Out of the Newsroom

One thing that has struck me as odd is the fact that the live streaming video coverage from the New Orleans television stations that I have been watching for a good part of the past 24 hours has always been proceeded by a short advertisement.

On WWL-TV, it has mostly been a spot for Lowe’s Home Improvement centers–though not for anything hurricane related mind you, but rather the store’s amazing ability to match any colors for paint you might need to buy. Over on WDSU, the commercials have been for Wal-Mart and again, not for what you might expect, but rather for how much money you would save over the course of a year by buying Wal-Mart’s take home pizzas, rather than getting pies delivered to your house.

If you are in Louisiana on this Labor Day, you might be thinking “Whew, thank goodness I’ll be able to get some ‘zas from Wal-mart and save some cash–even if I don’t have electricity to cook them!”

It does make one wonder when it is appropriate to turn off the “pre-rolls” (the name that these commercials get in the biz) in an emergency situation such as this? True, the meter count for the number of times these things have been viewed has probably gone off the charts, but is that good for Lowes or Wal-Mart in terms of reaching advertisers?

That nit-pick aside, the fact that these local television stations end up “broadcasting” to the rest of the country and actually the world, does not seem to have distracted them from their primary mission of being a local conduit of news and information–though it is great that they do acknowledge that folks from other places are watching and occasionally explaining things for their worldwide audience.