Before you invade the lower third of your viewers' TV screens, you need to step back and ask yourself - "Is this really necessary?"  Or - are you needlessly upsetting your viewers?

The latest victims of bad judgment were Orlando golf nuts who were subjected to three hours of "breaking news" crawls during the nearby PGA tournament on Sunday.  For most of the tournament coverage of the final round on NBC, WESH covered up the scores of the golfers to bring the all-important "breaking news" of smoke from brush fires obscuring the view along I-95.

The crawl ran non-stop from 4:30 through the end of a sudden death playoff at 7:30.  And get this - they NEVER UPDATED the crawl during the entire three hours!   Now that's giving your customers great service.

The lesson here is clear - before you decide to throw a crawl on your air, or interrupt a program for a cut-in, take a minute or two and step back from the situation.  Put yourself in the viewer's easy chair.

Is this a life or death situation?  Do we have to go right now, or can we wait for a break or to be sure no one is about to sink a winning putt, or that House isn't about to solve the disease of the week?   Sometimes, in the case of a tornado warning for instance, you must go right away.  But in most other situations, you can wait to make the cut-in less intrusive for your viewers.

And never put a crawl up for three hours with no new information on a "breaking news" situation that isn't.  By the way, those smoky fires destroyed one home - 60 miles away from Orlando on Sunday.

Jim

This entry was posted on Monday, May 12th, 2008 at 1:05 pm and is filed under Willi. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.