Five random thoughts after watching one of the weirdest local news commercial St. Louis has seen (and it’s seen some insanely weird ones):

1. Are my only choices for my lineup Katie Felts, Rene Knott, and Frank Cusumano? We’d love a “Create-an-Anchor-That-Can-Pronounce-Names-Correctly” Feature! Eh who are we kidding, we’d take all the fun out of the game by maxing all the attributes to 100, making a over-sized linebacker of a sports reporter who will just run over people…just like KMOV did.

2. Frank’s video game run is like a horrible white-guy dance looped over and over but somehow causes forward propulsion. Clearly someone did their homework because that’s exactly how Frank runs…through the open statue wasteland that lies in front of Busch Stadium.

3. Love the Rene Knott “action” shots of him interviewing various sports figures while looking exactly the same each time:

Steven Jackson…

Pujols…or Frucal standing on something? Probably Pujols…

Nondescript Blues player because whatever, it’s not like you can name one anyway…

4. Is there a “Franchise Mode” with this game? Does it allow us to set the minor league rosters? Can we put Katie Felts there? Can we name our minor league team “Fox2″?

5. Has no one as KSDK heard of the “Madden Curse” where people on the cover of the Madden NFL game seem to always get hurt or do a horrible job that very year? All of them are on the cover! …oh that’s last year’s cover? Makes sense now.

via The Tip Line!

A lot of you wrote in to us with the same sentiment: “Do we really need around the clock local news coverage about the ‘storm of the century’”? Apparently the general St. Louis audience, or at least our readers, thought that if they had to be stuck at home, then they could at least watch some TV. Ha! Nice try St. Louis, but local news won’t let that happen. Not on their watch. You have to watch the same 2 hours of weather radar loop over and over again while weather people point and zoom in on stuff between cuts to Mike Busch confirming that they aren’t going overboard and you will in fact die…Busch’s hair still won’t move, but you will totally die.

“A historic storm deserves historic coverage,” [Mike Shipley, news director of KSDK] said.

So what does a little worst that regular winter storm deserve?

Audrey Prywitch, news director of KTVI and KPLR (Channel 11), said she hadn’t necessarily planned to go live with storm coverage all day, but “as the situation was developing, we got into a good rhythm. You know when a story like this runs out of steam, and you shut it down. But we were getting so much good stuff, we kept going.”

Apparently we disagree on the definition of “good stuff”. One of your reporters in a Fox2 jacket standing by a plow falls in our list of “good stuff” way down at the bottom just above anal fissures and right below nodding along to the rants of “I’m in a hurry!” guy at the bank.

Viewership Tuesday “will be high — very high,” Shipley said. “Look at the pictures we’re getting. Nobody’s on the streets. You have to think they’re home watching a lot of television.”

That’s the spirit! Wining the “ratings” war by scaring your audience to be locked in their homes with jugs of water and enough flashlights to be spotted from space. We bet if you tell everyone that you put a bomb in their house and won’t tell them the dearming code until after sports and the weather you’d end up with some pretty decent ratings too. Unless they have cable. Dog the Bounty Hunter is worth a little explodin’.

via STLToday

#1 New York (JFK, LaGuarida, Newark)

#2 Los Angeles

#3 St. Louis

#4 Washington D.C.

#5 Boston

Those are the five worst airports in these United States, as voted on by the readers of “Travel and Leisure”.  Hey, at least its not about crime this time!

Maybe folks just miss TWA: its old home, Lambert-St. Louis International Airport, is dreary to AFC readers on a number of fronts. It ranks last for its airline clubs—you’ll find only one American Admirals Club—and its food and shopping rank 28th and 29th, respectively. Plus, you’ll pay $8 for WiFi.

Can’t argue with most of that. The food does indeed suck and any airport that charges for WiFi access should be taken out back and shot, and we know all too well about the craptasticness of the shopping at Lambert (JoeSportsFan Figures Out Airport Shops Suck Balls).

The good news is that if you are from St. Louis you are probably saying “Eh, its not that bad.” because you have the luxury of never having to be trapped in it, while many people outside of St. Louis don’t even know what Lambert is like because nothing flies through here ever any more. We hear Delta is thinking about just taking Labert out of the equation totally, making St. Louis visitors just jump out of the plane instead of choosing to actually stop here. Granted, that’s Delta where most would rather just jump out anyway instead of being treated to the free, and mandatory, anal rapping service Delta gives out these days when traveling with them.

Ah crap. We told you this news but we weren’t standing in front of Lambert when we did it. Is that OK? Did you still understand it? We know that apparently most TV news thinks your so stupid you can’t get it unless you are told news about something that they are standing right in front of. *cough* KMOV *cough*

“Lambert Airport was rated the third worst airport. This is an airport behind me…actually its Lambert Airport. The thing I’m talking about.”

Ooooooohhhhhhhhh…got it. A first I had no idea what you were talking about, but standing in front of it with all the wind and stuff really helped. I’m still a little confused though, any chance you could show me stock footage of people traveling?

There we go! It’s all so clear now! Can’t wait to hear more tonight at 10.

via Yahoo! Travel

Dick Ford and John Auble have been around the St. Louis news scene for a long time now.  Long enough to have a clip surface where together they interview Paul Stanley and Gene Simmons from KISS even before they would allow anyone to seen them sans makeup.

Stanley and Simmons did the whole interview with their backs to the camera with only a pair of shades embedded in to the mane of Simmon’s hair to differentiate himself.

Normally this would be a pretty un-stimulating TV interview.  Good think Ford and Auble brought the audience in on the action…

Um, guys? KISS really isn’t in that TV. You don’t have to look at the TV in some vein attempt at eye contact.

You can watch the whole interview that involves four dudes with their back to the camera after the jump by clicking below.

(more…)

Try to watch a Conan repeat on KSDK on a cold snowy night in St. Louis and see if you can tell if any schools are closing tomorrow.  Here’s a photo from last night:

Where are they…hmmm….ah found them!  Bottom of the screen with the snowflakes.  (Nice touch)

There are seriously loads of problems with this, so lets toss out some easy ones like oh the fact that internet might be a way better place for this kinda crap, and start with a simple one: Are you freakin’ serious with the size of this thing?!  And then on top of that, you are only showing 2 schools!  Jesus, you would think you could squeeze in a few more schools.  Another thing: you really don’t have to say “closed” on each one.  We know.  That’s why there are on the list.  It’s a “School Closings List”. Yeah, yeah, there are a few schools that just start later, but couldn’t those just go on at the end of the list or with an asterisk or something?  5 schools really shouldn’t mean the whole list needs “Closed” next to everything.

Its frustrating to watch local news continue to struggle.  Its just one stupid or antiquated idea after another.  Its like watching a slow kid drown.  Its sad, and you know he’s not going to figure it out, but you don’t want to go in there.  Its cold, and these pants are new.

Lastly…have a good one North St. Francois County R-1!  In my day, we fancied an epic Nerf war and a friend’s house.

More cost-cutting measures continue to be created to keep our struggling local news operations afloat. One of the more recent ones is KSDK, channel 5′s move to dismantle their news helicopter.

From the rumor mill over on STLMedia.net:

As of February 1st KSDK no longer has a news helicopter. The camera has been removed from chopper 5. In a cost cutting move KSDK is negotiating with KMOV for a “shared use” of aerial footage, but has yet to sign an agreement. Just another sign of the need to save money.

KSDK and KMOV are also combining for Spring Training coverage. KSDK will send two photographers, one shoots for KMOV, they will share footage, and KMOV is sending their Sat. truck to feed back tape.

I guess the next time we have a high-speed chance, the only way KSDK can cover it is to join the chase themselves.

We just can’t figure out why local news still hasn’t gotten it yet!’

First, the whole idea of having to wait until 6pm to get your news is a laughable concept these days.  If I want the news, I’ll either jump on the internet or tune to one of the many 24 hour news channels at any given moment.  There’s no reason for me to wait until some artificial time to get it.  Along these lines, the idea of “teasing” your viewers is also so weak its just annoying now.  When Larry Connors drops a “One of your household items may kill you…but we won’t tell you wich one until after sports and the weather!” it falls flat.  Why?  Because I can just look it up.  The end. Now where’s that remote, we can still catch the rest of Seinfeld.

Also, you guys speed way too much time on the weather!  Just tell me what the weather is like now, and what it will be tomorrow (or later today for morning newscasts).  Maybe throw in a weekly forecast graphic and that’s it! That’s it. Seriously. We don’t care why its cold, we just want to know if we should bring a coat.  Oh its a cold front from Canada?  Who gives a crap!  Hey, look at where the jet stream is right now! Oh wait, that means exactly dick to me!  If I care about that crap, I’ll click the “more details” link on Weather.com.