And now for something completely different
There's no media criticism in Wilmington, so I was in the mood to do some.
Star News Forums
I'm a little tired of the news itself, and wondering who and when will ever make a comment about the newest news team in town.
Grinny Ginny and her partner Ron Burgundy have been on Channel 3 for a couple of months now and while I did my best to give them a fair chance, I am just flabbergasted that anyone thought this was an improvement over Ann McAdams and Jon Evans.
Where do you start? Kaci Christian is probably the worst excuse for a main news anchor I've ever seen anywhere. She appears to have both the personality and intellect of a houseplant, but a carnivorous one that has been trained to bare its teeth when the lights come on, and to enunciate clearly. I have never seen anyone worse at camera changes, happy talk between segments, or applying the appropriate facial and vocal emotion to what she is reading. She will grin manically, batting the lashes on her caricature-sized eyes, as she lists the dead from a mass murder. I would joke that an AM radio station somewhere must be missing its traffic girl - except that it's true. How anyone bought her as a serious journalist, or even a good news reader, is simply beyond belief. I think it's testimony to the power of self-promotion. It's certainly not humility.
Steve Rondinaro probably isn't as bad as he seems to be as a result of debuting with her as a team. At least he's been to North Carolina before. He certainly has a nice voice and a particularly strong ability to use it to sell his stories. I don't know whether he's writing the promotional copy he reads - both during the news, as teases before commercials, and freestanding promos during other shows - but some of them are hilarious in their resemblance to 80's news parodies. He truly seems to have stepped out of a time machine from about 1981 - and pairing him with her only reinforces the worst aspects of his presentation.
Other things seem to have changed around there too. What the heck was this Dancing with WWAY garbage? Wasn't there any news for a whole month or whatever? The thing they did on Good Morning America was pretty stupid but at least they have a bigger budget to waste than these guys down here in Podunkville-size market.
Most of the reporters on Channel 3 seem to try hard to do a good job, but it's almost impossible for me to watch a whole show with those two on it. I end up laughing at the incredible stupidity of the blonde one and then giggling at the apparent eyelid paralysis of the other one, and the next thing you know it's the weather. But not the sports - apparently those two were so expensive to get that they don't have a sports department anymore. Gene Motley wasn't the best sports guy who ever lived, but people around here were definitely used to him, he still cared about his job after about 80 years doing it, and you could say he was an institution. The only thing I can imagine worse than being fired and replaced with a younger version is to be fired and replaced with Grinny-Ginny-and-Ron-Burgundy-do-SPORTS-too!!
Finally, while I was poking around the web, I found something that may explain a lot of this stuff. Perhaps this has something to do with the level of news judgment being exercised over there. The auteur of the behavioral music video - yes, that's what he calls it in this item on their website - Baghdad My Love - yes indeedy, that's the guy to figure out what's news right here in River City. If you're not familiar with high level information operations products, which he brags about as his background, you might want to do a little research and then get a little afraid every time you turn on Channel 3.
