CBS Fires Producer Who Broke Into 'CSI'

Yahoo! News - CBS Fires Producer Who Broke Into 'CSI'

This is for me fantastic!!! While I really do not have to deal with this stuff anymore in my new job, at my old station in New York we were constantly interrupting regular programming for the smallest of news events in an effort to report it FIRST. I have always been of the opinion that no matter what the graphic package, no matter where the looks, or how tight or loose the shot is or if they stand or sit, if they toss back and forth or just read the news, banter, no banter, small talk about personal lives or plain just rip and read the news, if you do not like the station and/or personalities delivering the news you will not watch it.

Plus if I am watching a program I absolutely HATE news interruptions of non-essential news stories. WTC attacked, Oklahoma City, Election Results, out President shot sure. Anything else can be handled with a quick crawl on the bottom of the screen and the lead of the nightly news, otherwise stop breaking in. When you break in first you only piss off your viewers and then if the story is big enough make them change the channel to the nes channel they prefer.

In a need to be first example I present the case of the dead fireman.

This took place several years ago when I directed the Weekend Evening news at my old NBC Station. During the news cast a report came in of a single car fatal accident in a small town east of Rochester. The man driving the car had a heart attack and crashed his vehicle and died. It just so happens that this was the Battalion Chief of the local Fire Department returning home from a fire. Now the producer wanted to include that information in the "breaking" story and I disagreed. He argued that since we did not release the name of the man we could report the story as he wrote it. My argument was that in a small town there would be only one Battalion Chief and many would know exactly who he was without mentioning his name, ESPECIALLY the family and friends who were still in the dark as it just came over the emergency scanner and rescue crews were not even at the scene yet. I for one did not want the family to find out about their father's death on the 11:00 news. We fought like cats and dogs and I told him I would not put the story on the air as written. End result was we aired the story to protect the identity of the victim and I got called into the News Directors office on Monday to explain my actions. News Director agreed with my position but not my 'method' of expressing it (I do believe words like "idiot, assinine, asshole, and piece of shit" might have entered the argument at some point).

Bottom line is now I hope Producers will think twice on all levels of TV before they cut into our favorite programs.