Tag: KCRA

Fun with slideshows

(Yes, we’re having a slow day at the Sac Rag offices, so sue us!)

Ever notice how KCRA.com offers up slideshows on their site?  While they are usually your standard “Caught on Tape” wackiness, from time to time I find a few that are funny.  Mainly because they are not really explained or introduced.  They just jump right into their topic.  For example, I noticed two “Most Annoying” slideshows today.  The first was “The Most Annoying Songs of All Time” and the second was “The Most Annoying Celebrities of All Time“.

While we can all agree on Carrot Top, I’m not sure Don Johnson really fits.  And Nathan Lane?

But, be careful.  I still can’t get that darned “Mmmm Bop” song out of my head now…

New crime mapping tool on KCRA

KCRA's Crime Tracker - Mike Teselle reports
Mike Teselle reports

KCRA rolled out its Crime Tracker tool just in time for Halloween this year, and RonTopofIt just pointed it out to me this morning. It is a mashup of Google’s ubiquitous mapping service, and it works way better than the SacPD’s Crime Mapping tool, although I’m sure the SacPD’s offering is more inclusive and updated faster. One thing I have always loved about the SacPD’s tool is the ability to search by neighborhoods, not just Zip codes — this link, for example, shows you residential, auto, and business burglaries in the Ben Ali neighborhood (which is apparently a microhood between El Camino and Marconi on the West side of the Capital City, who knew). To get a similar map on KCRA I had to use an address, 1941 Iris Ave, and I get all of the crime hits (including Invasion of Privacy). But the ease of searching by Zip, intersection, or “Landmarks” on the KCRA site makes it worth a look.

Tom Duhain: King For a Day?

Tom Duhain; Edward Woodward
Left: KCRA’s Tom Duhain;
Right: “The Wicker Man”‘s Edward Woodward

I had never seen the cult classic “The Wicker Man,” which has been in rotation on IFC, until last night. The resemblance between KCRA’s solid reporter Tom Duhain and Ed Woodward’s Christian martyr Sgt. Neil Howie is too great to pass without comment on The Sac Rag. As you can see in the picture, however, Duhain’s standard expression is the smile of the ultimate news professional, and I don’t think Woodward cracks a smile once (who can blame him, with all those filthy heathens, right?).

50 Years of Horror

Well, moving on… Did anybody else see the head-to-head 50 year anniversary specials on KCRA and News10 on Saturday night? One thing it proved to me is that local news shows see horrific local tragedies and think it’s their time to shine. The parade of memorable moments from both stations seemed more like a “Here’s to the worst things you’ve lived through” marathon. But as usual, with a local angle. For example, here is News10’s page dedicated to its top stories of the 70s and 80s. Explosions, crashes, disasters, murder, and Elvis. One of the most horrifying segments my wife and I witnessed was the capture of a kidnapper, caught on tape by News10. During the report, police on the scene discovered, in real time, another missing girl in a cardboard box in the creep’s trunk. Live on the TV news!
Continue reading “50 Years of Horror”

King and Queen of River City news call it quits

The local version of Maury and Connie, KCRA’s Dave Walker and Lois Hart are stepping down from the 11 p.m. news later this year. Dave and Lois are definitely my favorite local broadcasting team (can you say, If you don’t like that, you don’t like local sports radio idiots?) and will be sorely missed in the CoolDMZ household, where the flirtatious “active adult” couple was a heartwarming part of the nightly local news gathering ritual. Although at their age, it was pretty obvious that most nights they needed to be in bed by 11.

They will be replaced at 11 by Edie Lambert and John Alston, who are competent newspeople but will have the chemistry of a pair of candlesticks. What good is hokey local news (lokey news? hokal news?) without a cute old married couple telling you about the Asparagus Festival?

Your Cowtown Revolutionizes Online World

Finally, what we’ve all been waiting for: the launch of Your Cowtown. For weeks Sacramentans have wondered what online wonders the new site would present, then we played the cow-tipping game until we were masters (though I could never get past 1 cow until it timed out. What the dealio?). Now we have the full site, and all our questions are answered. In what is absolutely the biggest shocker since the Webber trade, the site is brought to us by…the Maloofs? KCRA? the Money Store? Sony? Sorry, it’s Crystal Dairy!

The site features the classic “Cow Tippin” game, a link out to Crystal Cream & Butter Company’s site, a tool for getting home delivery of dairy products (welcome to the 1950s!), a retail locator, and the two strangest things I’ve seen in a long time: a call for “columnists” (on a dairy producer’s site?) and a “Create a Blog” feature which is actually just a guestbook. What’s next, a screen of brain-hemorrage inducing dancing cows?

Don’t get me wrong: I loves me some Crystal products. For your money, Crystal ice cream is the way to go, unless you want high-quality ice cream in nice-looking packaging that doesn’t fall apart when touched. But seriously. Great milk, top-notch. And now a great website to boot!