Okay- THAT was Summer’s Last Weekend!

We had a pretty nice final weekend of summer for the past couple days here in our neck of the woods- nice weather, with great temperatures and a good deal of sunshine. I was taken to task a while back by a couple folks who , when I said that the extended Labor Day weekend was what I considered the end of summer, reminded me that the actual end of summer occurs on September 22nd. I had pointed out that my friends and I had always considered the Labor Day weekend as the SYMBOLIC end of summer, since, back when we were growing up, it was right after Labor Day that school started- and we still keep that mindset today. Anyway, for those who corrected me- yes, this past weekend WAS the last one of the summer of 2012- and it made for a pleasant ending. (I won’t even bring up the friends who consider the last day of the regular baseball season as the true end of summer…or the fact some suggest that one team’s summer-and season may as well have ended weeks ago…) Broadcast stupidity time! Last week, on one of those beloved local morning news shows, their spellchecker must have still been asleep- because a couple mistakes appeared in the graphics on screen within a couple minutes of each other- one had something about “Monical Lewinski” ( why do I imagine a saucy foreign exchange British White House intern wearing one lens over an eye?)- and the other had information about something that was “critiical”. Maybe it was their need to get somebody on their staff who can spell…( Truth in advertizing : I sometimes make mistakes in spelling- or the spellcheck on my computer changes a word it thinks I mis-spelled to a word that make no sense...) Additional broadcast stupidity: this from a radio guy whose “work” I’ve mentioned before, usually citing his lack of preparation , aka “doing his homework”- this time around, he had a bunch of old commercial jingles that had been previously prepared for his show, and he wanted to play “guess the product” with his in-studio co-workers. That sounds like a good, fun idea- except for the fact that EVERY ONE of the jingles actually mentioned the name of the product in it- several times, among the very first words in the jingle! Pretty easy to guess correctly, eh? Are you telling me that he and his staff couldn’t have “blanked out” or “beeped” out the name- or that he didn’t check them out before his show, or during the news , to find out the names of the products were right there?! He obviously continues at the same level of high standards of broadcast excellence… Someone recently made a big deal about NBC’s Al Roker’s mike being open after he finished his national weather – and tossed it to where the local weather person at stations cuts in to give the forecast for their area. Well, after the toss, you heard Al in the background, saying “blah, blah, blah- blah, blah, blah”- and the folks showing this were up in arms about how he was “insulting” the local weather person. Actually, I don’t think he meant to insult anybody- he was just more or less indicating causally to his crew that the time was being filled elsewhere. It’s kind of like something I’ve seen accidentally in newspapers a few times- under a photo, you’ll see a filler caption that somebody was supposed to fill in with correct information before the paper went to print, usually something like this” “blahblahblah blahblahblah captiongoeshere.” It’s not meant to disrespect the story it’s just filling the space, for layout reasons, until the actual caption goes in- more or less making sure there will be room for it. In Roker’s case, since he’s doing this several times every morning, and has been for so long, he probably just absent-mindedly provided his own filler while waiting for them to cut back to him. He wasn’t saying it as a “this goof is just babbling useless information”-type diss. Give the guy a break.