Monday, February 25, 2008
OK ... seriously?
I like conspiracy theories. They're fun to read. And while I believe there are plenty of valid ones out there, the Internet has given too many people a chance to voice their tinfoil-hat beliefs.
Last night we were supposed to air a 60 Minutes story about the prosecution of former Alabama governor Don Siegelman. We've known about it for months. I actually sent 60 Minutes some file video we have in our archives for their use. We even promoted the 60 Minutes piece leading up to Sunday evening's broadcast.
Then something happened, and part of it didn't air. I'm not extremely well-versed on the technical workings of our station, but basically the receiver that brings the CBS satellite feed into the station broke. At the worst possible time. You've heard of Murphy's Law, right? Anyway, we ran the piece again in its entirety at 10 p.m.
We've gotten hundreds of e-mails so far today about the problem. Some of them just curious, some accepting our explanation, and then some from people whose tinfoil hats are absolutely overheating.
I caught this gem of a comment from someone who thinks they're in the know. It was posted on one of the many websites picking up the story today.
"Most feeds are downloaded HOURS before broadcast."
Absolutely not true. WHNT carries CBS programming, which is brought into our station by a feed. What you see on CBS (all primetime shows, Evening News, etc.) comes through our station and directly out over the airwaves. Local programming, like Rachael Ray, Ellen and Who Wants to be a Millionaire, is downloaded from satellite and inserted into a video server. There is a big difference.
We initially thought it was a CBS issue, because there was a problem with the CBS feed during college basketball Saturday night. It's not an illogical conclusion to arrive at ... two broadcast issues within a day from the same source. It just turned out that wasn't the case, but the conspiracy theorists latched on to the change in explanation, and claimed we were changing our story after CBS said it was absolutely not on their end.
These comments are exactly what fuel this sort of conspiracy-minded thinking, which is why I sometimes hate the Internet.
In the two and a half hours I've been at work today,we have been called every name in the book, thanks to the anonymity of e-mail. Let's just ignore the facts and go with what feels more exciting, right? Let's keep our coffee and tapioca pudding in locked containers.
We're often demonized by people who say that we're always working a political agenda for someone. That couldn't be further from the truth. I have worked for five years in a TV newsroom (almost ten years total in the journalism field), and I can't recall one instance where politics entered into any decision-making process.
I'm not going to belabor the point any further. It's done, and most have made up their minds about what happened Sunday night. All I'd ask is that once you've heard everything there is to know about what happened, you take a step outside your political beliefs and think about what the more logical explanation is.
And if you still don't believe me ... there's a sale on Reynold's Wrap out there somewhere with your name all over it.
EDIT: Here's a link explaining what happened.
|| pary, 11:04 AM
1 Comments:
About Me
- Name: pary
- Location: Fayetteville, Tennessee, United States
I'm the 6:00 p.m. news producer at WHNT-TV in Huntsville, Alabama.
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I understand you guys have been put through a lot lately, and this censorship issue has caused a lot of grief.
I don't believe any of you would willingly commit such a foolish deed, but still, it's 3 days later and I'm still trying to figure out what happened. Saying one of the recievers "broke" is a bit misleading, and just leads to more rampant speculation.
Your engineer's emails indicated that video was out on reciever #1 and reciever #3 was looking at the wrong channel, and it took a simple power cycle run on #1 to get them back up. I understand that digital equipment can get glitchy, but it's something that could have been taken care of in a few seconds at your station. Don't tell me you would leave the station unmanned during a prime time broadcast of such local importance.
Can you please just explain why NO ONE was there to switch the feed to one of the backup recievers? Your station was staffed, as noted by your engineer, but it still took him 8-12 minutes to get there and switch the feed to backup reciever #4. Why didn't he instruct whoever was there to do it? Apparently there was a craw running at the bottom of the black screen, so whoever punched up a crawl could easily have punched up a working IRD.
So there's my beef, and I know you're sick of griping web heads, but some answers would go a long way towards shutting us all up....