KTLA 5 NEWS

Television is much criticized for its excesses, and people who watch a lot of television are suspect, as if they were wasting their time. Television has been criticized for not offering sufficient depth in its news analysis, but it is clear that television has become the major source of news and has brought information to millions of people who may not have had access to this much information in the past. The program to be discussed here is a news show that appears on local television one-hour per day, every night at 10:00 pm. The specific stories covered change every day, of course, but the way they are covered does not. The nightly news has a tight pattern which it follows each night, and much of this pattern can be discerned on one viewing of the program if the viewer simply assumes that what he or she is seeing is not unique.

Some of what is seen represents the iconography of a television news show, so much so that a viewer can recognize a news show instantly because of the way it looks. Some advertisers imitate this style when they are doing so-called infomercials, and what they are doing is trying to fool the viewer into thinking what they are watching is news rather than advertising. If a number of such programs are observed, it is surprising how many elements repeat. There are almost always two anchors, a male and a female, as there usually are here, though this evening there were two men covering the election retur

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ving anchors read news copy might be deadening after a time, pictures are used as often as possible. This seems logical for a television news program, but it is carried to absurd lengths as every story seems to require sending a reporter and a camera crew to some location just to get them out of the studio setting. Many of these distant locations have little or nothing to add to a story. If a crime occurs, reports come from the scene, even if these reports are filmed the next day after all activity has ceased. Buildings mentioned in stories are shown even if only from the outside. Even more useless are news reports from Washington that always feature the White House or the Capitol Building in the background, or state stories featuring the State Legislature in the background, or local stories showing City Hall in the background. On this evening, a number of reporters had been dispatched to different locations where supporters of a candidate or a ballot proposition were gathered, and those reporters would wait until something happened. Some of this might be valuable, as when a candidate appears to concede defeat or claim victory, but just as often, there was no one to talk to and nothing to see. Election stories lend themse
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Some common words found in the essay are:
TEN March, City Hall, California Election, Sports Weather, II Iconography, Capitol Building, Introduction Name, top stories, , III Pattern, election returns, IV Conclusion, anchors move quickly, remainder program, move quickly, male female, shift left, anchors move, health segment, comments television, slight shift left, move quickly form, quickly form,
Approximate Word count = 1438
Approximate Pages = 6 (250 words per page)

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