British Expatriate Network

I am curious - what's your local news like? Any strange anchors? Is it just tedious local stories about amusingly shaped gourds and the like?

I only ask because the ones here in Buffalo are driving me bonkers. The channel 2 (NBC) one has the tagline "2 On Your Side" which really doesn't make any sense. The station has lots of annoying related ones too like "What 2 Do" which they pull out at every given opportunity. The one that I really don't understand is the weather which is prefaced as "Weather On The 2's" -  what does that mean? For some reason the female newscasters have no idea how to put make-up on - they look like grotesque dolls. Still, as Buffalo goes down the crapper the news reporters have made a name for themselves on this station by actually giving local politicians a hard time. This station also has a super-duper-4-way-mega-doppler-radar that can tell you what the weather is like outside your house. Which is of course, completely useless. And the forecast is always wrong.

The channel 4 (CBS) one has lots of "4 Buffalo" and "Working 4 You" taglines and they call themselves News 4. They don't have as much money as channel 2 judging by the frequently awful editing they do. If they need to show you a photo or  but luckily their presenters have even less of an idea of how to wear makeup. Sadly this time it's the men - channel 4 has some two of the orangest men in America - they look like enormous pumpkins. The weekend anchor talks to the camera as if he's addressing mentally ill foreign language speakers. I've also enjoyed watching the morning news anchor lady slowly turn into a witch by putting more and more nasty white highlights in her hair. This is also the only station I've seen with a metereologist who is cross-eyed. I've also seen the main weather dude ratted out of his skull trying to knob 18 year old girls at a local nightclub. But as he's a 50 year old fat orange faced pixie he didn't have much luck. Channel 4's specialty is to only show stories about house fires and car accidents and pass it off as news. Wall to wall car accidents - if there's one in a neighboring state not to worry, it'll be on channel 4. Indeed, the only international news that can be seen in Buffalo outside of BBC World News is when a car crashes in Ontario. To anyone who gets channel 4 Buffalo must look like a Mad Max movie. This station also seems to be run by a devout catholic because they harp on about only catholic-related news items in between hard hitting analyses of car accidents.

The other one we have is channel 7 (ABC) which frankly looks like it is broadcast from a shed. I can't watch it because I know the main female anchor. If any of you know anyone that is on tv or the radio you'll know what I mean.

What about you - what's your news like?

Well I don't watch a great deal of TV but if pushed to watch TV news, you really can't do worse than our local Fox 12 channel.

It is like your CBS channel - choc-a-bloc with news on car crashes, gang violence, people on bikes getting run over on bridges and cats and dogs rescued from trees/rivers - that is if they don't have a sex story to run that night which is rare.

To be honest, sometimes I wonder if I am watching Portland nightly news or a compilation from Fox's "World's Wildest (Fill in the blank)".

There is a local channel in Eugene but that looks like someone is making it on their webcam and streaming it. I won't watch it on principle because the picture is crap and the sound is out of whack with all the other channels so you end up getting deafened if you switch to it from somewhere else.

I used to have to watch the University's news each night as I was working on fixing some glitches with their teleprompter and CG. Some nights that was particularly painful but at least they tried. Myself and the Chief Engineer were always disappointed that the anchors and staff all try to emulate the poor excuses they see on mainstream, instead of striking out on their own and doing it properly.

There's an annoying toerag of a weatherman called Nate Tannebaum who wears a bow tie on Vegas tv. Otherwise the anchors are all pretty much interchangeable men with cheesy grins and suits or women who all look like Jennifer Aniston wannabees with extra Botox.

/news is usually car crashes, murders, bank robberies and casinos' record profits with a small child overcoming incredible odds at the end for the "ahhhh" factor.

i flick between NBC11, local to San jose and only worth watching when the main weather guy is on who recognises Morgan Hill and those of us who live in what is commonly known as the "hot Valley", only one between the coast and the central valley.
Cbs 5 is good in the evening, the news reader is a biker type chick who has so many hairstyles it's astonishing. Their weather lady is good too, and, more importantly she's a trend setter regarding necklaces and such.
ABC7 has a local guy who is also on the radio and used to be on 4, but when they became independent he left them. He's the kind of guy, who like Eddie Izzard, can say, "no it's not" and then look straight at the camera, raise an eyebrow and give a slight nod and you know what he's thinking is not what's coming out of his mouth. His comments on George are fabulous.
i ignore channel 2 news, it's all about San Francisco. And i do mean ALL about SF.
4 is OK but doesn't have the feeds for local/national news.
Basically I watch for the weather.
I'm tired of the eugh a fire, eugh a shooting, eugh a car crash. They all do traffic quite well though, which is key in the Bay area. Bloody hours to make a 20 minute commute.

Everything else I get from the BBC or my neighbours. Believe me, bad news travels fast enough without tuning in to watch it. o

If it bleeds, it leads. everywhere.

Oh how cynical, i love it. :lol:

I find all news media in the US to be extremely annoying.. with the local news media the worst. While I do not watch the local news, I can not avoid the 5 second ads that come on between 6 and 10pm...

"A virus that could kill all children.. watch at 11 .."

6:23pm "Nuclear meltdown could be just minutes away.. find out how at 11 .."

7:21pm "Tornados are heading your way .. find out where at 11 .."

/may possibly have been discovered maybe in a potential book already. "Children of Men" (i think by PD James) maybe? Kill all the little bastards on principal. Little dribbly smelly oozing things that cry then bum money off you and whine. And they dress funny.

//not such a bad thing. Vegas is Sodom and Gomorrah for the 21st century.

Ha Ha! Your Local Place Sucks!

Dont watch local news much only thing news is good for is sports and there isnt any football or soccer around here . just high school stuff .

With the boys marries frog type of stuff DETAILS COMING LATER .
you get one min news bite on several stories ( if you are lucky )and then its back to 4 mins adds .
if it looks interesting i seach for it on the net .

The other thing that annoys me are the 10 minute highlights of middle school football and basketball games. And this isn't even some buck-toothed cousin boinking area where football is all there is.

Bungle, your local news is considered highly entertaining here in Toronto (we're just across the border). Sometimes when I'm just about to sit down and watch BBC World or some other worthy newscast, I grab a beer and settle in to watch the latest fires in North Tonawanda, the latest crack shootings in Niagara Falls, New York and all the corruption and sleaze emanating from the mayor's office/Buffalo City Hall/the Ed Board or Eerie County or the latest ten feet of snow to come wafting over from Lake Eerie. A former Buffalo anchor, Irv Weinstein, is a living legend here.

Most of the local news here is pretty tame and rather dull by comparison read by grinning barbie doll tw*ts on abysmal sets.

The only exception is CITY TV's Citypulse Tonight which tries to be a full on tabloid newscast. They do a lot of pacing around on an open set to try to add an an air of drama to the most mundane news story about gas prices or changes to the Catholic school board. They use a lot of young videographers , who being by themselves have to shoot their images in car mirrors. The anchor will add disgust to his voice if talking about a story of child abuse etc. even if the person police have arrested has yet to be charged, Citypulse has more or less sentenced him already. They use phrases like "shooters" and "cop killers". However on all these newscasts the news tends to dry up after about ten minutes and it's on the important stuff, sports and the weather.

Added to my vocabulary. Cheers.

I don't know why every newsreader/commentator I have seen on TV here finds it necessary to have a smirk escaping from the side of his/her mouth even during the reading of the most serious issues. It is annoying and downright disrespectful. I don't want someone grinning like a lunatic while telling me that some deranged saddo in our little town has been arrested in connection with the brutal murder of his girlfriend and seven-month old son.

Mind you, look no further than the man in the White House. roll

Debs x smile

In Georgia, the anchors looked like amusing shaped gourds.

What pi$$es me off is that they go through about 10 minutes of high school American football highlights before they get to the REAL football, er, soccer....ala Columbus Crew. :evil:

Otherwise, the anchors actually look like the estate agent pictures on their business cards - you know, the huge hair and too much makeup.....and thats just the men... :lol:

Does anyone else have that moron Mark Hyman's commentary part coming in during a commercial break? He makes it look like his part is part of the local news, then spouts his bazzarro right wing nonsense. He was particularly annoying around election time as he ranted every day about John Kerry.

We are blessed with Wavy News 10 it's a hoot! Our local newsreaders are fascinating, the women wear this amazing lipgloss and the blokes are mostly having really bad hair days. It's very distracting. Ours don't smile inanely when they are talking about the latest shooting/murder they always look very cross and exceedingly smug when felons have been caught. A couple of them have voices like cheese-graters. We know one of the weathermen, he's a skinny guy called Jeff who wears oversized jackets to make himself look bigger. We call him Jeff-Jeff On The Telly. I personally find our newsreaders quite entertaining and certainly don't watch it for the news.