RE <VV> Media attention

Tue Aug 8 00:48:35 EDT 2006

I have been watching all the references to "get media attention" to the various activities at a corvair attention. I'm here to tell you it ain't that easy, having worked at an assignment editor at  one of the top 13 stations in the U.S. Everyone envisions the big TV station on the corner as having unfathomable resources.  Wrong.On weekends (when most convention activity happens) I had one crew, one shooter and, if things got hairy I could scramble a helicopter.

  My fax machine overflowed every four hours with news releases about the latest and greatest, this one time ever, event that really, really, deserved coverage. do the math: there was no way to cover 'em all, so most went into the hopper and one, maybe one, event made it to the staff meeting where we'd agree to cover it if 'nothing else happens.:  Even today in TV if it bleeds it leads, and we on the production lived by our daily tally of blood and gore.

  Even if you personally came to the newsroom (which you couldn't because it's locked) and begged me to cover your event, and even if I had a car in the event, I'd be hard pressed to give you more than a 'maybe' And if it were a big event you wouldn't even get that since your event required more manpower than I could ever dream about.

  All those faxes and backgrounders and pictures of historic cars you've been sending me were nice, but of totally no use. TV news is a dynamic business driven by tiplines and police scanners. There is precious little planning and the coverage shows it.

  Remember, the average segment on a local news show is 90 seconds long and a good one can take up to an hour to produce. unless it's a terribly slow news day I won't commit a crew to your show for that length of time because I know a shot black man in a drug hole with his 300 pound girlfriend slobbering over his supine body is the piece that's gonna lead the  newscast and I don't want my crew over there doing a nice job on your corvair convention when they could have been prowling the drug holes.

  If you do want to make the  11  o'clock news I might suggest you pile one of those expensive, one-of-a-kind into a light standard and have it incinerate at least one spectator. That will get my attention and I'll have a crew there even before the EMS guys start to pry the lifeless cinders out of the wreckage. If you can arrange a gunfight at the same time, that's even better-- you might just get 94 seconds on the 11. 

  Admittedly, small markets are much easier, but you still have to do the repetitious faxes, telephone calls and arm twisting to get even a blip on the radar.

  Bottom line, it's probably a waste of resources to do more that put out the standard press releases and hope for a miracle. Besides, lucky tops good any day.

  Hope this helps put "get TV coverage" into perspective for future events.

  Arjay Morgan
  64 monza convert

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