Lou Pickney's Online Commentary
Declaring War On Sony
Thursday
July 18, 2002
I went in to work at 6:30 PM last night to do some judging for the "Best Of Gannett" competition. It's an awards thing, and the large markets (which I'm in with WTSP) vote on the small market awards and vice versa. I enjoy watching newscasts from other markets, and on top of that I wanted to at least help out some with the voting. With my odd shift that's kind of tough.
Anyway, nightside EP Marvin Tarver's category was "September 11th Coverage". This was not an easy category. The visual images were striking, despite having had them burned into my memory in that awful week last year. With local coverage, it was interesting to see how stations handled it. Most followed a rather logical pattern, with local church services and gas lines and elected officials reacting. It was an interesting, if not tough, two and a half hours. It was nice to see WBIR for the first time since the mid-90's at my grandparents' house in Harriman, TN. I saw WBIR (Knoxville) for years, dating back to when they were a CBS affiliate in the 80's. 5+ years in the biz gave me a different outlook on them, but it was still cool in a nostalgic kind-of-way, even though they have a new set and new fonts and mostly new people. For the record, Jacksonville got my #1 vote (I actually laughed, as my morning EP's style was very evident in many things in that segment) and Macon #2 (it's no fair for Macon to be in the same category as Jax and Buffalo, but the little guys held their own). And then there's Columbia, SC, who couldn't even follow the guidelines (Sept. 11-14 only... they threw on some excellent feature pieces that could've won "Best Feature Story" -- at least one was strong enough to have Jeanette the webpage producer crying -- but it didn't fit the category's criteria).
I now have an ally in the war on Sony. Scott Massey told me this morning that his PS2 gave him the dreaded "Disc Read Error" last night. Enough's enough. Ironically, he had been calling his girlfriend Carrie to laugh about my PS2 problems when his gave the dreaded Disc Read Error message. You want to screw with people in the TV news business, Sony? As Bubba the Love Sponge would say, "Glad you're feeling good." It's investigative report time. Your fradulant ways are going to come back to bite you in spades, Sony. I'll have continuing coverage on this on here as it develops. Scott's going to call Sony today -- getting the ball rolling...
UPDATE -- How about this, Sony caved! Scott called while I was asleep and said that Sony gave in and promised to fix his PS2 free of charge. Very interesting... Tried calling him back, but an answering machine picked up. But I'll check with him at work, and I'll have much more on this tomorrow.
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