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an open letter to Fox 31 (local news, denver):

dear FOX 31,

you've done it! you've officially passed your corporate parent as the greatest sham in news media today, a feat previously thought impossible by, well, everyone!

i watched 18 minutes of your 35 minute 9pm newscast. so far here is your lineup:
-tease: weather
-lead story: weather
-on location report: bad roads
-tease: forecast
-story: retail sales

out of curiosity, do you think anything may be missing? at the time of this writing, the date is december 29, 2006 at approximately 9:30pm MST(who knows when i'll finish). maybe you've heard by now that there was a fairly significant world event going on somewhere in the middle east. something to do with the execution of a murderous tyrant at 10pm eastern time....a FULL HOUR BEFORE YOUR BROADCAST.

7 inches. 7. fucking. inches. you led off your 9pm broadcast with coverage of the "holiday blizzard, round 2," more appropriately named "the blizzard that wasn't." (aside: where the hell did all this snow come from? this isn't fucking north dakota. can we please get back to a regular colorado winter? i really miss my 50 degree high temps and bright sunshine) yet, you buried a little nugget of worldy information in your news rundown so far down in your shot sheet, that i actually found out about it from another tv station....that doesn't hit the air with its broadcast for another 30 minutes! and following it up with a gem like, "before we get to the weather, we have some other news to report," is either a hint of a twisted sense of humor beyond my comprehension, or an aversion to doing your job that merits a similar qualification.

the fact that you have the earliest broadcast timeslot but were the last to report saddam hussein's execution (yes, the abc, nbc, and cbs affiliates all broke into their regular programming to let us know about this) concerns me gravely about your priorities. your accountability to your viewers is to provide us with all the news--local, national, and global--relevant to our lives. AND, this is a big one, AND you're supposed to list the stories in order of importance. did they not teach that at the ohio school of broadcasting, pueblo campus?

i've long lambasted your parent company for being the single most biased "news" source on the face of the planet. but hell, at least they report some version of the news. saddam is dead, you tell me about the weather. genocide in darfur, you give me britney's cooch followed by highlights of bronco's practice (yes, seriously, practice). what, pray tell, will you cover in case of a nuclear holocaust, groundhog day? i wasn't aware that news corp. had purchased the syndication rights to "inside edition." let's tune into abc 7 news at 10pm to see what else you've missed. disgraceful.

sincerely and disgustedly yours,

mr. misinformed