He meth have misspoken

This is your anchorman. This is your anchorman on . . . meth?

At least this is your anchorman with meth on the brain. Well, this certainly explains a lot about Channel 6 here in Omaha.

I understand this clip made it to the Tonight Show.

They don't call it Channel Sux for nothing. And remember, pass the meth pipe from the left-hand side. Now, name that '80s pop-culture reference.
 
Now back to Mary Jane at the anchor desk.

What kind of geek am I?

Still this kind of geek.

Still the kind of geek who needs ancient test patterns to check out his computer monitor -- adapted to wide-screen proportions, of course.

And now, our national anthem.

Don't mess around when burtations strike

In Los Angeles, when a reporter does this, it's cause for alarm and much legitimate speculation about on-air strokes or possible brain tumors. Scary stuff.

In Omaha, when a reporter does this, it means you must be watching Channel 6.

Your Daily '80s: Afternoon TV

It's the fall of 1987 in Omaha. You're a vidhead.

What to watch, what to watch on TV this afternoon?

Well, you can watch this.


Or you can watch that.

Shake your booty till your brains fall out

If you're a little boy growing up in Ashland, Neb., you can grow up to be an astronaut.

Look at Clayton Anderson. Remember, the sky's the limit.

If you're a little girl in Ashland, and if you want to try your hand at junior cheerleading, you can grow up to shake your butt for the astronauts. And if you don't want to shake it for the youth-football crowd, the cheerleader coach will kick your unshaking butt right off the squad.

Because the "shake your booty" cheer is a real "crowd-pleaser." Make of that what you will when 5- to 11-year-old girls are involved. And note that the NBC version of the video package originally shot by Omaha's WOWT television artfully cuts away before the little girls shake their butts at the camera.

The local Channel 6 story is here.

HERE'S SOME of the story from the Today show on NBC:

“It just felt wrong. I don’t know why,” Faylene Frampton said Wednesday during an interview on TODAY with Tamron Hall. “It just didn’t feel it was a cheer that was appropriate for kids of my age or younger.”

The sixth-grader from Ashland, Neb., says she complained to cheerleading coach Tina Harris in the past that she did not feel comfortable with the cheer, which is number 33 in the squad’s 44-cheer routine.

The cheer calls upon Faylene and younger members of the squad — including some in the second grade — to turn their backs to the bleachers, bend over, and move their pelvises from side to side.

The cheer had been used in the past, but Faylene says never liked doing it and told the coach so. So when Harris gave the signal for “shake your booty” on Oct. 10, the third-to-last game of the season, she decided it was time to put her foot down — both of them, actually — and take a stand.

Faylene, the oldest and most senior of the junior cheerleaders, refused to do the cheer and was sent home. Later, her father was informed by the coach during a phone call that Faylene was being benched for the last two games for disrespecting the coach.

(snip)

Coach Harris told the local NBC affiliate that she didn’t find the cheer sexually suggestive or objectionable, but nonetheless dropped it from the last two games. She added that no one had complained about the cheer before, and that explaining the controversy, and her decision to bench Faylene for the remainder of the season, was difficult.

BUT NOT as "difficult" as just not having little girls shake their butts at adults in the stands of an elementary-school football game.

"Shaking it" is one thing. People dance; little kids dance. It's cute when they do.

But little girls, some as young as 5, turning their posteriors to the stands -- bleachers filled with adults -- and "shaking it" at the crowd is entirely another.

As a Catholic who has worked with kids at church -- and as someone who has completed the now-mandatory "safe-environment" training -- that is not something I'd be comfortable letting high-schoolers do for an audience, much less forcing preadolescents to do under penalty of banishment. Maybe if everybody were doing the "Hokey Pokey" or the "Chicken Dance," but certainly not chanting "Jump! Shake your booty! Jump! Jump! Shake your booty!"

In other words, what the hell is wrong with this overgrown teenager they have "coaching" little girls in Ashland how to be cheerleaders?

It doesn't take a rocket scientist -- or an astronaut -- to refrain from teaching junior cheerleaders how to "shake it" like junior streetwalkers.

An electronic boat anchor

Starting today, we begin in earnest the short march to the end of TV as we've known it since Philo Farnsworth and Vladimir Zworykin figured out the all-electronic television method.

At noon today in Omaha, for the first time in almost 60 years, we'll see nothing on Channel 6 but nothing. It's all gone digital . . . and to new digital channels.

So, in honor of the beginning of the end of an analog era, let's take a look back. And don't touch that dial!

Whither broadcasting? I'm with Ron

Whoever is in charge of moderating website comments for WOWT -- Omaha's Weahehhehhehther Authority -- never, EVER ought to be hired for any job involving screening inmates' mail.

Ever.

SOME CHANNEL SIX VIEWERS, writing in the comments of the Omaha City Weekly Media Watch blog, complained the station's webmasters were censoring any negative comment concerning WOWT's bungled coverage of early Sunday's EF-2 tornado.

One reader noted his criticism of the station and chief meteorologist Jim Flowers, though measured and respectful, never made it into the website's comments section.

Apparently, WOWT staffers were too busy assigning blame to everyone but themselves for the station's inability to do what competitor KETV did -- provide live coverage as the storm bore down on the city -- to deal with negative comments.

THAT'S WHY a combox warrior has to be wily in these cases.

Likewise, it helps to get an assist from station personnel too harried or too dense to crack a really simplified version of a jailhouse code. In fact, the code "Ron from Omaha" used to breach the station's Pleasantville Firewall was so simple it required no key to decipher it -- just a sharp eye.

And sharp eyes must be something in extremely short supply at Channel Sux. Here are the messages (you read the words typed in all CAPS . . . that's how simple the code is):

Posted by: Ron Location: Omaha on Jun 9, 2008 at 02:34 PM
CHANNEL 6 is to be commended for not being EMBARRASED to tell it like it is about how ITSELF AND others had no lead time to know about the bad weather. Many people FAILED to see the tornado in OMAHA. IT IS PATHETIC, people, THAT JIM FLOWERS of everyone in Omaha is STILL the only one on the air who HAS the guts to tell us how people came so close to dying in their beds because of the freakish nature of this storm. Telling the truth is HIS JOB, and I'm glad Jim does it so well.

Posted by: Ron Location: Omaha on Jun 9, 2008 at 04:36 PM
Robyn says it all. WOWT could not know that bad weather was coming when the weather bureau FAILED to tell the station's meteorologists -- who weren't there anyway -- that there might be severe weather in OMAHA. I don't think it's right that WOWT should be BLAMED by some OTHER PEOPLE who didn't have weather radios, FOR its all THEIR OWN FAULTS. WHAT A BUNCH OF LOSERS! i'm going to FIRE back at these naysayers with the truth, which JIM FLOWERS so bravely told people to-day. WOWT, you're my favorite station. And all the whiners should HANG IT UP. don't SURRENDER YOUR moral high ground to these nattering nabobs of negativism. don't give them such LICENSE!

FISH. BARREL. FIREARMS.

And when swirling clouds of death and destruction bear down on our homes and loved ones, we count on these jokers to warn us that danger is nigh.

Among the impressive clot of refrigerator magnets on our old Kenmore (Really, I think standing near our refrigerator might relieve the pain and stiffness of arthritis.) is an old one from Channel 3 -- another station that was half an hour late and a sawbuck short early Sunday.

The magnet, back from when Action 3 News was KM3 News, listed "3 Things Every Kid Should Know" -- what county we live in, what's a tornado watch, and what's a tornado warning.

Maybe all the Omaha broadcasters -- save Channel 7 -- could pool their depleted budgets and go in on an updated version of that KM3 relic. It could add a fourth item, after the explanation of "tornado warning." Maybe something along these lines:

If you're counting on us to tell you a tornado's coming, follow these simple instructions. 1) Put your head between your legs. 2) Kiss your ass goodbye.