Who Dey Gonna Lighten Up?
Grayson
It’s a pretty good time to be a fan of the local NFL team.
Last weekend, the Bengals pretty definitively won a road playoff game against the Buffalo Bills, setting up back-to-back AFC Championship Game appearances (for the first time in team history) and a shot at finally winning that first Super Bowl. In addition, Joe Burrow said the Bengals’ championship window is “his entire career,” he told the media that he plans to spend a long time playing here, and Ian Rapoport reported that the Bengals – although notorious cheapskates – are preparing a big deal and extension for Joey B as soon as the offseason gets here (which I hope will not be until February 13). So you can’t blame people in Cincinnati for being a bit enthusiastic.
Well, actually, if you’re WVXU columnist John Kiesewetter, you can.
Kiesewetter, who previously worked for the Cincinnati Enquirer for several decades, writes the “Media Beat” column for the local NPR radio station’s website. In between wishing happy birthday to local media figures and aggregating any listicle that includes Cincinnati among the “Top Cities to” do this or that thing, he decided to indulge himself in some old-fashioned crankery. His complaint, in short, is that local TV news (Local 12, WLWT, WCPO, etc.) has gone a little overboard with its team spirit.
I thought about doing a more in-depth critical reading of his column, reflecting on the state of local news in the country generally, and drawing a through-line to how we got here. But that would be hard and take more time! And the column isn’t really worth it anyway. So instead, we’re going to do this “Fire Joe Morgan” style and just respond to it piece-by-piece. (Kiesewetter’s words are in bold italics, for clarity.)
Opinion: Who Dey think gonna stop this TV silliness? Noooobody!
If someone had read me the headline out loud, I might have thought it was someone taking a defiant stand in support of Justin Roiland to try to keep Rick and Morty on the air.
Cincinnati TV news is filled with frivolous features and inane comments about the Bengals playoffs again.
As opposed to the rest of the year, when it is filled with frivolous features and inane comments about other things.
When the Cincinnati Bengals win a playoff game, TV news teams lose their minds.
“The adrenaline is still pumping from last night, so I’m not even cold standing here,” WXIS-TV reporter Lauren Minor said outside empty Paycor Stadium Monday morning.
“That might be a lie,” she quickly added.
This is the low standard of journalism that has polluted the Cincinnati airwaves since the Bengals made the playoffs last year. Breaking news has been replaced by unabashed Bengalmania.
It’s important in a column like this to lead with one of your strongest examples, and the choice here is a good one, because it lets us know that the support for the writer’s thesis isn’t very strong.
Minor made a harmless little joke, that (I would suggest) says nothing about journalism standards more broadly. In addition, one of the jobs of local news is to provide coverage about the local sports team. So I fail to see why it would be illegitimate for Minor to do a segment outside of Paycor Stadium.
And that last paragraph is the kind of thing that really sets me off. He makes two conclusory statements that (we will see) he does not support. The first is that a “low standard of journalism” has ruined Cincinnati news since the Bengals made the playoffs - meaning that it started when the Bengals made the playoffs last year and did not go away, and he is at least implying a causal relationship here as well. Second, he says that Bengals coverage has replaced breaking news, meaning that local news is failing to cover specific breaking news stories in favor of more Bengals segments. Both of these require specific examples of how the Bengals stories have interfered with the rest of the news product. Kiesewetter has no such examples.
My thesis, for what it’s worth, is simply that Kiesewetter finds this stuff annoying and wants it to go away, but he has to pretend there’s some bigger thing going on to justify the column space.
On WLWT-TV Monday morning, anchor Kelly Rippin was talking about how the Bengals (sic) 27-10 victory over the Buffalo Bills leads to a rematch against the Kansas City Chiefs in the AFC Championship this weekend. Last year the Bengals won in overtime and advanced to the Super Bowl.
OK, so far, this sounds like Rippin was providing, uh, news, on a news show.
“We can do it! We know we can do it!” Rippin said.
That’s how WLWT-TV is leading the way, to quote the station’s slogan.
OK. I guess he’s implying that the morning anchor shouldn’t wish the team well? Who gives a shit?
Last week the television airwaves were filled with breathless live reports from western New York about Buffalo wings and Bengals fans by more than a dozen Cincinnati news anchors, reporters, meteorologists and, yes, even some TV sports reporters.
Kansas City, here we come!
While interviewing Cincinnati fans outside the Bills’ Highmark Stadium after the game Sunday, WKRC-TV’s Adam Clements told viewers, “This is how we elevate ourselves. This is the best fan base in the NFL!”
Just the facts, ma’am, has been replaced by just the fanaticism.
I’m revising my thesis. I think he came up with this line, fell in love with it, and built his column around it. I still think, generally, that he just finds this stuff annoying.
WCPO-TV anchor Tanya O’Rourke, also standing outside Highmark Stadium with Bengals fans after the game, told viewers how “my Bengals, your Bengals” were going back to the AFC Championship. She asked the gaggle of Cincinnati fans to give her a “Who Dey!”
Not to be outdone, WLWT-TV’s Danielle Dindak asked Bengals fans to give her a “Who Dey! Three times during each of her live reports at 10 p.m., 11 p.m., and 11:30 p.m. Sunday with people waiting outside Paycor Stadium for the team to return from Buffalo.
Look, I don’t watch local news, so I’m assuming the complaint here is that Dindak didn’t need to do the same thing on each of the half-hour news shows. It’s not like, you know, they do the weather on each of the 10, 11, and 11:30 shows, right?
Suppose WLWT-TV should change its slogan to cheerleading the way?
Ha.
Before the 6:30 p.m. kickoff Sunday in Arrowhead Stadium, get ready to see more stories about the host city’s food. Kansas City barbeque will replace Buffalo wings.
Get ready to see more stories about Bengals fans living in the host city. And meeting more couples where one roots for the Bengals, the other for the Chiefs.
You’ll hear a lot this week about the injured opponent. Stories about Damar Hamlin’s heart will be booted in favor of updates on Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes’ aching ankle.
Get ready to see more stories about T-shirt makers, ice cream companies, chili parlors and other folks grabbing the tiger’s tale to make a buck.
Expect to see TV personalities wearing plenty of orange – ties, dresses, jackets, hats, coats, scars and glasses. WXIS-TV meteorologist Catherine Bodak and WKRC-TV traffic reporter Jen Dalton appeared to be wearing the exact same orange dress Monday morning.
WCPO-TV meteorologist Jennifer Ketchmark Monday wore what looked like a white tiger-striped dress the morning after the Bengals wore their white uniforms in Buffalo. (If her wardrobe choice was purely coincidental, I apologize.)
So, this is the first part of the column that grasps at something like a point. If his argument was that these kinds of stories are predictable and stale, then I might even agree with him. But this is not the rot at the core of journalism in America, or even here in Cincinnati.
We saw a little bit of this last year, when Journalism Ethics Knowers complained about some reporters wearing team colors at the stadium. I think it comes from a fundamental misunderstanding or denial of what local television news actually is – which is a place people go to hear about the teams they like, find out if it’s going to snow tomorrow, and get absolutely terrified that roving gangs of criminals are wandering around abducting middle-aged white ladies and rubbing fentanyl on the outside of gas pump handles.
I think priorities are important, and I think some high-minded people have theirs out of whack. It’s easy to pick on two local news reporters wearing the same dress, and no one “important” gets mad. It’s a little harder to ask why the New York Times spent like two years pretending there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, or the past six years reporting on Russian interference, tax returns, and classified documents as if any member of the Trump family was going to be prosecuted for any of the crimes that they publicly and proudly committed.
Finally, as to the last two paragraphs, I learned long ago not to comment on what women choose to wear.
Veteran meteorologist Steve Horstmeyer did his forecast Friday night wearing a Bengals ski cap (under the hot TV studio lights?) and a No. 9 Joe Burrow jersey. WKRC-TV meteorologist Brad Maushart broke out his orange tiger-striped suit coat again Sunday morning – but not the orange-tinted glasses he wore last February on Super Bowl Sunday.
I, personally, think Brad’s jacket is good and cool.
And again, did these guys still report the weather? If so, what’s the problem?
Last year O’Rourke boasted during her Super Bowl coverage from Los Angeles that she was wearing a Bengals jacket loaned to her by Sarah Taylor, wife of Bengals coach Zac Taylor.
When you hear the phrase “9 on your side,” you know which NFL team Channel 9 folks are rooting for. (But what about during the Crosstown Shootout? Whose side is 9 on?)
There’s only one D1 basketball team located in the city of Cincinnati.
WLWT-TV devoted the first 13 minutes of its 11 p.m. Sunday newscast to the Bengals victory, while Channels 9 and 12 did a weather update and reported on the mass shooting in Monterey, Calif. (Channel 19’s news started late due to the premiere of Fox’s Accused after the Dallas-San Francisco game.)
Ashley Kirkland, who referred to the Bengals quarterback as “Joe Cool,” anchored Channel 5’s news from Cincinnati which included reports from Buffalo by main anchor Kike Dardis and weekend sports anchor Olivia Ray. Dardis ended his live shot by mentioning he called the Bengals quarterback “Snow Burrow” after the game, while others had dubbed him “Joe Snow.”
“Ashley, which one do you like better? Which nickname?” Dardis asked.
Once again, WLWT is leading the way.
This is cherrypicking particularly vapid episodes – if they weren’t doing small talk about the Bengals game they’d be doing small talk about something else. There’s a reason movies like Anchorman and Elf poked a little fun at local news stations in that same way, years before Joe Burrow took a snap even in college. What important news were we missing out on? He admits that channels 9 and 12 did the weather and reported on a mass shooting, and I’d bet that WLWT also reported on that same mass shooting, just at a different time.
It's hard to fathom that Cincinnati stations could do more hype this week from Kansas City than they did from Buffalo.
Channel 19 broadcast five hours of live “Playoff Prowl” coverage before the game Sunday. But all the pregame airtime couldn’t make up for the fact that WXIX-TV, the evening news rating leader, was the only station not covering the Bengals when the game ended about 6:10 p.m. Sunday. Channel 19 was broadcasting the Dallas-San Francisco game, followed by the premiere of Accused, and couldn’t resume its Bengals prowl until several minutes after 11 p.m.
Channels 5, 9 and 12 also devoted much of their Sunday morning newscasts to Bengals hype.
But give credit to the managers of Channels 9 and 5 for exploiting their Bengals postgame coverage – even though the game was on Channel 12. They knew Channel 12 would be locked into CBS’ postgame show, so Channels 5 and 9 shrewdly promoted that Taylor and Burrow would be seen live on their stations after the game. They carried the postgame press conferences live between 6:15 and 6:30 p.m. Channel 12 showed them on tape in its 6:30 p.m. local news, after CBS’ 20-minute postgame talkfest.
I’m sorry but that whole section is extremely boring.
It will be interesting to see if Cincinnati TV stations again promise this week to air Taylor’s and Burrow’s postgame press conferences live Sunday night. The 6:30 p.m. game on CBS (Channel 12) should end shortly after 9:30 p.m., which means the media conferences could start before the 10 p.m. news. Will Channel 5 and 9 interrupt America’s Got Talent: All-Stars or The Avengers to air them? Probably not.
I mean, surely you could interrupt The Avengers? Are they really just showing The Avengers on primetime on Sunday? Let me check…
Wow, they’re literally just showing The Avengers.
Channel 9’s early evening newscast also included meteorologist Brandon Spinner giving his forecast for next Sunday: “We’ll have a carbon copy of today, with the Bengals moving on.”
Who really knows what will happen next Sunday in Kansas City? It turns out that predictions the Bills-Bengals rematch from the Jan. 2 Monday Night Football game would be a very close contest were as wrong as forecasts saying Cincinnati would only get a couple inches of snow Sunday morning, and washed away by afternoon rain.
If this Sunday’s weather will be a carbon copy of yesterday, does that mean the meteorologists’ forecasts will be wildly inaccurate again?
This is a bit of a cheap shot, and also a hack bit (lol, the weathermen are always wrong). But also, they said it would snow Sunday and it snowed, what’s the problem? It’s not like Nate Silver gets fired every time he misses one of his polls.
Here's one safe prediction: The TV stations will go crazy with Bengals coverage this week from Kansas City. Stations will promise "complete coverage," even though WKRC-TV will have the most complete coverage because Channel 12 is the only Cincinnati station that will broadcast the game. The other stations can give us complete coverage of fans and food in Kansas City — but not the game. And isn't that the most important thing?
And here's another prediction: Cincinnati TV stations will send a small army to invade Kansas City in a few days for live reports on newscasts until the 6:30 p.m. Sunday kickoff.
Bengals fans who love to tailgate before the game could turn this into a drinking game. They could take a drink every time they see a station air a live report from Kansas City. The really hard core fans could take a drink every time they see a TV news anchor, reporter, meteorologist or sportscaster wearing orange. But they might pass out well before kickoff.
Bengals fans tailgating won’t need any help passing out before kickoff.
WXIX-TV sports director Joe Danneman predicted from Buffalo that the Bengals-Chiefs AFC Championship game will be "a classic in Kansas City."
Then he added: "It's going to be a talker all week long."
I'm afraid he's right about that.
Nailed it. People are going to be talking about the AFC Championship game for the entire week leading up to the game. I’m not entirely convinced, though, that this shows how far local news in Cincinnati has fallen, or that it shows much of anything at all.
I’ll give him this much, Kiesewetter certainly revealed something in his column, just not whatever he was trying to.