media maven / By Marcy Burstiner

On TV

(March 6, 2008)  Eureka’s KIEM-TV, Channel 3, isn’t in the smallest television market in the country, but it is near the bottom of a 200+ deck. Why should you care? The bigger the TV market size, the more money a station can command in advertising fees and the more it can spend on its evening and morning news. There shouldn’t be a connection between money and quality, but of course there is. A big one.

That means that you can assume that the owners of this NBC affiliate, Pollack/Belz Broadcasting, LLC, which owns only one other TV station, don’t pull in huge amounts of money from this station. So they won’t likely devote a huge amount of money to improve it with better technology and staff training for the producers and reporters of its news operation. The quality of the broadcast screams low-cost operation.

Until now, I kept myself from criticizing the news team at Channel 3 in print. I try not to criticize what I can’t improve, and I figured that if I couldn’t suggest zero-cost improvements I might as well put my typing fingers to other uses.

But I’m now addicted to the 6 o’clock news. I find it tells me things I didn’t know, such as the status of the closed Martins Ferry Bridge, which the Eureka Reporter and, until Monday, the Times-Standard have all but ignored. I can’t help wanting to make the newscast better. Plus, since early December I’ve read The Little Train That Could at least a dozen times, and the story is insidious. I now think almost anyone can get over any hill with just the right amount of grit.

So here is my list of tips for the overworked, ridiculously underpaid team at Channel 3, who I know try the best they can with so very little.

1. Assume your viewers know nothing. When you tell me about Martins Ferry Bridge, tell me where the heck it is. I happen to know that the bridge is in Hoopa and affects a too-often ignored population of Native American people. But most of your viewers have no clue. So …

2. Never forget the basics: Who, What, Where, When, How and Why for every story. If you can’t find out that basic information you shouldn’t run the story. That brings me to the Who …

3. Identify people you interview on video.It frustrates viewers to no end when you show someone saying blah, blah, blah, blah, but there is no name or title or town of residency for that person.

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