I've noticed an interesting thing over the last few days.
South Carolina ETV Radio- the state-owned public radio network- has quietly abandoned any pretense of running a news department.
For ages, ETV'd pick out a few stories from what they called "multiple media sources" and jump into the airwaves at least once an hour to read them over and over and over. ETV's especially bad about cannibalizing time from NPR's Morning Edition show for their little one-minute audio factoids, and listeners got a lot of the "state news" at annoying intervals during it. Often it seemed the news readers had no editor and no idea what the lead of the story be. My favorite was a 2008 item about how the wife of a past acting president of Clemson had died, including when and where the service would be held, and who the survivors were. No mention of what made her an important figure of any sort, and, most interestingly, no mention whatever of her husband's name.
I have mixed feelings. On the one hand ETV's attempt at news was so inept and uninformative one can derive some pleasure from its disappearance.
On the other, it seems like just one more instance of ETV- radio and TV- withdrawing further and further from trying to do anything excellent, even as they raise money on the backs of the kind of good, respected programming they produced thirty years ago.
South Carolina ETV Radio- the state-owned public radio network- has quietly abandoned any pretense of running a news department.
For ages, ETV'd pick out a few stories from what they called "multiple media sources" and jump into the airwaves at least once an hour to read them over and over and over. ETV's especially bad about cannibalizing time from NPR's Morning Edition show for their little one-minute audio factoids, and listeners got a lot of the "state news" at annoying intervals during it. Often it seemed the news readers had no editor and no idea what the lead of the story be. My favorite was a 2008 item about how the wife of a past acting president of Clemson had died, including when and where the service would be held, and who the survivors were. No mention of what made her an important figure of any sort, and, most interestingly, no mention whatever of her husband's name.
I have mixed feelings. On the one hand ETV's attempt at news was so inept and uninformative one can derive some pleasure from its disappearance.
On the other, it seems like just one more instance of ETV- radio and TV- withdrawing further and further from trying to do anything excellent, even as they raise money on the backs of the kind of good, respected programming they produced thirty years ago.
I lived in Charleston for a couple of years in the early-mid 70's and again for a couple of years in the early 80's and found good programming on both radio and T.V. I'm sorry to hear that it declined and more-or-less disappeared.
ReplyDeleteI fully expect NPR and PBS to disappear completely within the next 8-10 years. It seems we have decided that Jerry Springer and the Housewives of ..... are appropriate fare for this nation.
Old gray haired woman in N.C.
When I was a teenager PBS ran a show about poetry called "Anyone for Tennyson?" You have to really search to find The Boston Pops any more, but there's no end to aging 70s rock band reunion concerts and the appalling cheesiness of Lawrence Welk. SC ETV ran Buckley's "Firing Line" for thirty years. Now they are running ads for "Piano Jazz" at the same time they run promos by the apparently enfeebled Marian McPartland, where the show is still called "Marian McPartland's Piano Jazz. As for ETV radio, they mostly specialize in one-minute promos about their other, few shows (take Roland Alston's daily farce promoting he "Making It Grow" show, which has become a weekly half hour commercial for SC commercial nursery operators.
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