When big news rumbles into town, we summon our favorite stations, our preferred anchorpersons. We expect them to deliver data in deliberate, reassuring tones. True, we laugh as reporters say things we know to be inaccurate. We jeer the anchors who've been vamping for hours with not much new to report, leaving themselves open to silly pranks and hopeless speculation. And yet we watch, because when the Earth recalibrates its underpinnings and gives us the mother of all wedgies, it's no fun waiting 'til tomorrow for the papers.
TV is immediate.
It jumps on big news like seagulls on a French fry. It generally hangs on too long, not quite knowing when to let go. But don't ever impeach it for not trying hard, for not having heart. Exactly 60 minutes after the Ash Wednesday earthquake made us acutely aware of the dust unto which we shall return, Lougee, against his inclinations, escorted me into the KING newsroom. Lougee, the station's former news director, was in his element.