Terror Attack in Spain and KTAR Is Out For the Day

Let me preface what I am about to say with this: I think what Bonneville, KTAR-FM and Arizona Sports 98.7 FM do with their Give-a-thon for Phoenix Children's Hospital is great. It is a real great fundraiser for a very good cause. What I criticize is that for two workdays straight (it started at 2:00 P.M. yesterday and runs until 6:00 P.M. this evening) both KTAR and Arizona Sports 98.7 air nothing but the give-a-thon for PCH. If there is breaking news (like there is today with the terror attack in Spain that, by preliminary estimates, has killed 13 people thus far), KTAR takes no breaks at all to provide coverage of any major news stories. This is unacceptable. At the very least, do the give-a-thon for PCH in tandem with your regularly scheduled programming, similar to what PBS and NPR does for their respective pledge drives. On PBS and NPR, they will spend about 10-15 minutes asking for people to donate money, but this is followed by a normally scheduled program (Prairie Home Companion on NPR, Rick Steves' Europe on PBS, etc...). On the other hand, Bonneville and KTAR's approach is to ram endless sad stories of PCH patients down our throats for hours and hours on end, begging for money and guilting people into donating. If you don't, well then you must be the devil incarnate because who wouldn't give to sick and dying children? Then, they spend the next few weeks talking about how great they are for raising that money and how they are the "#1 tele-a-thon in the country for raising money for a children's hospital." Some modesty would be nice.

Basically my opinion is this: I love the cause, I don't like the approach Bonneville and KTAR take in raising the money. If there is breaking news like there is today, maybe direct listeners to Arizona Sports 98.7 FM for the give-a-thon while covering the breaking news on KTAR. Heaven forbid any major breaking news should happen during the PCH Give-a-thon!

Anyone who depends upon radio for instant news is missing the boat. TV, this morning, treated the attack as just another news story (of course not as much was known then and only 1 death was believed). The online news outlets all had a more complete story by the time I got online just 30 minutes later and it is headline/breaking news on almost all of them now.

Even though it looks like another ISIS terrorist attack and a dozen people are reported dead I am not sure it deserves wall-to-wall coverage. It seems as if our current news gloms onto a headline story and beats it to death for as long as they feel it attracts viewers/listeners (as this is written that story about Trump not singling out the KKK and White Supremacists is still being covered many days later).

KTAR used to be a viable news outlet but its time has passed. It doesn't even deserve criticism any longer.

asugeorge1 said:

Basically my opinion is this: I love the cause, I don't like the approach Bonneville and KTAR take in raising the money. If there is breaking news like there is today, maybe direct listeners to Arizona Sports 98.7 FM for the give-a-thon while covering the breaking news on KTAR. Heaven forbid any major breaking news should happen during the PCH Give-a-thon!

Click to expand...

This is no different than what ESPN does with the V Foundation. They take a good cause and literally drive people away with their constant bombarding and badgering. Frankly, if I see that Jim Valvano speech one more time, I'll throw a brick at the TV. Yeah, he died of cancer, and set up a foundation to fight it -- a noble cause. But ESPN has spent the last two decades taking it way too far, to a point that is well past overbearing and obnoxious. Let the man rest in peace!

TMISU are doing the same thing with Phoenix Children's Hospital. Even though it's a great cause, I've found myself tuning elsewhere for sports talk (at least they kept 620 open for the D'backs game). They just beg us to death, and I'm surprised it hasn't hurt more than it's helped by now.

Now that the Begathon is over, Los Buckeye Boyz have re-emerged to offer a different view of 92~Three's Barcelona coverage. For crying out loud, Barcelona aint even in Los Estados Unidos, nor was coverage in Phoenix only available on KTAR. This event did not justify wall to wall coverage, or a suspension of the Begathon. There were plenty of other sources for the story and TMISU wisely chose to stick with their plan to raise even more money than last year. It's not the end of the world for KTAR, and they'll be receiving a lot of praise on Friday for raising over $1.6m.

Nothing to see here folks, so just keep moving along.

landtuna said:

KTAR used to be a viable news outlet but its time has passed. It doesn't even deserve criticism any longer.

Click to expand...

Actually, when they have ads throughout town asking everyone to take them seriously -- "arrive to work informed" -- it's not unreasonable to expect some actual news instead of all the softball parenting tip "non-stories."

What makes Barcelona more important for a local news/talk station than Charlottesville -- which broke on the weekend, outside 92.3 broadcast hours? Why wouldn't Charlottesville, or Boston (for that matter), have been important enough to cut into brokered weekend time? There is a much greater likelihood of listeners with family and friends in Charlottesville and Boston. When 92.3's news coverage is essentially non-existent on the weekends, which is when a lot of major news stories have broken (Osama bin Laden's death broke on a Sunday), it's difficult for me to share any hand-wringing about no Barcelona coverage as they have made it abundantly clear to their listeners that news never breaks after 8:00pm, during Beans & Rice Radio, or on the weekend.