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April 8, 2022 10:40 am  #1


The Sad State Of Sloppy Local Radio News

I admit that no one's prefect - er, perfect - including yours truly. But I've heard some pretty bizarre things on several Toronto radio newscasts this week and there was really no reason for them. 

On CFRB Friday morning, the anchor threw to a post-budget wrap from CTV's Joyce Napier. She pronounced the surname as "Nap-ee-your" instead of "Nape-ee-your," as in the nape of your neck. Not a big deal, maybe, but the veteran correspondent has been around for years and you should know how to properly say the names of the people on your staff. 

It was far worse over on AM 640 in the past few days, where a relative newcomer on the evening shift (who may not be located in Toronto, but could be doing her cast remotely) threw to a report from Global's Washington correspondent Reggie Cecchini. Except she intro'd him with something that sounded like "Reggie Cuchinold." It actually rhymes with zucchini, and again, if it's your own guy who's been around forever, you should probably know how to say it correctly. 

On another newscast, this same reader warned listeners that a certain food product had been recalled because it was potentially contaminated with "samerall" or something similar. It was really "salmonella," which is pretty serious but she clearly had no idea how to say the word, and the danger may have been lost on listeners.

I point all this out not to make fun of them or make anyone think they're not smart. Instead, to me, the problem is the lack of mentoring in newsrooms, since so many experienced pros have been let go. There's no one for these newcomers to go to, to actually ask how a word or a name is pronounced. (It would be easy to check, of course, but it's hard to correct something if you don't know it's wrong in the first place.)

Another consequence of firing people who know what they're doing and replacing them with people who may not - although you can pay them a lot less, so I guess in the end, that's all that matters.

 

April 8, 2022 10:55 am  #2


Re: The Sad State Of Sloppy Local Radio News

I wouldn't go as far as saying the people don't know what they are doing...    The issue is the cuts have went too far in major markets like Toronto especially that people are not getting enough coaching and oversight to become better, getting the support they need to be better, and treating radio news as a second fiddle they have to deal with along with the ever more important TV operation.   

The board room decisions made with this harm credibility, ratings etc. and once the listeners are gone, it's hard to get them back.    It's easy to see in the ratings book currently what has happened.   640 and 1010 as budgets got cut, are in the bottom ranks compared to 680, that still funds it's newsroom. 

Last edited by radiokid (April 8, 2022 10:57 am)

 

April 8, 2022 11:05 am  #3


Re: The Sad State Of Sloppy Local Radio News

Even with cutbacks , I wonder if someone is taking the time to aircheck and work with these people or ..does that job no longer exist . How many (sometimes humbling ) sessions did I have to be a part of over the years . It's called "quality control " but ..that may be a thing of the past . Sure sounds like it some days .  

 

April 8, 2022 11:28 am  #4


Re: The Sad State Of Sloppy Local Radio News

I think you may find the remuneration is the issue..,

 

April 8, 2022 1:09 pm  #5


Re: The Sad State Of Sloppy Local Radio News

Not a mispronunciation, but just a gaffe. On BT this morning the traffic person did a live ad tag and said I could save on my car insurance if I drove less than 19,000 kilometers an hour.

 

April 8, 2022 1:25 pm  #6


Re: The Sad State Of Sloppy Local Radio News

The Weed wrote:

Not a mispronunciation, but just a gaffe. On BT this morning the traffic person did a live ad tag and said I could save on my car insurance if I drove less than 19,000 kilometers an hour.

I guess the crew of Star Trek won’t qualify for that discount.

 

April 8, 2022 3:22 pm  #7


Re: The Sad State Of Sloppy Local Radio News

There are a few reasons for local news being a mess.  Cutbacks mean the staff does more.  And news directors don't review copy and assist readers with proper pronunciation. 
I was told the main goal of these companies is to satisfy the shareholders. To hell with viewers and listeners.

 

April 8, 2022 3:31 pm  #8


Re: The Sad State Of Sloppy Local Radio News

Ale Ont wrote:

There are a few reasons for local news being a mess.  Cutbacks mean the staff does more.  And news directors don't review copy and assist readers with proper pronunciation. 
I was told the main goal of these companies is to satisfy the shareholders. To hell with viewers and listeners.

I'm honestly not sure if some of these stations even have news directors any more. 

     Thread Starter
 

April 9, 2022 2:45 am  #9


Re: The Sad State Of Sloppy Local Radio News

Please!  This isn't a mentoring issue.  It's a laziness thing.  

 First, I have to think back to the early 90s to remember having a news director whose only job was being a “news director”.  Everyone else also had an on-air shift - usually mornings - and a pile of other crap to do.  Good luck getting that exhausted slob give you a useful air check or some sage writing advice on the regular.   

You don't need a 45-year veteran of news to hold your hand and tell you how to pronounce your own correspondent's name.  Youtube can do that.  

Need to know how the locals in Ukraine say 'Mykolaiv'?  Find a tour video.  In the US, 'Greenville' is one of the most common town/city names but it's pronounced differently depending on the state.  And don't even get me started on all those f-ed up places in Massachusetts (why isn’t Bicester spelled 'Bister'?).  Youtube's good for that too.   

And for the record, it took me about 2 seconds to find a video of Reggie Cecchini saying his own name.  Just because someone avoided getting fired or laid off for half a century doesn’t make them wise or even good.   Everyone’s just gotta learn to be clever with whatever resources they've got.  

Last edited by Mavridis (April 9, 2022 2:49 am)

 

April 9, 2022 10:32 am  #10


Re: The Sad State Of Sloppy Local Radio News

The question is , is  anyone correcting them?  Or is there a great concern about " hurting someone's feelings"?
I used to tell colleagues  ...if you hear me mispronounce something ..please tell me. No sense sounding like an idiot a second time . 

Last edited by fyshtalk (April 9, 2022 10:36 am)

 

April 9, 2022 3:15 pm  #11


Re: The Sad State Of Sloppy Local Radio News

Some broadcasters don't take direction well...





 

Last edited by Media Observer (April 9, 2022 4:47 pm)

 

April 9, 2022 4:38 pm  #12


Re: The Sad State Of Sloppy Local Radio News

Rogers National overnights is a total cluster F

 

April 10, 2022 9:36 am  #13


Re: The Sad State Of Sloppy Local Radio News

pinto wrote:

Rogers National overnights is a total cluster F

I second this emotion. 

My dog woke me up at 5:20 AM Sunday morning and after letting him out in the backyard for 90 secs. to do his thing, I tried to go back to sleep. When I couldn't, I turned on the radio and with so little on at that hour of the day, I tuned into CityNews 680. And after listening to them for a few minutes, I really couldn't sleep!

I don't know the name of the guy doing the overnight news reading but I believe he was either out of Calgary or Vancouver. Wherever he was, he wasn't far enough away. This guy simply could not read a sentence without stumbling over every other word. It was simply incredible to think this was going out across Rogers' news stations from Vancouver to Halifax and all points in between. 

At one point, he came out of a report on Ukraine, and declared "in local news" and then aired an item about something going on in Alberta. It certainly wasn't "local news" in Toronto! Did he forget he was on a network?

The number of boots, mispronunciations and hesitant delivery was unlike anything I've heard since first year Ryerson RTA. 

And it's not the first time. There is also a woman with a foreign accent who sometimes works this same shift that cannot properly say names or locations and has an almost unlistenable delivery. Fortunately, she wasn't on when I tuned in. 

But that wasn't the end of it. Not only was the timing between the local traffic and weather and the network rejoins missed almost every time, but I was stunned to hear a prerecorded voicer from 680's own Ari Rabinovitch, who is normally very good, pronounce the word "extremist" in his story as "extra mist." Given how many times they air the same reports, how did that get through and get repeated over and over?

All this goes back to my original point - if Rogers doesn't care about its on-air sound, it speaks to how important the bottom line really is in this. If you have no experience and presumably are willing to work cheap, they'll put you on overnights across the country! A low listener level is no excuse for something this amateurish. 

It's more of the sad truth about local (and in this case national) radio and the fact there's no one to tell anybody how to do it right anymore. 

And boy, does it show!

     Thread Starter
 

April 10, 2022 11:10 am  #14


Re: The Sad State Of Sloppy Local Radio News

As programming elements and people were being slashed all around me, ( including me!!) a former Corus sales manager said to me that he didn't care what anything sounded like as long as he made more money.  The full service newsroom at that station was eliminated.

 

April 12, 2022 11:04 am  #15


Re: The Sad State Of Sloppy Local Radio News

     Thread Starter
 

April 12, 2022 3:32 pm  #16


Re: The Sad State Of Sloppy Local Radio News

OK, this one is about sloppy TV, but take a look at this frame grab I took off of CBC's Tuesday noon newscast, a simulcast of CBC News Network, with a few local headlines thrown in. Can you spot the maybe not-so-obvious terrible error? Answer posted below. 








Answer:

The issue is in the local news headlines at the bottom of the screen. Police just arrested a suspect in the apparently random killings of two men, including one outside a subway station. The headline at the bottom of the screen says he "fatally shot" the two victims. The problem? The guy hasn't been convicted of anything. He not only hasn't had a trial, but he's barely been in court before a judge. And any trial is likely months or even years away, unless there's a confession. They have convicted him of the crime before a judge or jury even gets to hear the case. And until that happens, he's not only not guilty but they can't say he fatally shot anyone. 

It should have read "allegedly" or is "accused of" or "has been charged with." This is the kind of stuff that can get TV stations in a lot of trouble if cops have made a mistake or if for some reason, he's not convicted, and it drives producers crazy. 

 
I wonder how long this ran before someone caught it - if they ever did. 

     Thread Starter
 

April 12, 2022 11:37 pm  #17


Re: The Sad State Of Sloppy Local Radio News

Another error occurred on the CTV Toronto news at 6:00pm this past Sunday during the brief coverage of Boris Brott's funeral.  The person being interviewed outside the synagogue after the funeral was labelled as Boris Brott's son David Brott but clearly was not that person but rather was TVO's Steve Paikin.

 

April 13, 2022 12:24 am  #18


Re: The Sad State Of Sloppy Local Radio News

mojo55 wrote:

Another error occurred on the CTV Toronto news at 6:00pm this past Sunday during the brief coverage of Boris Brott's funeral.  The person being interviewed outside the synagogue after the funeral was labelled as Boris Brott's son David Brott but clearly was not that person but rather was TVO's Steve Paikin.

Here's the proof at about the 1:08 mark:

https://toronto.ctvnews.ca/video?clipId=2419847

As someone who once did graphics, I can tell you it may or may not have been the operator's fault. Often these things are in a queue in order and you just display them when the time indicated on your cue-sheet tells you to. He or she may not have recognized Paikin and just put up what the instructions told him to do. And you don't have a lot of time to make the decision because the clip is often just a few seconds long.

Still, the graphics guy or gal likely should have recognized him and I agree it looked very bad, especially because the TVO host is so well known. 

In some shops, they add the supers directly onto the finished product. I'm not sure if CFTO does that, but if so, it should never have left editing that way. 

     Thread Starter
 

April 13, 2022 7:02 am  #19


Re: The Sad State Of Sloppy Local Radio News

RadioActive wrote:

mojo55 wrote:

Another error occurred on the CTV Toronto news at 6:00pm this past Sunday during the brief coverage of Boris Brott's funeral.  The person being interviewed outside the synagogue after the funeral was labelled as Boris Brott's son David Brott but clearly was not that person but rather was TVO's Steve Paikin.

Here's the proof at about the 1;08 mark:

https://toronto.ctvnews.ca/video?clipId=2419847

As someone who once did graphics, I can tell you it may or may not have been the operator's fault. Often these things are in a queue in order and you just display them when the time indicated on your cue-sheet tells you to. He or she may not have recognized Paikin and just put up what the instructions told him to do. And you don't have a lot of time to make the decision because the clip is often just a few seconds long.

Still, the graphics guy or gal likely should have recognized him and I agree it looked very bad, especially because the TVO host is so well known. 

In some shops, they add the supers directly onto the finished product. I'm not sure if CFTO does that, but if so, it should never have left editing that way. 

There might not even be an operator... a lot of newsroom computer systems, e.g. iNews, can interface with a CG, so what you see from the Chyron, Inscriber etc. may have actually been keyed in by a reporter on their newsroom system, and the switcher/technical director is likely simply hitting a button to jump to the next super in the rundown/queue.

 

April 13, 2022 7:12 am  #20


Re: The Sad State Of Sloppy Local Radio News

Yep, it's changed a lot since I used to do it. But this just shows the danger of placing it in the hands, if you will, of a machine.

People can make mistakes, but I can't tell you the number of errors I caught before they hit air - it numbers in the hundreds over the years. There are so many potential points of problems, from spelling mistakes to wrong timing to an unexpected cutaway to the wrong person being keyed at the wrong time or being given the wrong title.

God knows the TD has enough to do - they don't need to add adding supers to the list! Not being old fashioned or against technology, but sometimes an extra pair of eyes works wonders. A computer only knows what is supposed to air and when - not if it's right in the first place.  

     Thread Starter
 

May 9, 2022 7:43 pm  #21


Re: The Sad State Of Sloppy Local Radio News

I have no idea what the experience level of the woman who reads the news on AM 640 during the evening shift is, but I continue to be dumbfounded as I listen to her newscasts. 

On Monday night, she referred to the Ontario Liberal leader as Stephen "Deluca." I sure Mr. Del Duca would be surprised to hear it. You just can't get this wrong. 

The other night, she told the audience that "the Jays are off tonight." What she didn't mention was that they'd been rained out in Cleveland and there would be a doubleheader the next day. Therefore, they really weren't "off" in the way her copy would indicate, their scheduled game had just been postponed. That matters.

She also mispronounced Kelly Cutrara's name at one point. She's one of the station's hosts and that one should be a no-brainer. 

I hear a ton of errors on this person's hourly casts and I actually don't blame her. Briana Carnegie, the woman in charge of 640's newsroom, definitely needs to have a talk with her and review some of these errors so they don't get made over and over again. They're very obvious, very embarrassing and they really hurt the station's overall credibility. 

     Thread Starter
 

May 11, 2022 7:10 pm  #22


Re: The Sad State Of Sloppy Local Radio News

OK, I hate to keep harping on this, but it keeps getting worse. The AM640 newswoman who reads the headlines after 7 PM had another simply horrendous newscast on Wednesday.

First, she called AM640's morning show host Greg Bradley. (It's Greg Brady. If you don't know the name of the most important personality on the station, I have no idea what to say.)

Then she gave the score in the Jays afternoon loss to the Yankees, noting the final score was "three to five." The higher score always come first, except, it seems when she's reading it. 

I have no idea if she's actually based in Toronto but someone needs to take her aside and go over the basics with her. It's an absolute embarrassment this should be going out night after night after night on a station in the biggest market in the country. 

     Thread Starter
 

May 11, 2022 8:28 pm  #23


Re: The Sad State Of Sloppy Local Radio News

I remember when CIDG-FM in Ottawa had a Blues format.  A female announcer says that this particular artist was influenced by British Blues legend Long John Bradley.
Sometimes the kids aren't alright.

 

May 16, 2022 8:50 pm  #24


Re: The Sad State Of Sloppy Local Radio News

I hate to keep harping on the evening newscaster on AM 640, but she just keeps creating more reasons to write about her. On Monday night, she came on after the leaders' debate and continually mispronounced Andrea Horwath's name. At first, I thought it was just a slip of the lip, but the name came up at least twice more and yep, it was wrong every time. You just can't get this stuff wrong. 

Then we got another incredibly silly score. She told us that the Jays were playing the Mariners and that the score was "two and zero." Who gives any sports update like that? 

There were a few other things, by which time I was grateful it was only a four minute or so newscast. This is an absolute embarrassment to the station and it's been allowed to go on night after night after night after night.

I can only assume this is because no one in charge is listening.

If it continues, the audience won't be, either. 

     Thread Starter
 

May 17, 2022 1:50 am  #25


Re: The Sad State Of Sloppy Local Radio News

Many years ago on CHEZ, the sports reader reported "Andre Dawson had three R-B ones to lead the Expos to victory.