Action News!

OK, I admit it: I still get nostalgic for my days hawking TV news.

There was a time that working in local TV was fun — before cable and the internet started sapping away the ad dollars. Today, everybody longs for those quaint old days when the only competition was radio and the newspapers.

What I really loved was chasing around our news people with a camera to make they’re work look hyper-exciting. This spot is chock-full of cliches and somewhat dated, but a good example of the genre:

One interesting note: we did not risk life and limb to get that opening shot, the one where the news vehicle stops just short of the camera. No, instead we had it accelerate away from us in reverse and ran the footage backward. Thank you, Georges Méliès.

And yes, I know: It would have been better if the license plate said “WNYT 13.”

5 thoughts on “Action News!

  1. Man, I think channel 13 has held it together pretty well, but overall local TV news is shit. The worst ones are Fox 23 and the Time Warner news. Time Warner is just awful. It’s like they got stuck with all the second string anchors and reporters who can’t work at real TV stations. Fox 23 is nearly as bad. I feel bad for John Gray. Basically, every station has almost exactly the same stories reported in exactly the same way. Who needs all this news?

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