It Musta Been a Slow News Week

Admittedly, it usually is between Christmas and New Year’s Day. But some of the stories we saw on local television news were a little far out there.

KFSM-TV, Channel 5, for example, made hay of the news that Monica Lewinsky had been named a Jenny Craig spokeswoman. The station did its own stories on the news and it also did a phone-in polls.

Missed in the initial day’s reports, however, was the news, reported the following day by KFSM, that the local Jenny Craig franchise holder was not using the Lewinsky spots.

As for the station’s poll, 79 percent of an unspecified number of callers said Lewinsky shouldn’t profit from her notoriety. The most notorious thing we noticed was the spelling the station used in its graphic: “noteriety.”

The other local news station, KHBS/KHOG, Channel 40/29, first showed us a story about a singing dog and followed it the next day with a piece on a goat that blows up balloons. Frankly, we didn’t check on Day 3.

By this time next year, the third local station, KPOM/KFAA, Channels 24/51, expects to be on the air with a local newscast.

With competition like this, we can hardly wait.