Cheap Shot?
Eat The Press unfairly ridicules MSNBC over the Larry Birkhead announcement here. I had MSNBC’s coverage Tivo’d so I replayed it last night and it’s not anywhere near as bad as ETP makes it out to be.
TMZ hosts the (obviously subsequently added) footage from MSNBC, which unwisely left a chryon reading “Biological Father of Anna Nicole’s daughter to be revealed shortly” on right through to Birkhead’s announcement…and then for a full two seconds after it before switching to the updated “Larry Birkhead is the father” version. Hey, in CableNewsWorld, that stuff matters.
To read the ETP review you’d think that MSNBC’s control room was asleep at the switch or something because they were so slow to react. But the reality was another matter altogether. ETP complained that MSNBC left the chryon up, saying that an announcement of who the father of Anna Nicole’s baby was was expected shortly, after Birkhead started speaking. The reality is that Birkhead walked right out from behind closed doors to the microphones and started speaking and less than ten seconds after starting speaking the news came out. So we’re talking at most 20 seconds from when Birkhead opens the doors to the announcement (it should be noted that the TMZ video does not include the full time period but only starts when Birkhead speaks). And also keep in mind that MSNBC didn’t know whether Birkhead himself would make the announcement or what he would say. Under the circumstances, leaving the chryon up until the announcement, was completely appropriate.
Also the delay from the moment the news came out to when the chryon changed was not two seconds. It was at most a little over one second. That’s about as fast as one could change a chryon when you don’t know in advance what the outcome is. The whole reason I watched the segment last night was because I was looking to see if they’d muff it and put up the wrong chryon (”Howard K. Stern is the father”) but they didn’t.
Honestly, aren’t there more important things to rake MSNBC over the coals for than a few measely seconds it takes to change a chryon?
I hope you are equally as verbose and outraged whenever a cheapshot is leveled at FNC.
Comment by Jim — April 11, 2007 @ 11:27 am
I have been on occasion…
http://insidecable.blogsome.com/2005/07/27/cjr-mocks-fox-analysts-telestrating-abilities/
but obviously I’m not the cheap shot police. Nor do I want to be. So that means every single cheap shot out there won’t necessarily be blogged about. But if I see one that sufficiently irks me I’ll blog it. That is entirely subjective of course but it’s my blog so that’s the way it is…
Comment by Spud — April 11, 2007 @ 11:31 am
Talk about cheap shots! Come on Jim, spud is very fair and impartial here.
Comment by myview — April 11, 2007 @ 11:44 am
I never even stated my opinion yet, although one might be inferred. Just seemed like an overlong blog for such a minor offense ( or minor cheapshot ) Just jumping in here.
Comment by Jim — April 11, 2007 @ 11:53 am
Out of all the networks, MSNBC had the best coverage of ANS yesterday (even though i hate the story, but they had to cover it). I believe CNN was in commercial for the announcement, and Fox only had streaming video, making it look like the announcement was in Iraq.
Comment by Randy — April 11, 2007 @ 12:25 pm
Just seemed like an overlong blog for such a minor offense (or minor cheapshot ) Just jumping in here.
Spud: Jim makes an interesting point. Do you realize that some of the items you post that illicit little or no reaction take so much space on the screen that they bump the threads with the best discussions into never never cyberland that much faster?
Comment by Ira — April 11, 2007 @ 3:51 pm