"I'll just tell them to do the usual holiday travel/shopping/hunting/hard-luck stories we do in November and December, then start fresh in 2011," producer says
TELEVISION RIDGE - Employees of KTXI News shouldn't expect to see much of news director Peter Longu over the next seven weeks, as he plans to "phone in" the stories he wants to see on the air.
"Every year we do the same stories," Longu says. "Why should I even have to go in? Let me give you the lineup our viewers can expect to see."
"Let's start with a local charity's worry that they won't have enough turkeys for Thanksgiving," he began. "A few days later, we'll follow up with a story about how many people came forward to donate, and how wonderful it is. By then, we can switch over to covering how 'crazy' it is at airports and on the roads the day before Thanksgiving."
"That leads us right into Black Friday, which our reporters always claim is the busiest shopping day of the season, even though it's not. We'll find those people who get everything done that day so everyone else can be irritated at them. And since this is Pennsylvania, that's followed right up with the first day of deer gun season and stories about all the guys getting ready to go hunt."
"Then we have the segments about hunting accidents, more shopping, decreased donations at the Salvation Army kettles, an outpouring of donations to the Salvation Army kettles, and so on."
"We'll probably look for a few families down on their luck and feature them, but it's hard to predict when we'll find them so I'm not sure when they'll be on. It'll be early enough in December that our viewers can come forward to donate to them, and the families can say how wonderful it is. And then it's returning gifts after Christmas, New Year's eve, and we're done."
Longu acknowledges that one thing might throw off his plans: bad weather. "Bad weather is good for ratings even though people complain about overkill on our team coverage," the news director says. "So I'm hoping for a little bit of bad weather, just as long as it's not so bad that I have to go into work."
