Thursday, July 30, 2009

WUNC off the air....

I was listening to the BBC Newshour at 9:40 AM today when a story on Zimbabwe was interrupted abruptly to say that the station was going off the air for twenty minutes because of work on the transmitter.

That's fine, but where is the rest of the story.

On the website, there is a mention of concern for worker safety. What's happening?

Why was there no announcement on air that the station would continue to be available on the web?

Why no continuing announcement/news "on-air" (through the website) about the outtage.

Why no warning in advance?

Why nothing on the website about where a listener can go - with a precise link - to listen to the rest of the BBC story that was interrupted?

For an organization that spouts so profusely how important it is as a source of information, reality just does not measure up to the promise.

1 comment:

w said...

I just heard a WUNC fundraiser announcement in which they referred to themselves as "one of the best in the country." Wow. So insular. They must not have listened to many other stations. This is one of the lowest brow stations I've ever heard. Discernibly lower brow than public radio east. The staff and management at WUNC have seemed to be so full of themselves for so long. That was my subjective interpretation. Now that they have announced just how good they are, we can see how highly the hold themselves. That probably explains a lot of the conduct and content of the station.
I have to ask, how do having your local on air personnel read the half hour headlines written by national make you "one of the best"? How does forcing your musical preferences down the throats of listeners make you "one of the best"? How does production of the perpetually boring 'state of things' which appears to avoid anything controversial or interesting make you "one of the best"? And how does producing 'the story', a show which takes advantage of the tragic stories people and milks them for their on air value, make you "one of the best"?