Local TV News is Shitty

But you knew that. This Illinois Times article highlights how much it sucks for many of the people bringing you the TV version of the news.

Although I never did TV news (never wanted to), my experience with radio broadcast news wasn’t much better, even two decades ago. The hours sucked and the pay sucked even harder. You have to either be really ambitious (and, sorry, self-centered) or just really, really like the work itself. I fell short on both those counts. I moved on and I’m happier for it.

The thing I liked the most was doing a talk show. It was kind of fun have an audience when I spoke my mind. I find blogging satisfies that same desire (with a much smaller audience) while allowing me to hold down a job that actually pays a decent wage and doesn’t require me to cover a fire at 2:00 AM.

I never ventured into TV news because I really didn’t want to be recognized on the street (although that’s a feature, not a bug for some people). I also didn’t like the idea of having to base all stories around some visual. That just seemed like extra work that often didn’t add anything to the “news” aspect. In fact, the visuals often made a story “newsworthy” when in fact it wasn’t, it just looked good on TV. And it’s still that way. It just wasn’t for me.