Monday, May 12, 2008

OBR News-o-rama

OBR News-o-rama

Bentley Getting Close to Return

Posted: 12 May 2008 02:17 PM CDT

Perspicacious Browns reporter Steve Doerschuck caught up with Browns head coach Romeo Crennel at today's Pro Football Hall of Fame luncheon and got him to talk briefly about the status of C LeCharles Bentley and TE Steve Heiden.

Regarding Bentley, the center continues to talk about how good he feels and is close to returning to the practice field. Bentley is in NYC today, and will be coming back to Cleveland to get the look-see from Browns doctors. After that's done, assuming a good outcome, LCB will be back on the field.

RAC also discussed TE Steve Heiden's minor back surgery, and with usual Crennellian restraint suggested "I think Steve will make the team".

Action Channel Action Tabloid FAKE News

Posted: 11 May 2008 03:18 PM CDT

I've been pretty honest with everyone about this - I don't have a high opinion of many in the local and regional TV racket, and am anxiously looking forward to that particular bastion of old-guard media arrogance tumbling down.

It's coming, folks, limited only by adoption rates for high-speed broadband connections and the pace by which web technologies are integrated into home networks and set-top boxes. And it's badly needed.

(Discuss this story in the OBR Watercooler)

The availability of Youtube on your Tivo or AppleTV is the first step to enabling new entrants into the video content market cheaply, in much the same way that blogs and web sites have forever altered the print media landscape.

I can't wait. There's no media entity more in need of competition, as well as the type of bracing humility that only the worldwide internet dunk tank can provide.

If nothing else, a little dash of accountability would be nice.

The Plain Dealer's Michael McIntyre (a fellow Twitter fan), helped in that respect on Saturday, when he exposed a fake interview that Channel 19 Action News conducted with Browns TE Kellen Winslow, Jr.

The approach used by Zapchannel Action News19 is not dissimilar from the sort of antics we've seen from the bottom rung of sports bloggers, crediting news to "a source" when they are simply regurgitating information provided elsewhere.

Here are the instructions: use someone else's work, put the voice of an attractive and occasionally clothes-less anchortroid over the footage, slap an "exclusive" tag on it and move on. Well done.

Of course, Action 19 Tabloid Newschannel will get away with it. Local newscasts are largely considered interchangeable by viewers, and their ratings are primarily dependent on channel-changing inertia. The percentage of that newscast's target audience which will read the Plain Dealer is probably fairly low.

This particular local station has caught my attention a number of times before. Since losing pre-season TV rights (which followed a repulsive decision to air a 911 recording of a Lerner family tragedy), 19 Tabloid Actionnews  has been on a rather transparent mission to exploit and attack the NFL franchise. Their ham-fisted investigative reports going after the team's dealing with contractors or their joy of trumping up negative stories like the one on Leigh Bodden became tiresome a while ago.

The OBR hardly stands for endless happy-talk about the franchise. When we have to report things that the team would rather not have heard, we do it. It's our job. From my perspective, I'm just happy that Channel 19 (CBS) and Channel 8 (Fox) flipped networks years ago so that we're nowhere in their corporate family tree.

Honest? Nope. Fair? Hardly. Everywhere? Not if I can help it.

What Channel 19 does is very different from what objective, albeit sometimes critical, news outlets do. It's behavior I would find unworthy of a Myspace blog, much less a major local TV station.

If you watch this stuff, you get what you deserve. Here at OBR World Headquarters, the channel gets changed or the TV turned off when that nonsense comes on.

Ratings are all that people like those running Actionchannel 19 Death News understand. Until technology levels the local news playing field, tuning your TV elsewhere is the only weapon fans have to make them accountable.
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