WTAG coverage of Fire

["Michael D. Malone" <mmalone@wdoa.com>]

In regards to WTAG's coverage of the fire.  They dropped the ball big time
on the evening of the 3rd.  I could see the fire from my home base, and
turned them on to see what they had.  In a word nothing...An Icecats game.
About 9:00 PM, I called WTAG and asked the guy running the board why WTAG
had no coverage.  He seemed completely unaware of the fire and even more so
unconcerned, even after I told him it looked like at least 2 firefighters
were dead and others were missing.  His reply "I just work here".  I
suggested he better call the News director pronto...I listened off and on
for the next couple hours or so and heard nothing, although I heard they my
have had reports on after the 11PM hour...

Also on Thursday while the coverage during the Memorial was well done, WTAG
was very quick to go to Rush Limbaugh and subsequently Dr. Laura after the
service, this while (out of towners)  WBZ continued coverage, and WTKK
opened the phones to people to talk about the Memorial.  WTAG did open up
the phones several hours later during the Jordan Levy show, but that gap
IMHO was a major error in programming...

and finally Charter's (formerly Greater Media's) cable channel 3 in
Worcester did worse.  They didn't pick up the coverage of the procession to
the Centrum on Thursday until close to 11AM...While most of the procession
was occuring they were running their usual parade of infomercials.
Subsequently in the last few days they seem to be using footage of the
Memorial as filler between infomercials...I.E.  they will run an infomercial
for a period of time, it will end and then they will run part of the
Memorial then dump out of it to go to the next infomercial...

Mike Malone

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