jeremy borger [blog]

So I turn on my TiVo tonight to watch this past Mo…

So I turn on my TiVo tonight to watch this past Monday’s episode of Heroes and what do I see crowding the bottom 25 percent of my screen? School closings.

Now, ignore for a second the fact that it’s three days later and these school closings aren’t even accurate. Why must they take up an entire QUARTER of my screen? Is one line of text too complicated? Actually, I think it’s too easy. They need room for their fancy graphics and logo.

As if that wasn’t enough, about two minutes into the show, there’s an annoying beeping sound before a graphic of northeast Ohio and a crawl appear ABOVE the 25 percent of the screen that’s already being taken up! The crawl warns me that it’s cold and snowy outside, as if I didn’t already put this together by A) noticing the 500 school closings occupying the bottom of my screen or B) looking out my damn window.

I never understood the loud beeping that precedes the crawl, either. As if in this day of The Weather Channel, weather.com, weather on my cell phone, weather on my desktop, weather on every local news site in Cleveland and local digital weather stations on cable, I’m somehow going to say, “Ooo, my TV is making that annoying sound again! It must be about to bestow some secret piece of weather knowledge that’s eluded me so far today!”

And if they feel obligated to play a sound before the weather crawl, haven’t we advanced technologically to the point where we could use something besides an audio effect that sounds like a 1987 Chevy Cavalier dying? Would it be so hard to play a chime or something?

But that goes away and the school closings are still there, taking up valuable screen space. I don’t go to school, I don’t work at a school and I don’t have kids that go to school, so I don’t care about school closings. “But, Jeremy! Some people DO care about school closings! Shouldn’t they have access to them?” Yes. But Channel 3 lists school closings ON THEIR DAMN WEBSITE! Go there! And guess what? You won’t have to sit there for 20 minutes waiting for your school to show up! It’s right there in a alphabetical list and beautiful black and white text! Isn’t technology amazing?

And don’t even give me that “What about the people that don’t have Internet access?” crap. If you go to school, work in a school or have kids in school and don’t have access to the Internet, you deserve to die in the snow drift on the way to class tomorrow. Thin the herd.

I find it ironic that Channel 3 calls their school closing system “iAlert” (the logo is prominently displayed on the bottom left of my TV screen). Marketers were using that “i” in the late 90’s to usually indicate something that was related to the “Internet” or on the cutting edge of technology, but they’re still giving school closings like they did 40 years ago.

How about this… Put a little, transparent iAlert logo on the bottom left of the screen when there’s school closings. Maybe put “wkyc.com” below it so when people see that logo, they know to go to your website and check for school closings.

I don’t need you to provide me with Heroes, Channel 3. I can download it on iTunes. I can even stream it for free from NBC’s website! Without the school closings.

You’ve already got Good Company. Are you really trying to give me another reason not to watch your station?