Okay. I like technological advancements. I admit it. I know I probably just blew the minds of several people here. Now, facetiousness aside, the one thing that drives me crazy about a technological advancement is when a company decides to upgrade their tech and clearly have NO idea how to use it properly.
Let me explain. The local NBC affiliate here in Houston has updated their news ticker (been that way for about a month, so I gave it plenty of time) and they obviously don’t have a clue how to write headlines on this thing. Used to be that the news ticker was a blue bar at the bottom of their screen, and the news would scroll right-to-left. The headlines could be literally as long as you wanted, and they would just scroll on. No problem. The only annoying thing about this ticker was the “Weather” update would scroll up in front of the news, so if they had just the right amount of stories, every time a certain story scrolled around, the Weather would pop up and prevent you from seeing it. Why not just have the weather scroll at the end of the news and sports ticker??
With the current news ticker, the annoyance is much worse. I’ll spare you the technical details, but let’s just say the space is much smaller than the width of the screen, and on this narrow black bar, a full line of text scrolls UP onto the bar and stays there for about 5 seconds, then a new headline scrolls up. The problem is, some genius at the station has insisted whichever intern is in charge of typing this must get the entire news blurb summed up in ONE line of text. Now, it can be difficult to sum up even the most banal of complete thoughts in 140 characters, do we really want the most important news stories of our world today summed up in half a tweet?
This is NOT the way the software has to run – I know this because, in the first few days of using this new ticker, they had a handful of headlines that didn’t fit on one screen, so when it scrolled to the next line, it was the second half of the news blurb. This was great, because it was COHERENT. However that wasn’t good enough for an exec at the station, who, like most executives in TV, decided they would ruin it with their brilliant ideas of the “correct” way to do it. So now what we are left with is uninformative “pop” news blurbs that are barely more intelligible than a caveman grunt.
It’s a lot like having an awesome new unlimited data plan on your smartphone, but the plan only allows you to download the first page of websites. Or having a great assault rifle with a 1000 round magazine, but by default the rifle ejects the cartridge after three rounds.
This probably doesn’t sound like that big of a deal, but I’m not exaggerating when I say that some of the stories are almost IMPOSSIBLE to decipher, and when it’s early enough in the morning that planning a route for your coffee cup to travel to your mouth is a complex calculation, the last thing you want to do is try to figure out what someone means in 4-5 words of text. Take these real examples:
“STOCKS IN JAPAN NUCLEAR PLUMMET.”
Okay, this was the first one that made me pause, concerned that someone had lost their mind. It’s not that hard to decipher, but it’s also not that hard to write it more coherently. Why not “Japan stocks plummet following disaster?” Or better yet, Line 1: “Japan stock market in freefall…” Line 2: “…following nuclear disaster.” This is SO much easier to read, and actually doesn’t make you sound like you’re just listing random things. Seriously, “Stocks in Japan” makes sense, but then, “Nuclear plummet?” Really? What is a nuclear plummet? Is that even a thing? Does nuclear DESCRIBE the plummet? So, are the stocks falling from the sky and hitting the ground hard enough that they literally split atoms?
Here’s another:
“OBAMA DISAPPOINTED, TALKS BREAK DOWN”
So, the talks broke down because he was disappointed? Because that’s the order in which you wrote it. Or, did it happen the other way around? Is Obama disappointed BECAUSE of the breakdown? And regardless, which talks do you mean? Budget talks? Libyan dispute? NFL Players Union negotiations? Did we invade someone else overnight? Or did something happen while we were sleeping to cause us to have to salute a new flag? Help us out.
“FINAL CARRELL OFFICE ‘SUPERSIZED’ EW”
Okay. First, Steve Carrell’s final episode being a two-parter isn’t exactly news. A lot of people knew that already. Which begs the question, is that what you mean by this headline? Does “EW” mean Entertainment Weekly? If so, why haven’t you put sources on every OTHER headline you run? This makes us wonder, is “EW” your source, or an editorial comment intended to signify that it’s somehow nasty that the episode has been ‘supersized?’ Or are you saying the entire episode is a “SUPERSIZED EW?” Or, could you be telling us that some guy named Final Carrell is expanding his office? And again, you’re disgusted by that? Please just tell us what the Hell you’re talking about.
One last one:
“DEL TORO, STEWART DAUGHTER EXPECTING.”
First of all, which Del Toro are we talking about? Benicio? Guillermo?
On top of that, misplaced commas are a, thing that annoy the crap out of me and worse is not using enough commas so that a reader is left to interpret a meaning from your rambling dumbass. (Like there, for example.) Does this headline mean that Del Toro and the daughter of someone named Stewart are expecting a baby? If so, which Stewart? There are lots. Jimmy Stewart? Martha Stewart? French Stewart? Is it really necessary to specify “Stewart daughter?” Can’t you just say, “Del Toro, wife, expecting daughter?” Because I’m pretty sure that anyone who actually CARES about this news story at this hour of the morning knows who his wife is, and anyone who doesn’t care, cares little enough not to need to know that she’s related to some randomly famous Stewart.
Or (as I have since found out) does this mean that the vaguely-named Del Toro and an equally-vaguely-named Stewart (Martha? Kim? Kristen? Again, French?) are expecting a daughter? If so, who the Hell writes “Daughter expecting” to signify that someone is expecting a daughter?! Is YODA writing the news for you people now?? Oh, more breaking news, “BEGUN, THE CLONE WAR HAS.”
I guess I’ll drop it for now, but please, PLEASE reconsider the way you’re writing these stories. Otherwise, we’ll see the following blurb one morning soon on our news tickers:
“KPRC NEWS DIRECTOR SUCKS, IMMINENT REPLACEMENT.”
Just don’t forget that comma. I hope by now they understand it would completely change the meaning of their story.
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