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With brush fires continuing to spread across Southern California, blown by Santa Ana winds, Channels 2, 4 and 9 are staying live with coverage. Channel 7 is airing "The View" instead, Channel 5 is going with Larry Springer and Channel 11, which has reporter Rod Bernsen out eating smoke and a chopper in the field, has switched to "Ambush Makeover."
11 a.m. update: The toll across the region, mostly before today -- 13 deaths, 827 homes destroyed and 30,000 still potentially threatened, 330,000 acres of brush burned, 7,000 firefighters on the scene. Flights today are still being delayed and cancelled at LAX and San Diego. Channel 7 resumed live coverage at 11 o'clock.
Noon: Channel 4 peels off to "Starting Over" as the flames begin to move on Los Angeles itself in the Twin Lakes area of Chatsworth and Box Canyon.
1 p.m.: Prime soaps time, so only Channels 2 and 9 are still on the fire. I'm off to a meeting.
On the other side, for those who want to get as much information as possible, tune your scanners to 119.775, 129.950 and 119.3 for air operations over SIMI. These are comms from the cockpits. From where I'm sitting, I can watch the air units and listen to what they're saying to each other. And it's not going well.
Posted by: Wally Fay at October 27, 2003 02:42 PM
of LA Observed
I'm not sure of your point, if you're indeed trying to make one.
How important is it that every channel switch over to full-time fire (or earthquake, or whatever) coverage?
What can this full-time coverage contribute to the general weal (other than sating the looky-loos) that a crawl and occasional brief break-ins to regular programming couldn't?
Posted by: exherald at October 27, 2003 01:19 PM