Tag: KCRA

KCRA’s Bienick chases down the story

Bienick doing his best
Sasquatch impersonation

I know this is old news, but I couldn’t help but chuckle while watching the video of KCRA’s Dave Bienick chasing down Sacramento Mayor Kevin Johnson’s SUV yesterday.

A few minutes later, the SUV pulled away and went to the back of the building. KCRA 3 also went to the back of the building to wait.

At that point, the SUV drove away and went back to the front of the building. KCRA 3 followed, arriving just in time to see Johnson hop into the vehicle and ride away.

Bienick called for Johnson to stop, but he did not.

By the way, I’d love to “Watch live coverage of Mayor Kevin Johnson’s weekly news conference at City Hall, during which he will discuss a possible obstacle to Sacramento receiving federal stimulus money.” but how many flippin’ Firefox plugins do I need to get this stuff to work? Here’s the follow up story.

At any rate, well done, Dave.

KCRA, where the non-news comes first

KCRA reported over the weekend that the economic downturn has hurt River Cats ticket sales. “It’s considerably decreased” says Chad Collins, Director of Ticket Sales. “I hope this isn’t an indication of what the rest of the season is going to be,” says Group Events Executive Marie Maita.

Think again. Those quotes are in the story, but they’re actually just courtesy of local residents waiting in line to buy tickets, “reporting” on their memory of what the line was like last year. Seriously. Continue reading “KCRA, where the non-news comes first”

Pamela Wu moving on

P Wu Just received this email from KCRA anchor Pamela Wu:

After 14 years in the TV news biz, I am excited to make a career change.

I will be working for Kevin Johnson!

No, not Sacramento’s mayor…

Kevin Johnson is Dean of the UC Davis School of Law, where I will become the Director of Marketing and Communications starting on Monday, February 23. My duties will include raising the profile of the law school in the local and national press, as well as marketing the school to prospective students, faculty, and donors. If you’re a reporter in need of a legal expert to quote for a story, I’m your gal.

I will miss television journalism and my amazing colleagues at KCRA-3, but I won’t miss working crazy hours and on holidays, and I definitely won’t miss doing the snow reports from Blue Canyon!

U hadn’t heard this news yet. P. Wu has always been a fan of this here web log and we’ve always been a fan of hers. We wish her luck in her new career!

Watts out at KCRA

Local news is a fickle game. We’ve always tried to follow the action along the way and provide you with our observations and updates. In fact, these observations and updates have been one of the main reasons people find themselves on this here web log.

In this tradition we must begin our paper trail for Julie Watts who was recently “laid off” from KCRA (btw, I’ve always thought the term “laid off” was for seasonal workers like lumberjacks or carpenters…)

While I am on the subject of annoying terms and euphemisms, here’s a blurb from the Sacramento Business Journal article:

“We’ve had some staff reductions,” said KCRA general manager Elliott Troshinsky. “These are challenging economic times and we needed to scale our business accordingly.”

“Staff reductions” eh? “Challenging economic times”? Why didn’t you say so. Well, who is going to pick up the weather reporting slack in Julie’s absence? You know, cause times is tough all over in case you haven’t heard.

Wait, what’s this? Hello, Byron Miranda, what’s going on? What are you doing here? Oh, you were recently hired to forecast the weather at KCRA? How odd. They just recently reduced staff, you know…I did catch him on his first day when he made a joking reference to his ex-wife. Make yourself at home, BM.

Good luck, Julie. Hope the blogging thing works out for you. Let us know if you need any help.

Google more silly than local news

Yesterday I saw the Official Gmail Blog post about a new “Mail Goggles” feature, designed to prevent Gmailers from sending that drunken “late night Friday email.” I chuckled, assuming that the jokesters at Google couldn’t wait until April 1 to launch another yuk-fest of a fake feature. I did notice a few news stories about the feature, but I didn’t think much of it.

And then just now on the KCRA morning news I saw Walt Gray report on it. Ha! I thought, just wait until I blog the heck out of this hilarious small town bumble from the gullible yoyos at the local news station. Before I did that, however, I searched again for news stories. Hmm, doesn’t seem like Information Week would fall that easily. Much less Wired. More importantly, the feature does appear in my Gmail settings. It was not a joke at all.

What? This is the dumbest thing I have ever seen. Sure, I suppose it qualifies as “useful,” but it’s just so damn silly–geared for the intoxicated, set to be enabled on weekends only. I’m definitely not saying that because I was duped. Duped into thinking it was a hoax. 🙂 Oh Google, you have bested me this time.

A Tale of Two News Shows

We’ve taken our shots over the years at the two ring circus that is “Good Day Sacramento,” but we’ve not told the other side of the story, the side that compares Good Day against the other morning shows in the area to see where each stands in this fence-sitter of a media market. (Are we a small big market or a big small market, who can tell?) This week, a dear friend relayed to me his experiences with a two morning shows, and I’d like to share those with you. Hopefully, this will give you a chance to judge for yourself as to who really rules the airwaves from dawn to coffee break.

First of all, let me set the scene for you. My friend had two appearances lined up last month to promote an event, one appearance on the KCRA morning news on channel 58, and one appearance on Good Day Sacramento. The KCRA news appearance was (as if you couldn’t already see this coming) a bad scene.  Rushed for time, fighting technical difficulties and trying to get out his message points despite the woodenness of the broadcast team, my friend did his best to fill the thirty seconds that they wound up giving him. According to him, the crew was a bit scattered, everything was thrown together last minute and the everyone seemed a little stressed. Continue reading “A Tale of Two News Shows”

About KCRA’s new prep sports site…

Have y’all seen KCRA promoting “our new site, highschoolplaybook.com”? And have you also seen the commercial on KCRA for highschoolplaybook.com, clearly indicating that our region is just one of the communities featured on the site. (That commercial, by the way, is very confusing … the young gal is interviewing the football star, and then suddenly the sound goes out on them? implying to me that they are falling in wuv, but without that classical music snippet that they play when people are in wuv, you know the one. I assume it was written by Mozart.)

I assumed it was one of those mistakes about computers that old people make, like saying “how can I download the internet.” It made me wonder why they didn’t promote their new video feature a few months back as “our new online video site, YouTube.com”…

However, it took the wind out of my sails when I saw that the site is actually a property of Hearst-Argyle Television. Abort snark!!

KCRA, YouTube ink deal

My YouTube buddy just hooked me up with the news that Hearst-Argyle Television has reached a content agreement with Google to provide a new channel on YouTube. Finally, online video from KCRA.

KCRA’s YouTube Channel … will be populated with news, weather, and entertainment videos as well as with original, local television programming such as “Chronicle,” one of New England’s most honored television programs.

Where the news from back east comes first.

Interesting bit at the end there about a digital video initiative to cover “local amateur entertainment.” Wonder how that will take shape…

KCRA: Literally insane for the whales

“Whale Watch” is getting out of hand. The entire KCRA 6 PM newscast last night was dedicated to “Whale Watch.” At about 10:15 last night Edie Lambert was talking to Toby Ross, the City Manager of West Sacramento, who cautioned would-be whale watchers to stay off of levees that are not meant for car traffic. Would it be cruel to suggest that drivers too stupid to stay off of non-roads in order to watch whales too stupid to stay out of fresh water rivers are a match made in heaven?

However, it does reflect well on the kind of news that KCRA likes to present. Flipping over to CBS13 at 11 is like watching the Great Britain PR spot on “Children of Men.” War. Famine. Dead horses. Only CBS 13 still soldiers on…