This may not be verbatim, but it's very close... I grabbed my notebook right after the 10:35pm tease on ABC6.
"A young man dies when he's caught in a trash compactor. We'll tell you what happened, at 11."
Sometimes this blog just writes itself.
It makes a certain basic kind of sense: you pile all the stories on one subject in the same corner of the newscast. This is typically done for team coverage of a big story, and weather lends itself particularly well. Today at 5pm on ABC6 it was hot weather that got the multi-element treatment. But in an attempt to beef up the coverage, the producer wound up burying a big story behind some small heat-related sidebars.
After a Sean Cuellar liveshot on an East side driveby shooting, hot weather coverage kicked off with a short forecast, followed by a cheerleader camp at OSU where a girl keeled over from the heat. After that, things began to go downhill in the name of "continuing coverage." A crew dropped in on the cooks at Phillips Original Coney Island, who have to work in a stifling kitchen. Maria Durant filed a package on the Central Ohio Breathing Association's free air conditioner program. Then, three sidebar graphics: where to put the fan in your two-story house for best ventilation, how ceiling fans should be set to pull air up in the summer (and push down in winter) and Chillicothe opens an air-conditioned room for anyone who needs to get out of the heat. The weather theme was capped off by great video of flooding in Cleveland.
Finally, at 5:08, the producer was able to get to a news story weeks in the making: the mayor of Columbus' wife in court for sentencing on charges related to lying on time sheets at her state job... taking money for hours she didn't work.
I'm not saying all those sidebars didn't have a spot in the newscast, but at some point, someone has to look at that lineup and say, "Do we really want to wait eight minutes to get to Frankie Coleman?"
NBC4's Candice Lee did a newsroom liveshot in the 6pm about two Columbus police officers who were arrested in Licking county early Thursday morning and booked on alcohol and weapons charges. Police reports say one officer was picked up trying to cross Route 40 on foot, the other had run an SUV into the ditch a short distance away.
But here's the interesting part of Lee's script, verbatim: "Both officers made bond that night and arraigned today in Licking County... a hearing NBC4 unable to attend because both officers work undercover." That was covered by a shot of a dark closed-circuit TV monitor, tilting down and panning over to a closed courtroom door.
It's interesting, because WSYX covered the same story as a VO at 11. The video was a neck-down shot of one of the officers standing in front of the judge, then turning and walking away. Anchor Yolanda Harris explained they weren't showing his face because of his undercover status.
OK, it's not Watergate, but it's a nice get. Both crews made the drive, one came back with the shot.
Incidentally, neither station explained why the officers were charged with what Lee termed "using a weapon while intoxicated." To me, using a pistol suggests firing it. But it turns out it's illegal just to possess a firearm while drunk. The Columbus Dispatch online has a clear account.
I don't often write about print. But when I saw this front page, I wanted to offer up some thoughts that I hope might generate some discussion.
At the top, all the way across, City sues for control of City Center. It's accompanied by a picture of men in suits behind a podium, who look ready to, well, sue somebody. It's a great story about a power struggle over a downtown landmark. The place has been a problem for years.
Near the bottom, in three columns and much smaller font, Somali man pleads guilty to plot. There's a picture of Nuradin Abdi and a jump to A6 after four and a half paragraphs. The article includes plenty of new detail about the case; the terror cell is bigger than previously reported, and more indictments are "likely." True, Abdi doesn't come across as a well-connected terrorist. He admitted traveling all the way to Kenya and Somalia in 2000 to attend terrorist training camps, only to discover that one had been dissolved and he couldn't find the other. Still, the idea that terrorists in Columbus, Ohio might have been trying to figure out a way to blow up a shopping mall captivated the city when Abdi was arrested. Now he's agreed to plead guilty to one count of conspiring with terrorists.
And he's below the fold.
Midway through the A-block at 5, ABC6's Carol Luper packaged a followup to a Memorial Day attack that put a motorcyclist in the hospital. The sell seemed to be that the teenage assailant was prompted by the judge to apologize in court to his victim. But after watching it, I'm not convinced there was a story there at all. And I think Luper makes the same case by what she doesn't say, and by what she holds back until the last possible moment.
Here's the live intro: "Well, Yolanda, we're not going to show you the face of the 15-year-old who was sentenced today." A flat statement like that sets you up to hear why in the next sentence, given that young offenders are sometimes shown, sometimes not - depending on the type of offense and other factors. (Also, she's using his name, but not his picture, which adds to the need for a short explanation.) So really, in this case, it's the kid's age combined with the relatively inconsequential nature of the crime that keeps his face off TV. But Luper doesn't point that out, because she'd be arguing against airing her own package. She never says what the 15-year-old is charged with, but it amounts to hitting an 18-year-old with the bar from a set of free weights, knocking him unconscious. Granted, the older teen's enlistment in the army has been delayed, but a serious injury like that is going to change any victim's life. So, big picture, this is an assault case.
Then there's the apology, which was "suggested" in no uncertain terms by the judge and then offered in a fairly matter-of-fact tone. It was made even less compelling by the fact that we couldn't see the teenager's face.
Finally, at the very end of her live tag, Luper offers up what the 15-year-old's sentence will be. Probation. And that really serves as the test for airing this story. If she'd said up front that one teen had been given probation for knocking another teen unconscious, would you stick around for any sort of apology?
I wasn't rolling tape on the tease that aired at 10:45pm but it caught my attention, and my note of the script reads this way:
"A pilot is killed in an Ohio airshow. Reaction at 11."
Writers often fall into the trap of wanting to promise "something at 11" at the end of a tease. Unfortunately, the promise is often something vague like "reaction." The tease in question was a :05, and vagueness can sometimes be driven by the enforced brevity of the promo - once you set up the basics of the story, you're low on time.
But what was this tease actually selling? Reaction to an air crash? That would predictably be shock and horror.
I think you can make a good case for just teasing the crash itself. The promo already included home video of the incident, and despite poor video quality, it's compelling. The pilot was a featured performer at the Dayton Air Show. It's likely a good portion of the prime-time audience didn't see the early shows on a Saturday but heard about the crash, and could easily be convinced to stick around for the story. Why not something like, "At 11, federal investigators probe a horrifying crash at the Dayton Air Show."
The other reason not to push "reaction"? As it turns out, the 11pm version of the story contained no references to "reaction" whatsoever.
It was easy to tell that something was blowing up NBC4's A-block at 5pm; relatively unimportant stories were pushed to strange prominence near the top of the block, anchors went too long without handing off reads, takes were sluggish. One of Colleen Marshall's tosses to a liveshot was waved off in mid-sentence.
I get all that. These things happen, and sometimes there's a domino effect that can bury an unsuspecting producer.
But you've got to protect the lead.
In this case, it was a huge story about a pair of teens plotting a Columbine-style attack on a Westerville church and several restaurants in the city's downtown district. Pipe bombs. Automatic weapons. Mayhem. But by the time it finally aired, it was 5:18, and I can't quite figure out why. The only reason to float that story (and elevate some questionable stories to fill) would have involved the combination of three factors: 1) No live shot and 2) no reporter package in house and 3) no script in the TelePrompTer for the anchor to at least vamp with, prove you have the story, apologize for a technical problem and promise the piece is coming up. Otherwise, viewers are going to think the second story is the best thing you've got... which, in this case, was a live-reporter-to-stillstore piece about the State Attorney General filing some environmental lawsuits. There was no tape; it was really just a promo for a 6pm story. And as a lead, it was an invitation for viewers to start looking around.
So, OK, say the liveshot went down. Toss to the package. We know Erin Tate tracked a package as an insert for her liveshot, and presumably fed it back (as opposed to rolling it from the truck). You can have the anchor re-identify the reporter at the end and read the reporter's live tag as an anchor tag. Not great, but you protected the lead.
What if the liveshot was ready but the package hadn't quite turned around? (This seems less likely given the 18-minute lag to air, but what if?) Let the reporter mention there's a problem with the tape, tell the best possible 30-second version of the story, and promise a great package at 6pm. Again, not great, but you protected the lead.
And finally, the doomsday scenario - no live reporter, no package in-house. NBC4's own website had a story filed at 12:24pm and updated at 3:02pm. If nothing else, drag :30 worth of that script over into the prompter, dress it up with a Top Story or Developing Story banner and lead with it. Explain you have a reporter on the story, she has a technical problem and she'll have in-depth coverage of this startling story as soon as possible. A long way from great, but you protected the lead as much as possible.
It's 2007. Viewers understand how TV works, and they'll forgive a technical problem. But if you don't protect the lead and tell them a compelling story, they'll go looking for better material.
