Wednesday, August 31, 2005

As you would expect, Katrina dominated the KPTV "news" show for a second night. I have to confess that I'm a bit surprised, pleasantly so, by that. I was half-afraid that Short Attention Span Theater would lead with some stupid ID theft thing or something.

Top Story. Katrina. Things are going from bad to worse in the area affected by the hurricane. KPTV lined up a bunch of "their" correspondents all over the area to give us reports. First up was "KPTV's Sumi Das" who used to host a show called Fresh Gear on what was then called Tech TV (it's now G4, whatever that means). Sumi was in Biloxi, Mississippi (apparently replacing the exhausted-looking "KPTV's J.J. Ramberg") where things aren't much better than they are in New Orleans.

The peopletrapped inside the Superdome, where the big lights are off, the toilets don't work and the air conditioning is out, are going to be transported to Houston, 350 miles away, where they will be housed in the Astrodome. They're on the stadium tour, apparently. There was a big fire near the intersection of Bourbon St. and Canal St. in New Orleans. That's where Bourbon St. starts and heads into the French Quarter. Canal St. is a major commercial street in N.O.

Kevin Coari was in North Portland to give us the inevitable local angle. Norm Bone is a Portland resident who lived in New Orleans for many years; he's trying to contact relatives there (his brother Trom perhaps), but as you would imagine, phone service into New Orleans isn't great at the moment. The Portland chapter of the Red Cross says it has gotten more than 120 calls from locals who have family or friends in the affected area.

The 304th Rescue Squadron, housed in Oregon, is heading down to Louisiana ASAP. Jamie Wilson was On The Scene in Northeast Portland for this story.

George Bush Senior and his new favorite son, the Most Charismatic Man on Earth, Bill Clinton, are going to head up a massive rescue operation.

With the hurricane as an excuse, oil companies are raising gas prices. In Southern Oregon, it has gone up by as much as 20 cents since Tuesday. KPTV claimed that gas was going for as much as $6/gallon in some places, but they didn't say where.

Pump Patrol

• Nationally, gas is averaging $2.61/gallon. Diesel is going for an average price of $2.65. In Atlanta, gas is selling for as much as $5.87. If I was still in the Wacky Radio Morning Drive DJ business and I was working in Atlanta, I would urge people to eternally boycott any station that was charging prices like that, even if they eventually reduced the price. Screw profiteers!

Next was a summary of what was going on in the hurricane area: the mayor has ordered a total evacutaion of New Orleans; looting is rampant there; etc.

Break.

OK, the first 11 minutes were concerned with the hurricane situation. You knew they'd have to go back to the pseudo-news at some point, right? This is that point. The next story was one of KPTV's patented pieces of scarenalism about Kristin Benson, a local woman who got scammed by a guy she met through an online dating service. Sort of. See, first she dated the guy, then she dumped him, then she gave him the keys to her house, her checkbook and her debit card even though they were no longer a couple: she wanted a free/cheap housesitter while she was away on a trip and it didn't occur to her that the guy she dumped might want revenge. Gee, maybe we could pass the hat down in New Orleans to collect money to throw her a pity party.

We're nearly 20 minutes into the show so you had to figure we were due for an ID theft story. A black guy and a white woman apparently managed to scam people out of money, using fake ID's.

A big drug bust in Multnomah County yielded 53 pot plants. We were told that the guy the cops grabbed wasn't arrested, but not why. They only have an hour to work with; you can't expect KPTV to give you details on every non-smoking monkey story.

Cops in Southern Oregon stopped a guy for a routine traffic violation. Turns out he's wanted for a rape elsewhere. So, I guess that justifies the increased harassment of average citizens by cops all across America these days. Hey, your tail light lens is cracked. How do they know you aren't a rapist?

Fox 12's Most Wanted

• Dustin Eamon again! He's still missing. No shit, Sherlock.

Members of SEIU, Service Employees International Union, are striking Legacy Emmanuel Hospital. Management issued the usual statement about how services are not being affected by the strike. Uh huh. If the work these people normally do doesn't affect the service the hospital provides to its patients, why are they on the payroll? Just asking.

Speaking of health-related stuff (were we?), 4 Oregon residents have contracted West Nile virus so far. It can be deadly, but these 4 are all still walking around.

Break.

If you want to help the hurricane victims, KPTV.com has a list of charities you can contribute to.

Even weasely radio morning show creeps want to help the hurricane victims, especially if there's a TV camera conveniently handy to record their efforts. Sacco and Vanzetti, Siegfried and Roy, or whatever the morning team from 99.5 The Wolf is called, showed up at a local bank to write checks for the recovery effort. Knowing radio people as I do, those checks should be cashed as quickly as possible.

Since no story is complete until it has had every nugget of "local angle" extracted from it, the sports weasel was dragged on camera prematurely to tell us about a PSU football player who has family in New Orleans. His grammy is down there; fortunately she's OK.

Break.

Northwest Tonight

• There was a large fire in Gig Harbor, Washington.

War On Terror

• A "suspicious" piece of luggage was found in Miami International Airport. Naturally, that screwed everything up as it had to be examined. It turned out to be nothing.
• 4 men, one of them already in prison, were indicted in Los Angeles on charges of planning terror attacks. A alleged list of targets was found on one of their cell phones.

Fight For Iraq

• Shiite Moslems crossing a bridge on a religious pilgramage panicked when a rumor spread that there was a suicide bomber in their midst. In the resulting chaos, some people jumped over the side of the bridge into the Tigris River and others were crushed by the stampede. 950 people are dead and 800 injured.
• A "terror video" alleges to show a U.S. helicopter falling from the sky. I guess the people behind the video are claiming to have shot the chopper down; that point was unclear.

Katrina's Fury

MORE local angle. Jesus H. Christ, isn't this a big enough story without having to drag local crap into it? Jim Hyde was in News Control, explaining that while Portland has some vulnerabilities, it isn't as susceptible to natural disaster as New Orleans turns out to have been.

Hilary Hutcheson, her hair parted on the right side again, was in Cornelius to tell us about how local companies are sending water and tea to the hurricane victims in New Orleans. Nordstroms has chipped in to pay for the trucks driving the liquid down there. Now if they'd only chip in for a makeover for Hilary!

The city of Portland is sponsoring training for local people to learn what to do in the event of a natural disaster. The class takes 8 weeks.

Speaking of makeovers, you should have seen what "KPTV's Sumi Das" who is still in Biloxi, looked like several years ago when she first started working at Tech TV. Plain Jane City. Then one day, she got a makeover and turned into a little Indian hottie. But I digress. Sumi told us that things were not getting better in Mississippi. Some of the floating casinos there, for example, ain't floating anymore.

By this point, I was wondering what the deal was. Weather usually pops up at 33 past. It was 38 past before the weather started.

Weather. Break.

Final Cut

• A train derailed in Kansas, spilling ethanol all over the place, closing a nearby school.
• Another rail car caused a chemical leak in Cincinnati, Ohio.
• A small plane crashing into a house in Utah caused a fire.

Katrina's Fury (again)

"KPTV's Doug Luzader" was in Louisiana to tell us about all the mayhem in New Orleans. We saw video of copters airlifting survivors into the air and of George Bush holding a press conference (which included the least inspiring speech I've ever heard by a president) in the White House Rose Garden. We also were told--again--about the people in the Superdome being transferred to the Astrodome in Houston.

It's not really a disaster in America until a big corporation is affected. The new Hard Rock casino, scheduled to open last night at midnight, was destroyed by Katrina. Katrina is now officially a true disaster.

Some local healthcare professionals are being transported to Louisiana to help with the recovery effort there.

Lastly, we got a lecture about how we should all have an emergency kit handy. It should include the items you'd need to survive for at least 72 hours. According to KPTV, these include water, food that requires little preparation, flashlights and a first aid kit. No Diet Pepsi, Hershey bars, symmetrical fake potato chips in a can? Screw it, I don't want to live!

WHAT KPTV DIDN'T TELL YOU ABOUT TONIGHT (a sampling):

Plan B is the name of a "day after" birth control medicine. Under the Bush administration, the FDA has been dragging its feet about allowing it to be sold over the counter. As a result, a high-level FDA official has quit in protest: [link]

His slow response to the disaster seems to be further hurting President Bush's popularity. The Manchester (New Hampshire) Union-Leader, historically a very conservative newspaper, ran an anti-Bush editorial:
[link]

It was worse inside the Superdome than you may have been lead to believe. Much worse. Click here.