Effective September 23rd, Albuquerque will officially rise one place in Nielsen's ranking of Local Market Universe Estimates from 46 to 45th-- tying New Mexico's only media market with Oklahoma City.
But as far as I'm concerned, New Mexico might as well be dead last. I've seen some bad newscasts in my short life, but our local network news is bad, bad, bad, bad. I'm sure it's no different here than elsewhere, but I'm not talking to you people--I'm talking to the people who give a damn.
Amongst my many beefs with our local TV media is that Albuquerque is smack dab in the middle of one of the nation's most targeted congressional races, and we haven't gotten squat in the way of real coverage.
For instance, today Heather Wilson and Patricia Madrid squared off for the first time, but the lead-in to the news on KOBTV was sports and KRQE 13 it was an exclusive with a woman who'd been hacked to death a machete (she lived) and on KOAT--the only station to provide any coverage (3 minutes), it was buried in the middle of the broadcast and consisted of little more than 2 cuts from each candidate and the anchor giving each candidates position on abortion.
As far as the bond election in Albuquerque tomorrow, KOAT provided minimal information on the bond,
other than the amount that would be one on the ballot and that some of the funds would be used to build several new schools.
Local networks make money broadcasting on publicly owned airwaves under license granted by the FCC. Each station is obligated to provide programing that serves their communities needs by providing information on local matters of importance. Now think about that idea for moment--what do you think is important to know?
Weather? Yes. Traffic? Sure. Positions of your candidates before the election? Maybe.
What about candidates for other offices? Don't we deserve to know what's going on with their campaigns?
What about the Republican party filing an FEC complaint against Patricia Madrid?
What about the fact that both Heather WIlson and Steve Pearce accepted contributions from Bob Ney's leadership PAC?
What about the hearings held last week regarding LES not having a waste disposal plan for Uranium yet?
What about voter i.d. requirements for the upcoming elections?
If one were to use the content of our local news broadcasts to determine the concerns and priorities of our
communities in this state, then the natural conclusion would be that the problem isn't with our elected officials, it's us--the voters; that we're more interested in hearing about random acts of violence and senselessness, fashion, celebrity gossip and sports than we are the problems facing our state and the proposed solutions of our officials.
There's always lots of talk about where to begin if this state is to break the bonds of its 3rd status; schools, teachers salaries, elected officials who aren't crooks, taxes, no taxes, transportation, jobs, training, pride, PR, tourism, blah, blah, blah. The truth is that we need a better media. We need a higher quality of evening news, we need a news broadcast that doesn't demean us by wasting our time with half-baked report of little to no consequence. If we're to improve our situation, then we first need to know what it is and that's not possible if you rely on KRQE, KOAT or KOBTV to figure that out.
Technorati Tags: Blogs, budget, corruption, Elections, media, New Mexico, Politics, news, local news
Comments