On Sun, Aug 28, 2011 at 4:50 PM, David Lynch <[email protected]> wrote:
> On Sun, Aug 28, 2011 at 16:54, PGage <[email protected]> wrote: > >> I think I dispute some of this David. While the storm was predicted to be >> Category 2 when it hit North Carolina (and I believe that is what happened), >> as early as Friday morning lots of experts were saying that it would likely >> be Category 1 by the time it got to NYC - and some were saying it might even >> be Tropical Storm by then, which it was (caveat here, my Friday morning is 3 >> hours earlier than NY Friday morning, so that might be part of the >> discrepancy). This is what I mean by the cablers regularly confusing worst >> case scenarios (it might be Category 2) with most likely scenarios (which by >> Friday morning I believe was Category 1). >> > > I just looked through the NHC archive and it's less clear about the > strength than I remember seeing, so it could be that my memory or some > forecaster I saw/heard/read confused "could be category 2" and "will be > category 2". The 5 AM EDT advisory from Friday -- which the east coast woke > up to -- predicted a strong category 2 over Albemarle Sound, NC on the wee > hours of Sunday and a tropical storm over western Maine on the wee hours of > Monday, with no intermediate predictions. (This was when Irene was still > supposed to hit NC as a major hurricane.) By 11 AM Eastern (8 AM Pacific), > they had a forecast point just offshore from Atlantic City, or 70 miles due > south of the southern tip of Staten Island, with an intensity right near the > cat 1/cat 2 line. I wouldn't rule out a category 2 storm over/near NYC from > either of these forecasts, but it's not explicit. > Right. This is consistent with my experience following CNN most of Friday Morning (PT) - except that I am very clear that the experts being interviewed were saying that (with ample caveats about the difficulties of predicting such a complex, dynamic event) Irene was most likely to be Cat 1 by the time she got to NYC. It is also consistent with my main criticism of CNN - which is that they way their anchors and reporters covered the lead up to the story over-emphasized the extreme estimates, and under-emphasized that likely estimates, causing mis-perception and mis-understanding in its audience. I think the only reason I was more aware of the difference is that I was specifically focused on what the most likely intensity of the storm would be in NYC because my daughter was living in a Zone B (Category 2) Evacuation area. On Sun, Aug 28, 2011 at 4:50 PM, David Lynch <[email protected]> wrote: On Sun, Aug 28, 2011 at 16:54, PGage <[email protected]> wrote: > > >> Additionally, the point of critics like Howie (and myself) is not that >> this was a non-story, or not deserving of high-volume coverage (it was an >> important story, and justified a lot of investment of resources and time in >> coverage). The point is that the nature of the coverage was focused on >> fanning anxiety in order to create viewer interest and decrease viewer >> turn-over during commercials. Instead of providing sober reportage that >> viewers could consume on as needed basis, they are motivated to create >> viewer dependency on their coverage by over-emphasizing the most dramatic >> and frightening aspects of the story. >> > > I disagree with your interpretation of his piece here. When he makes > comments like "Every producer knew that to abandon the coverage even > briefly—say, to cover the continued fighting in Libya—was to risk driving > viewers elsewhere", that's not about the tone of the coverage, it's about > the quantity of coverage. He does take them to task for their tone as well, > but that wasn't the only thing he criticized. > I do think CNN could have cut away for more brief segments on other important news events during its storm coverage Friday and Saturday (they did a little of this). Doing so would not have decreased in any appreciable way the emphasis they were giving Irene, which in general was justified. Howie is not saying that CNN should have just treated Irene like one of several important stories over the weekend; he is saying that they should have covered the story in a way dictated by what would most inform its viewers. Cutting to a 5 minute update on Libya would not have meant CNN should have invested less money or resources in covering Irene; the reason they did not do it very much is not because they thought the Hurricane story required 58 minutes of every hour, but because they were afraid of losing audience share to a cable competitor. CNN could have devoted just as many resources to this story, and 10 fewer minutes per hour in the days before landfall, and not have substantially reduced their coverage. -- TV or Not TV .... The Smartest (TV) People! You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "TV or Not TV" group. 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