CTV live rescue coverage

[offair]

Anyone catch the 6 o'clock news on CTV yesterday?

What are your thoughts on the 30 minutes-plus coverage of the cliff rescue?

I tuned in around 20 after 6, and they went strong right up until just before 7, when the boy and dog were finally pulled to safety.

Someone made the comment it seemed very CNN-style.
Was it worth it?

[Tim]

Not bad, but Pamela seemed very awkward - there were a lot of 1 second pauses and she would quite clearly say "Uh..." a couple times before David had to jump in to the rescue - no pun intended.

Good that they were the only ones actually seeming to give a darn about the rescue, of course, but it was very, very repetitive what they were saying. The thesaurus was probably used a hundred times during the coverage.

[zacharack]

I saw it and I have to say that it wasn't worth dedicated 3/4 of the newscast to it! It was CNN-style, however, I'm wanting the rest of the news.

Now, perhaps they could've done a picture in picture shot (and have the regular newscast continue while continously showing the rescue in the bottom corner of the screen and cut in when something is happening, and talking about it, like the actual rescue from the cliff).

Tim, you're right about Pamela... not the best at breaking news. Just look at the Election Night coverage in the federal election... Bill controlled that show. However, I also noticed at first, they didn't know they were going all the way with this. A couple of times, both Bill and Pamela said something like "Thank you David. David Kincaid reporting live from Chopper 9." obviously attempting to move on, however, the producer said otherwise.

Also, talk about milking this story. There were 2 stories on him on CTV, he rode in Chopper 9 and was in studio at the end of tonight's newscast!

[millar]

From choppermurman.blogspot.com -
I urge you to check out his blog and his Chopper 9 site as well: www.geocities.com/choppermurman/, Very interested to us media-watchers.

Tuesday, April 04, 2006
The Day After
Last Tuesday evening on CTV News @ 6, a drama unfolded "live" in the living rooms of viewers. The story of a 12 year old boy trapped on a ledge of a precipice with his dog. The story had it all, drama and a happy ending. It took 45 minutes to unfold and was covered start to finish live from western Canada's only news gathering helicopter, CTV Chopper 9. No other news outlet could or did cover the story. Naturally when a news operation gets a story like this, one that their competitors did not have, you can bank on a "follow up" item the next day. The competition then has two choices.

1: attempt to catch up and try to advance the story or
2: ignore it and pretend it even happened.

I want to tell you about the "follow up" item.

On Wednesday the plan was to follow up coverage with an interview with the young lad and his companion. OnCTV made contact with his Mom and arranged to meet the boy at his school. Now here's where a competitor, Global BC, clearly beaten the night before wanted to either A: catch up and advance the story or B: deny it even happened.
But wait, the story of Boy/Dog rescue was leading all of the news radio newscasts and it had been picked up by outher news origanizations across North America. The TV talk shows are calling, wanting our little fellow to appear on their shows (Ellen DeGeneres, Inside Edition and the CBS Early News). Wow this one has legs. So how will Global "deny" it ever happend?

The interview was set up for noon. When the crew arrives at the boy's school and announced themselves at the school office, they are informed the boy is not here. "Another TV Crew picked him up at 11 and was taking him to Burniby to meet Mr. Parsons."

Mr. Parsons? How clever.

What time will the boy be back? There was no answer.

After many attempts to contact his mother, who by the way had been fielding media inquires from all over North America and by the time we reached her, she was, quite frazzled. She was asked about what was going on. She said that Global was going to interview him at the scene of the rescue. No doubt this would help them tell their version of the story that they had missed a day earlier. Thats fair. It certainly won't be as good, as we are the only news origanization with the visuals thanks to our command of the skies. But as time wore on, and the boy had still not been returned to either the school or his home, it became obvious what Global was up to. They have done it in the past. They were attempting to "deny" the boy to CTV. It was planned and it was delibrate.

"Hey Billy have you ever seen a tv station?" "We just got a new coat of paint and have changed our logo." "Do you like our new logo?" What is it you ask? It's a ">", it means we're greater, we're bigger" (Yah, bigger dickheads!)

A conversation with his mom revealed that Global had every intention of keeping him under wraps until 6.

The crew explained to mom what was really going on.
After it was made perfectally clear what kind of games the pin heads at Global were playing, she picked up the phone called thier assignment desk and told them to return her son at once or the next call would be to Police.
The boy was returned promptly, but as gutless as they are over there, he was returned unaccompanied in a cab. I'm surprised they didn't make the boy pay his own fare.
Needless to say it's crap like this, that gives us all in the media a bad name. Their coverage of this international story, one that warranted spending the entire day with the boy eventually turned into a forty second voice over which in the third section of "Mr. Parson's" show. More like buried in section three, if you know what I mean.

However this story, like the one the one the day before, had a happy ending.
At the end of the day he said he enjoyed his ride in the helicopter even more than his tour of the Global> studios.

posted by Murman at 9:43 AM 1 comments

[tombrokaw]

I'm pretty sure he was on Inside Edition doing an interview with his father or big brother person that he was with at the Global Studios? Seems hardly like he was being held hostage by them if he was with someone else and conducting interviews to other American media outlets.

BY the way, it was a great story for CTV to air live. It was great and dramatic that Chopper9 was able to capture it, just the reason why Chopper9 is around. However, it is unfortunate that you hear the long silences and pauses of Pamela Martin's brain trying to catch up, while Bill Good says the same thing over and over again. That is, until Pamela says such obvious things, allbeit awkwardly "wow, that does look dangerous" or "gee, what a situation". CTV is lucky that the reporter in the air (David Kincaid I believe) did a great job, and when media outlets around North America and the world carried the footage, it was his good reporting skills and not Pamela Martin's poor Live Breaking News skills which were displayed alongside the CTV name. Other examples of it are in the live coverage of the 747 landing with broken landing gear in LA, or the daily banter between her colleages at the desk.