Assignment 4-1: Local Newscast Critique

Nick Acheson
February 4, 2010

For this assignment I watched WABI TV 5 on Wednesday night at 5 pm. I found this assignment difficult to critique the writing of this news program because the program is obviously well written and also because newscasters talk very quickly. These two factors made it very difficult for me to find parts of the newscast that I would have changed. However, I did find some pieces of the newscast that I would have done differently.

When talking about the new recall that the car company Toyota has enacted, WABI TV 5 newscaster said, “again we’re also told the owners who have a recalled notice model will actually receive notices by mail from Toyota that will tell them to take their vehicle to be fixed.” Although there is no major problem with this previous quote, it is somewhat confusing. I’m not sure if the newscaster misspoke or not but the words, “recalled notice model,” do not make much sense to me. I would have worded it differently such as “recalled model notice” or maybe just “recalled notice”. I think either makes more sense than what was said in the actual newscast.

Another part of the program I might have changed or excluded would be when the meteorologist had the map of the entire United States behind him and he said, “Look at all this moisture in the south.” He was talking about the large amount of precipitation that was hovering over Texas and the southern United States. This would have been fine if his statement actually led to something that affected all of us up in Maine. It actually had nothing to do with Maine and he quickly switched areas to Canada to show us where all the recent cold air was coming from. So the quick blurb about precipitation in the South was completely useless to everyone watching this in Bangor, ME.

Throughout the newscast, I realized a trend with the verb tenses. Almost all the verbs used on the show were past tense verbs. Some of these verbs included: “said” “seized” “filed” and “charged.” Using past tense verbs makes sense because they are reporting on information that has already happened in the past, excepting the upcoming weather for the week.

These are some of the areas of the newscast that caught my attention and might have changed if I had been in charge of editing the program.