Broken News: Live Splatter in HD on KABC

In a stroke of great timing, KABC Channel 7 news rolled out their ‘AIR7HD’ hi-def helicopter camera just this week, in time for them to show you a man get plugged dead by police on live television. The hi-def shooting came around 5:30 in the evening Wednesday at the end of an hour-long car chase. When they demoed their new HD copter cam on the air, they droolled on about “getting into those details” and making the viewer “more a part of the story.” Gee thanks, Channel 7.

Of course The Times ran the usual piece on the pseudodebate over broadcasting live car chases. Take some local TV news editors spouting the usual pablum on why they cover these chases. Grab a communications professor to break off a fresh soundbite of that golden oldie, “If it bleeds, it leads” and reveal to us that it is not good to expose kids to this stuff. Rinse, repeat.

But you have to love the NBC guy’s holier-than-thou attitude in the Times piece. “It has to rise to the level of real news,” says the NBC guy in explaining why they did not show the chase. I guess when he says “real news,” he means stuff like their real news piece on a bikini-wearing realtor. I give them a month before they have their own Hi-Def copter. Fire season’s right around the corner, guys.