Tuesday, December 04, 2007

TV Stations Sites: Can I See Some ID?

I was going to mention this story about a man who was shot with a taser as he stepped out of his bathtub. The man was deaf.

But I became increasingly frustrated at the website as I glanced and scanned and checked it out: where the hell are we?

In a world of ever-growing, worldwide internet presence, I'm continually surprised by how lacking local news stations are in one very simple item: city and state. I can tell you KWCH is west of the Mississippi River, and reading the entire article places the deaf man in Wichita (call letters are similar), and working through the menus shows me we're in Kansas. But are we? I've gotten this far by a lot more deduction than I should be expending simply trying to figure out where the station posting the article is based.

Summary for every local news station in America-

Your Local News Internet banner should contain the following:
  • Your call letters
  • Your city and state
  • The pretty faces we would see were we living locally and turned on the news
  • A generalized, trite, non-descriptive slogan that you think sets you apart from the rest of the local news stations in your market (optional)
So hurry up and get your web guy/gal on it! And while you're making phone calls, call the cops and tell them to stop tasing deaf and/or pregnant people.

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