More Random Rants

First of all, I appreciate the e-mails and messages from those of you who saw the “U-Me-and MeToo” float in the South Side Irish Parade, and were disappointed that yours truly was not there. Fear not- there will be many more occasions coming up for you to meet me- it’s just that cold weather and Mr. Goolie do not mix (the same goes for overly warm weather- I know I’ve told the story about the one year at the Bud Billiken Parade, where the heat index was topping 112 degrees-which didn’t help my chances of survival for too long!)It was fun to watch the various news reports and truncated versions of the parade on various stations, and see people sporting the green plastic hats with our logos, that our parade staff was handing out!
Speaking of watching other stations, you’ve often read my rants about dumb local weekend morning newscasts, and various errors, etc, that I’ve seen on them. There was a great one this weekend- first, on Saturday, when the news anchor threw it to the person in the high-tech traffic studio, there was a running crawl at the top, giving the time- which was about four minutes different from the time the newscast had posted in the corner of the screen next to the station logo. When I turned on the TV Sunday morning to the same station, there was the newscast, asking occasionally if we had turned our clocks forward …then, they threw it to the traffic studio – where the running crawl gave the time as not only four minutes off- but AN HOUR AND FOUR MINUTES OFF! Some genius there forgot to set their clock forward!
Another broadcast blooper- to my mind, anyway- occurred on a radio station- when the host was talking about how a magazine cover with Nicole Ritchie and her new baby out-sold one of Christina Aguillara and her offspring. The host said that Xtina, as the gossip papers call her, was now having a field day with the news, firing various staff members. Now, personally- I always thought using the term “having a field day” meant a positive thing- capitalizing on something, for maximum enjoyment- so, she wouldn’t have been “having a field day” (an old school term, playing off when a school class would have a “field day,” like going on a field trip, or playing sports, etc. the host should’ve used a term like “rampage “ instead of “field day.” Maybe it’s not as wrong as I feel it is- feel free to let me know what you think!
Hey, it’s not like I don’t make mistakes- if you’ve seen us run our “Oops Files” bits, you know how often it happens to me-and thank God for spell-check!
However, with a big local news show, you’d think there are enough eyes there internally to pick up something that’s amiss…