this on WGN-TV any time soon. Variety reported that the new format will be tried on the company’s station in Houston, and may be considered most likely for stations that are lingering at the bottom of the local ratings.

WGN has too much going for it these days to be tinkered with, whereas a “going nowhere” television station has nothing to lose if the reality of NewsFix turns out to be much more bizarre than the rhetoric we have heard.

If anything, it might be something that Tribune Co. would try in Chicago if they owned WBBM-TV, the station that last week told us their latest change is to bring back “Bill and Walter” as the anchors of one of their evening newscasts – hoping the masses will think it is once again the 1970s when Channel 2 News was the undisputed leader in local news broadcasting.

THAT COMPARISON DOES strike me as having one similarity – Channel 2 is going back, in part, to “the voice” of Bill Kurtis (whose voice is so prototypical anchorman-ish that he narrated the 2004 film “Anchorman” starring Will Ferrell) to help give their news credibility. Just envision if WBBM were to try a NewsFix using Kurtis as the voice of their narration?

A half hour of Kurtis giving us the news, minus one minute for a Perspective read by Walter Jacobson – giving us his latest take on how big a goofball Rod Blagojevich has become.

Sound ridiculous?

It certainly couldn’t be any worse than what the people of Houston will soon be subjected to when they tune in to KIAH-TV.

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Cubs finally (maybe?) sold

While many people enjoy the thought of attending a professional baseball game as part of the Independence Day holiday celebration, it would appear that the Ricketts family took things a step farther.

It appears they finalized a deal to buy themselves a major league (theoretically, that is) ball club – the Chicago Cubs.

THE CHICAGO TRIBUNE reported Monday that Tribune Co. reached a tentative deal to sell the Cubs to the Ricketts family, a deal that could have been made months ago had it not been for the stubbornness of some officials that any transaction involving the Chicago Cubs set records for the amount of money paid for a ball club.

But in these tough economic times, nobody is going to pay record-high prices.

And what seems odd about the deal as reported by the newspaper is that the actual price is pretty close to what was nearly agreed upon several months ago. This plot of land, which hasn't changed much in 76 years, could be a valued part of the overall Tribune/Cubs transaction.

So for somewhere in the area of $850 million, the Ricketts family will get the rights to operate a National League ball club in Chicago, ownership of a square block of land at Clark and Addison streets in the Lakeview neighborhood and one-quarter ownership of the Comcast Sports Chicago cable channel (ch. 37 on many local systems).

THIS DEAL IS close enough that baseball officials are turning over the financial data to that legal entity known as Major League Baseball.

For now the owners of all the other 29 teams in the American and National leagues will get to have their say (including Jerry Reinsdorf and his business supporters who run the Chicago White Sox). It will take a majority of them to agree that the Ricketts family isn’t “bad” for baseball.

Just what that means is vague. Baseball gets to define its ownership qualifications pretty much on its own terms, and likes to operate as though it doesn’t have to answer to anyone. Remember how the White Sox themselves a couple of decades ago could have been bought by the DeBartolos, but baseball officials suddenly got religion and complained about the family having interests in racetracks?

It was like Capt. Renault objecting to “gambling” taking place in Rick’s Café Americain, but it stuck.

SO WILL THE other owners find the equivalent of racetracks in the Ricketts business operation? Or will they be so eager to have the Cubs transferred to ownership that cares about the ball club that they will approve anything?

I hope so. Because even though I personally am a baseball fan who cares less about the Cubs or anything in the National League (except to see which team they put forth each year to lose the World Series to the American League champions), the fact that this Cubs transaction has stretched out for so long is embarrassing for this city.

After all, Sam Zell made it clear on the first day he and his group took over Tribune Co. that the one property they weren’t interested in was the Chicago Cubs.

He pleaded ignorance as to the ways of operating a major league baseball team, even though he had long been one of the anonymous business executives who supported Reinsdorf and the White Sox by owning a tiny sliver of that ball club.

ADMITTEDLY, MANY PEOPLE thought Zell was being overly optimistic when he said back in December 2007 that he’d sell the Cubs by Opening Day.

But here it is, mid-way through the 2009 season, and Zell still has the team in his possession. For a guy who was so eager to unload the team, it seems strange that his tenure will wind up consisting of two full seasons with the Cubs.

There was all the talk early on that the Cubs sale would top $1 billion – which would be a record for a professional baseball team. It was supposed to be evidence that the Cubs were somehow a property more treasured than any other sports franchise.

It ignored the fact that the previous records were set by companies that bought broadcast properties and also acquired the ball club so as to have direct control over the sports product they were broadcasting.

THE TEAM ITSELF isn’t worth that much (those of us who root for the White Sox wouldn’t pay more than a buck to see a ball club that hasn’t won a league championship in 64 years, but that’s just our funny little quirk about wanting to see a winner).

But in the end, it was those declines that are hurting the news business (both broadcast and newspaper) that caused people to quit being stubborn, and allowed the Ricketts family the potential of saying they got a “bargain” at $850 million.

That’s assuming the major league owners and the Bankruptcy Court that is reviewing the Tribune Co.’s finances these days don’t find reason to object.

I hope they don’t.

BECAUSE IF THE Zell era winds up running into Season No. 3 and he still has control of the team in 2010, then Chicagoans are going to start including the Cubs’ on-field woes among the list of failures that he brought to the Tribune Co.

The Tribune Co. stripped the Chicago Tribune down in content to the point where many of its longtime readers don’t recognize it, and failed to take advantage of many situational perks that appeared as though things were aligned for a championship or two on the North Side.

Zell was the guy who had a legacy of making big money out of financially struggling companies. But he could be converted into the guy who trashed the Tribune and the Cubs all in one shot.

Sell, Zell, sell it already.

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EDITOR’S NOTES: Could the Chicago Cubs have new ownership by year’s end? It would (http://www.chicagobreakingnews.com/2009/07/cubs-sales-deal-finalized.html) seem so. How much (http://www.chicagobusiness.com/cgi-bin/news.pl?id=34635) did a profit margin declining from 19 percent last year to 8 percent so far this year influence the decision to finally sell?

This fantasy (http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-cubs21dec21,1,1477370.story) once was treated as reality.

Will the Chicago Cubs EVER be sold?

I’m not sure how much of this is just the fact that I care less about the “product” put forth by the Chicago Cubs on the playing field, but I’m sick and tired of stories about how the ball club has yet to be sold.

I especially don’t understand those people who want outspoken billionaire Mark Cuban to own the ball club (one of two that has been in operation every single year of the National League’s existence). But that is a different issue, and at this point, I’d settle for the silliness that a Cuban-run ball club would bring to Chicago, just to put an end to the financial nonsense that is passing for negotiations.

IT JUST STRIKES me as ridiculous that an owner of Tribune Co. who expressed his desire to unload the ballclub (saying he knew “nothing” about the business of sports) nearly two years ago has been unable to bring the hammer down to complete a deal.

This inability to complete a deal is made more ridiculous by the fact that the Cubs are supposedly a “historic” franchise that can command a premium price because there is a demand for a team with its sense of history.

It’s not like this is the San Diego Padres up for sale.

Yet still, Cubs “fans” (an absurd breed in and of themselves) have had to endure two seasons of knowing that their team was in limbo, unsure of what the long-term future would hold because no one knew who would be in charge of that future.

THE FACT THAT the Cubs were good enough in those two seasons to manage to win division titles makes the situation even worse, because a serious baseball operator would be able to take the ball club that came close to winning a National League pennant (which would be a first for the Cubs since 1945) and refine it to the point where it could win something in ’09 and be a legitimate contender for years to come.

Instead, who’s to say what will really happen with the Cubs. I can’t help but notice that most baseball-related coverage these days with regards to the Cubs focuses on the fact that the National League’s central division is getting weaker with no apparent dominant team.

So the Cubs could continue to bumble their way into division titles (which are cute, but don’t mean much if you can’t actually win the league championship) amidst inferior competition.

Now I know there are Cubs fans who would be content to say their ball club won another division title. When your team hasn’t won a league pennant in 64 years (and officially made it to a full century since it last won a World Series title), you learn to settle for what you can get.

PERHAPS THERE’S A certain sanity to that attitude, since life isn’t always fair and doesn’t always allow us the opportunity to get what we want.

But a good part of what professional sports is about, from the perspective of the fan, is providing a diversion from the realities of life.

The ballpark ought to be the place where I can go for a few hours to forget about partisan politics and economic troubles and any other social troubles I may be having.

What it ought not to be about is a ball club behaving in a ridiculous manner. If it is for sale, it ought to be sold. If someone had a ridiculously high price in mind for the purchase that just isn’t going to happen because of current economic troubles, then somebody within the outgoing Cubs management needs to face reality.

IN FACT, I got a boost from a recent Chicago Tribune story about the continual delays in selling the team. The story noted, rather matter-of-factly, that the total purchase (regardless of who actually bought the team) was expected to be about $800 million.

I can remember when the followers of Tribune boss Sam Zell were insistent that a sale of the Cubs bring in $1 billion. That figure was based largely on the fact that the sale of the Boston Red Sox a few years ago managed to set a record for ball club transactions with a price of nearly $700 million.

Some people just naturally assumed that a Cubs sale would top that figure, even though that Red Sox transaction also included the entities that broadcast the ball games, which means the buyers (including the New York Times Co., owners of the Boston Globe newspaper) were also getting the right to make money off of baseball broadcasts.

So where do things stand now?

FRIDAY WAS SUPPOSED to be the deadline for the three entities that reportedly remain in the running to buy the ball club (pending approval by Major League Baseball, which means the other owners – even Jerry Reinsdorf of the White Sox – and Commissioner Bud Selig get a say).

Yet now, we learn that the deadline is “flexible.” Who’s to say when a prospective new owner will be chosen? A part of me would not be surprised to see the Cubs go well into the 2009 season before learning who will run the team for the foreseeable future.

Now I understand the fact that Tribune Co. is in bankruptcy court. And even though the ball club was not included with the rest of the company in that legal filing, the Cubs departing owners are obligated to show that they got as much cash as possible from the sale for the benefit of the media company as a whole.

But enough is enough. I’m tired of this Cubs stuff (or should I use first lady Patti Blagojevich’s preferred phrase for the business dealings of the Chicago National League ball club?)

HOW MANY CHANCES do the business entities currently in the running get to continually sweeten their bids before somebody pounds the gavel, so to speak, and declares the ball club “Sold!”

These continual delays are getting to the point where the Cubs’ performance in the boardroom has become nearly as embarrassing to the city’s image as the team’s play on the field.

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EDITOR’S NOTES: Last week Friday turns out not to be the real deadline for (http://www.upi.com/Sports_News/2009/01/13/Chicago_Cubs_sale_deadline_extended/UPI-46311231858268/) submitting bids to buy the right to operate a Chicago-based ball club in the National League.

I’m not alone in wondering (http://www.nbcchicago.com/sports/baseball/This-Cubs-Sale-Will-Never-End.html) if this bidding process will ever end.

Even if officials pick a winning bidder for the Cubs in the next week or so (http://www.bizofbaseball.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=2851:why-the-final-bidder-for-the-cubs-may-not-be-the-final-bidder&catid=30:mlb-news&Itemid=42), the process could be reopened if baseball officials have a problem with the bid. Anybody who doubts that should note how successful the White Sox were (http://www.brainyhistory.com/events/1980/august_22_1980_153076.html) under the ownership of Eddie DeBartolo.

Can Newsday offer Sun-Times a lesson?

So does this mean that the fate of the Chicago Sun-Times (provided that its ownership doesn’t ultimately decide they can get a better tax break by folding the paper than they would a sale price by selling it) is to be a sister company to Comcast Cable?

If Tribune Co.’s recent sale of Long Island-based Newsday is any indication, it could be.

THE BIGWIGS WHO run the nationwide information and entertainment conglomerate from the gothic tower on Michigan Avenue recently dropped their interest in Newsday from controlling to just over 3 percent.

Newsday is now controlled by the people who run Cablevision, which is New York’s answer to Comcast – controlling what people get to watch on television and charging excessive rates for hundreds of channels of mediocre programming.

Yet to listen to Cablevision executives, they see Newsday as a brand name that they can leach off of in putting together news-oriented products on the Internet, and perhaps on television.

“Newsday TV” – a cable television channel that provides intensely local news programming unlike what is offered by the network owned-and-operated stations in New York City. That is one vision of what could become of the newspaper property in the New York suburbs that Cablevision has just acquired.

SOMEHOW, I DOUBT they paid over $600 million just so they could operate printing presses on Long Island.

For those of us who wonder the fate of newspapers, this is probably it.

The simple fact is that newspapers do have tremendous archives of material (unless they were short-sighted and turned it all to mulch). They provide more detailed accounts and better information than any other form of news media.

So it would make sense that people would want to turn that credibility developed over decades into a news product that can be used on other mediums.

TELEVISION IS THE most obvious – trying to feed off the credibility of newspapers, combined with the video skills of the broadcasters who also are losing viewers to people who’d rather sit in front of a computer screen (or, in some cases, would rather have a little audio and video snippet fed to their cellphone) to get a story.

I can see it happening in Chicago too.

Tribune Co. was always big on pushing the concept of “synergy,” getting their newspaper people to take their local television stations into account when rooting around for stories, while also getting their broadcasters to undertake projects that promoted the image of their local newspapers.

The big problem with Tribune in recent years wasn’t that synergy itself was a bad concept. It may have been that Tribune was trying to do too much in too many places, all in its attempt to create itself into a national media company.

THERE IS A natural tie between the Chicago Tribune and WGN (both the radio and television versions) that allow for Chicagoans to accept the notion that they work together. It is why the concept of ChicagoLand TeleVision seems logical – even though poorly executed at times.

Such a bond has never existed in Los Angeles between the Times and KTLA-TV or in New York between Newsday and WPIX-TV. (Whether Tribune could have succeeded if they had never sold off the New York Daily News is a different debate for another day).

Cablevision, which already provides television programming and sports in the New York area, would have a logical tie to a New York newspaper. The fate of newspapers that manage to survive in some form is probably to develop as many local ties and offshoots as possible.

If this means the day will come when Tribune Co. is nothing more than its Chicago properties, that is probably a good thing. People in the news business have long accused Tribune Co. of taking on actions that hurt their properties across the nation because they were more concerned about propping up the Tribune and WGN.

PERHAPS A CHICAGO-focused Tribune Co. (instead of having to worry about how the Los Angeles Times’ long-standing financial difficulties will drag down the company as a whole) will figure out a way to succeed. Perhaps Los Angeles-oriented ownership is best for the Times.

And perhaps Cablevision (a company that knows nothing of newspapers but understands the New York market) can figure out the way for Newsday to exist long-term.

So that takes me back to the original concept of this commentary – what about the Sun-Times?

If that news-gathering entity is to have a long-term future, it is going to be in the form of a business entity that wants to develop a Chicago-specific news product.

THERE ISN’T GOING to be some out-of-town newspaper tycoon with deep financial pockets who will come in and take over the Sun-Times out of some deep moral concern for the information needs of the people of Chicago. Newspaper tycoons only spend money on publications in markets with no competition.

Its future owner is going to be someone who wants to peddle information about Chicago and who thinks that the brand name “Chicago Sun-Times” still carries a lot of weight and could give instant credibility to any new venture.

Some people think the Sun-Times could follow the lead of the Capital Times newspaper of Madison, Wis., which recently converted itself to a once-a-week newspaper whose primary focus is now (http://www.Madison.com/tct/) its website.

I personally see this vision of Comcast deciding it can make money off a Chicago-oriented cable news channel (they already do Comcast Sports Chicago, channel 37 on many cable systems across the Chicago area).

THEY COULD HIRE up a new crew of kid broadcasters and put together something on the cheap, like they do with the local news interview inserts that run every half hour during the day on CNN Headline News.

Or they could use the brand and resources of the Sun-Times to give themselves some instant credibility – creating the image of more in-depth news than that offered on the conventional local television stations.

In fact, we could someday see the Chicago Newspaper War converted into something that is not fought on newsprint – Tribune-owned CLTV takes on Sun-Times/Comcast, with the two channels trying to convince the news consumers of this area that they offer the best, most-detailed report.

Both would probably also have web sites, and that would be where the archives of the two newspapers could be found – digging up the actual news accounts to provide the first-hand reports of when the significant events of Chicago took place.

SUCH A COMBINED Internet/broadcast combination is likely the future of our local news media. If Comcast isn’t the company to do so, perhaps someone else will take on such a venture.

Some will argue that it is just inevitable that Chicago will become Tribune Co. turf. Their products will control our local news reporting. I disagree, because I know there is a significant portion of the Chicago news consumer who (for whatever reason) wants nothing to do with Tribune and ignores its properties. There is a large enough market for a competitor. Money can be made by a sharp operator, particularly if they can combine newspaper expenses with their other media operations.

Of course, we’d have the inevitable battle over what to call such a new venture. Sun-Times/Comcast sounds right, but I’m sure there are those who would insist on putting the corporate Comcast portion first – just like it became AOL/Time-Warner when those media properties tried a joint venture a few years ago.

I must admit that while I will miss the feel of newsprint (and the concept of stories laid out on big pages in easy-to-read formats), I find such joint ventures a much more pleasant concept of the media future than the idea of the newspaper legacies dying out altogether and news reports falling into the hands of corporate types who think the First Amendment exists solely to let them sell advertising at overpriced rates.

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EDITOR’S NOTES: Cablevision officials are trying to figure out how Newsday can help their (http://www.newsday.com/business/ny-bzdola135684073may13,0,6390185.story) media properties become a larger company as a whole.

It will take drastic measures to prevent the brand name of the Chicago Sun-Times (http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/chi-fri-earnings-may09,0,5984608.story) from joining the ranks of the Chicago Daily News, the Herald-Examiner or the original Chicago Argus – namely, that of defunct newspapers.

THE INK-STAINED WRETCH: Television too anxious to broadcast the "news" live

Once, when I was sitting in the press room at Chicago City Hall during a lull in the action, some of us reporter-types were half-watching a television set that was tuned to a local television station’s early afternoon newscast.

Two female anchors were engaging in some banter about some fluff subject (it might have been a cooking segment, I don’t remember) when one of my reporter counterparts made a statement that I still think of as a sound philosophy when trying to comprehend what goes through the collective mindset of television news shows.

“IT DOESN’T BOTHER me that they want to fill airtime with this stuff, but do they have to call it ‘news’?”

It's not news. Not really.

Too much of what appears on television news shows is content meant to amuse the viewer enough to keep him or her watching long enough to watch the commercials – assuming (that is) they aren’t TiVoing their way through them.

But even when television news shows are trying to come up with hard-hitting reporting, there is something about the stupid nature of news broadcasting that comes through – which is the reason I still read newspapers, even though too many geeks want to believe it is the television medium that sets the news agenda.

(The reality is that television and wire services all too often pick up on stories that newspapers report first – but a story that is ignored by television will not gain any ground in the public consciousness.)

A PERFECT EXAMPLE of television’s stupid nature came on Friday, when I made the mistake for about an hour during the afternoon of watching CNN.

Actually, I was flipping around my dial between CNN, CNN-Headline News, MSNBC and CLTV (ChicagoLand TeleVision, for those of you who are not fortunate enough to live in the Chicago area). As it turned out, for much of the hour, the same story was dominating all the stations.

The story was the emergency landing that an American Airlines flight from West Palm Beach, Fla., to Chicago was forced to make at Miami International Airport.

It appears there were signs of problems with the front landing gear, and the airline had the pilots abort their planned flight and set the plane down as quickly as possible.

THAT MEANT FLYING around and around and around Miami’s airport to burn off jet fuel (so as to reduce the risk of an explosion if there was a crash landing. Finally, the airplane came down, slowly, slowly, slowly, then touched down and within about three minutes came to a complete stop.

Pilots were able to get the landing gear into position and it held. The landing itself was uneventful. For passengers, the problem became their personal inconvenience – they did not arrive at O’Hare International Airport until some time about 8 p.m., compared to the 3:50 p.m. scheduled arrival.

Now I fully understand why American Airlines was cautious. They preferred to reduce the odds that a deadly crash would occur. They handled the situation professionally, and emergency crews were ready in case something had gone wrong.

What I do not understand is why CNN, CNN-Headline, MSNBC and CLTV (I didn’t bother watching Fox News, although I expect they did the same thing) all felt the need to show the live video of the airplane going around and around and around, and finally making what appeared on screen as a routine landing.

FOR WHAT IT’S worth, my television was tuned to CLTV at the moment the airplane came down safely. It was the Tribune Co.’s Chicago-area cable news operation that allowed me to see that all the breathless “news” coverage resulted in “no” story.

That’s right. I said NO story.

At most, it should be worth a paragraph in Saturday newspapers, or perhaps a picture with a colorful cut-line of the rescue crews waiting in position just in case a crash had occurred.

That is what was really behind the LIVE NEWS COVERAGE that aired Friday afternoon. Each and every one of those stations wanted to be able to say that they were broadcasting live at the actual moment that a passenger jet hit the tarmac and exploded in flames, killing the 133 passengers and five crew members on board.

THEY WOULD HAVE gone into graphic detail picking through the gore and carnage, and we would have seen the “money shot” over and over and over for days on end.

The news professional in me understands that when word came that emergency crews were preparing themselves for a potential crash, the appropriate newsperson response is to get oneself in place to cover the story – if it happens.

Since it didn’t (thankfully, it didn’t), we should just write it off. Not every news tip pans out.

Instead, the television stations felt compelled to keep broadcasting a summary of the afternoon non-events that they spent valuable air time reporting in great detail.

SINCE WHAT COULD have been the story of the day (the one that knocked Hillary Clinton’s wise-aleck debate crack about Barack Obama’s Xerox policy out of the news cycle) fell through, CNN Headline felt the need to come up with another NON news event they had the potential to show live.

The briefs network (which employs some of the most beautiful women currently on television news) took us to the Greater Los Angeles area, where we got to see a police chase.

We got to watch from overhead as police pursued a nearly 30-year-old stolen vehicle after the driver refused to pull over. We even got to see news anchor Susan Hendricks interview a police authority who gave us blow-by-blow details about what exactly law enforcement officials were doing in the live video we were watching.

That incident ended after about 15 minutes, with a police officer using his car to give the offending driver’s vehicle a nudge, thereby bringing it to a stop. The arrest was then made on national television, with the police expert telling us that the driver would have been pursued (and caught) by a German Sheppard on the scene – had he tried to flee on foot.

THAT STORY IS worth even less than the emergency landing. At most, it is worth one paragraph in whichever suburban newspaper is relevant in that part of the Los Angeles area that a car thief was arrested following a brief chase. I can’t envision the Los Angeles Times (I hope not, anyway) being interested in writing a word about the incident.

It was at that point I turned off the television. I just couldn’t take any more potential gore being hyped into incidents of significance.

News is something that happens. It is NOT anticipation of what dramatic event could possibly happen if the odds break a certain way. That ought to be Lesson Number One taught in Journalism School (and it is times like this I am thankful I got a real education instead of majoring in journalism or communications).

A professional newsroom is ready to go with just about any circumstance. A quality newsroom would have been ready to start offering up hard coverage if people had been killed on injured in a landing, or had the police chase resulted in pedestrians or other spectators becoming caught in the crossfire. A quality newsroom would not have let itself get sucked into broadcasting morbid trivia in hopes that it became news.

SO WHILE A part of me is grateful for the outcomes of both incidents, I am more repulsed at the TV twinkies who thought the actual buildup to the non-news events was worthy of such breathless coverage.

And insofar as a Chicago angle in all this is concerned, we have area people who have relatives and friends on board American Flight 862 who are thankful their loved ones did not become part of a legitimate news story on Friday.

Of course, then we would have got to see some enterprising TV type think he was going to win his Emmy by asking someone if they would have been sad, had their cousin/girlfriend/whatever been maimed.

Oh well. It’s only television. And as everybody’ favorite “ignorant slut” of TV news parody, Jane Curtin of the Weekend Update sketches, used to say, “That’s the news. Good night, and have a pleasant tomorrow.”

-30-

EDITOR’S NOTES: Friday’s emergency landing of an American Airlines jet may have caused “tense moments” (http://www.witntv.com/home/headlines/15883487.html), but no news resulted from the event.

At most, this (http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5hxa5Yo9zp-6C-Gq1Ju908i86aNZA) is what the emergency landing story is worth.

Too many news directors have visions of O.J. Simpson whenever police chases (http://abclocal.go.com/kabc/story?section=news/local&id=5975948) come to mind.