It was a sad story, as they all are. Abilene’s latest murder involved the death of a 19-year old man allegedly at the hand of a 16-year old boy. Details were sketchy, but apparently at happened at a north Abilene home in the early morning hours of Saturday, April 18th. There was a fight and a shooting.
That prompted an online poll this week on BigCountryHomePage.Com: “Would a teen curfew lower crime?” The results were a little one sided, as you might expect. Only 64 people responded, so it was far from a communbity mandate, but almost 80% said, "Yes, a curfew would keep teens out of trouble".
But wait just a minute here. While it’s true, crimes involving teens tend to get huge headlines, in my 33 years of covering news, the crimes committed by adults far outweigh those committed by kids. In 2007, the American Civil Liberties Union of Texas released a report on prisons. Entitled Texas: Tougher than Ever, But are we Safer?, the report found that in 2005, Texas' non-violent prison population totaled 57,460 inmates, making ours the 6th largest prison system in the nation. One of the findings was that Texas spent five times as much on its prison system as it did on higher education (and couldn't figure out why it was having a problem with repeat offenders)– and taxpayers were picking up most of the cost of incarceration. Then, in March of 2007, the lid blew off conditions in juvenile lock-ups in Texas far worse than any adult jail in the state.
No, I think that if you really want to attack the problem of crime, let’s put the biggest offenders away: the adults. But more than that, let’s impose a curfew for the rest of them, whether they’ve done anything wrong or not. No adults on the streets after 11 at night. Violators will be arrested on sight and locked up. That should reduce the crime rate because the only adults out after 11 would be criminals, right?
So, how do you like the sound of that? Doesn’t sit too well, does it? Especially if you are being unfairly judged, based on the actions of a few individuals.
I know that a lot of cities in Texas have a teen curfew. Abilene is not one of them. You know, I have a real problem with this continuing cycle of “criminalizing” our kids. We don’t want them to smoke, so we make it a crime to do so. We want to protect them from skin cancer, so we pass a bill outlawing tanning beds if the user is younger than 16. Want to talk about skin cancer, how about this: I know of kids who spent their summer's in backyard or at the neighborhood pool, smothered in baby oil or cooking oil. Instead of keeping the tanning in a regulated environment, we just turn them loose to bake like a strip of bacon.
When I was growing up, my parents had a rule: I had to be home by 10. During the summer, I was allowed to sit on the front porch with my friends until 11, but I couldn’t leave the porch. Did our city have a curfew? I don’t know; it never came up. I had a curfew, though, and if I didn’t follow it, I didn’t go to jail. I didn’t go anywhere…for a month!
There are 292 cities in the country that restrict teenagers after hours. Most have a curfew in place from eleven at night until sunrise the next morning. My first real job was delivering the Washington Post everyday, rain or shine. It meant getting up early each morning, sometimes before five, so that adults could have their morning paper each day. I had to service my paper route and collect from my customers each month to pay for my papers. Sometimes, I got stiffed by them. It taught me a lot about people.
You know, maybe it’s time for parents to stop letting the government step in and do their jobs.
Would a teen curfew curb crime? Maybe, but an adult curfew would make an even bigger impact. In fact, here’s an idea: let’s ban everyone from being on the streets between 11 pm and sunrise. That’s a deterrent. It’s also got a name: martial law.
Downing Bolls
Thursday, April 23, 2009
Wednesday, April 15, 2009
Reports of My Death Are Greatly Exagerated
Don’t Believe Everything You Hear.
A few week’s ago we aired a story about car sales in Abilene. A local dealership was saying that sales figures this year were actually better than they had been last year, despite doom and gloom assessments of the economy. It brought to mind a book I recently read called, Mind Set! It’s written by John Naisbitt, the same guy who wrote the book, Megatrends. In Mind Set, Naisbitt discusses the new economic model and how the media presents a distorted picture of things because it doesn’t know how to report it. He specifically cited the sales of automobiles. We have seen a lot of stories about the dire straits the American auto industry is going through, but when you consider automobiles as a specific sector of the world economy, the news isn’t nearly as gloomy. To me, it points even more to the importance of localizing every news story you do because, in not doing so, we often paint a distorted picture of what’s really going on. It’s no wonder people don’t trust the media.
There was a story recently in the trade publication Media Week. A new study finds that when times are tough, people turn more often to local TV for news. Local TV? Wait a minute, isn’t the media suppose to be taking a real beating right now? The study, by Frank N. Magid Associates for Hearst-Argyle Television, found that 99 percent of respondents said they are turning to local TV news at least as much as or more frequently than in the past due to the troubled economy.
The study was conducted over two weeks in February in 24 markets served by Hearst-Argyle. including Boston, Baltimore, Orlando, Cincinnati, Sacramento, Pittsburgh and Milwaukee.
Sixteen percent of the 2,500 respondents said they are following local TV news "more." The only medium surpassing local TV was the Internet, cited by 17 percent of respondents. Newspapers, radio and print magazines trailed at 10 percent, 9 percent and 6 percent, respectively, but it was clear where people are turning these days to get their news.
The news was especially good for television advertising. Commercials airing on local TV news engage consumers more than other traditional media. When asked which types of ads respondents pay more attention to, 57 percent cited local TV versus 43 percent for magazines; 64 percent versus 36 percent for newspapers, 72 percent versus 28 percent for radio, 81 percent versus 19 percent for yellow pages, and 55 percent versus 45 percent for direct mail. They also found local TV ads more engaging than all forms of online ads, on average 85 percent for local TV versus 15 percent for online ads.
Local news also got the high scores for trustworthiness and recall and, as the most important source of community information, it rivaled newspapers..
Although the audience to early morning news is growing, most respondents (62 percent) said that late news is when they typically watch local news.
It is a great story and one that bears telling, especially these days.
A few week’s ago we aired a story about car sales in Abilene. A local dealership was saying that sales figures this year were actually better than they had been last year, despite doom and gloom assessments of the economy. It brought to mind a book I recently read called, Mind Set! It’s written by John Naisbitt, the same guy who wrote the book, Megatrends. In Mind Set, Naisbitt discusses the new economic model and how the media presents a distorted picture of things because it doesn’t know how to report it. He specifically cited the sales of automobiles. We have seen a lot of stories about the dire straits the American auto industry is going through, but when you consider automobiles as a specific sector of the world economy, the news isn’t nearly as gloomy. To me, it points even more to the importance of localizing every news story you do because, in not doing so, we often paint a distorted picture of what’s really going on. It’s no wonder people don’t trust the media.
There was a story recently in the trade publication Media Week. A new study finds that when times are tough, people turn more often to local TV for news. Local TV? Wait a minute, isn’t the media suppose to be taking a real beating right now? The study, by Frank N. Magid Associates for Hearst-Argyle Television, found that 99 percent of respondents said they are turning to local TV news at least as much as or more frequently than in the past due to the troubled economy.
The study was conducted over two weeks in February in 24 markets served by Hearst-Argyle. including Boston, Baltimore, Orlando, Cincinnati, Sacramento, Pittsburgh and Milwaukee.
Sixteen percent of the 2,500 respondents said they are following local TV news "more." The only medium surpassing local TV was the Internet, cited by 17 percent of respondents. Newspapers, radio and print magazines trailed at 10 percent, 9 percent and 6 percent, respectively, but it was clear where people are turning these days to get their news.
The news was especially good for television advertising. Commercials airing on local TV news engage consumers more than other traditional media. When asked which types of ads respondents pay more attention to, 57 percent cited local TV versus 43 percent for magazines; 64 percent versus 36 percent for newspapers, 72 percent versus 28 percent for radio, 81 percent versus 19 percent for yellow pages, and 55 percent versus 45 percent for direct mail. They also found local TV ads more engaging than all forms of online ads, on average 85 percent for local TV versus 15 percent for online ads.
Local news also got the high scores for trustworthiness and recall and, as the most important source of community information, it rivaled newspapers..
Although the audience to early morning news is growing, most respondents (62 percent) said that late news is when they typically watch local news.
It is a great story and one that bears telling, especially these days.
Friday, April 3, 2009
All In The Family: The "New" Business Model
It was one of those "double take" moments. You know the kind: when you have to pinch yourself to make sure it's really happening? It was during the last commercial break in the 10 o'clock News the other night. A promo pops up on the screen urging KRBC viewers to subscribe to a call back weather service offered by our sister station, KTAB. The same service that KRBC also offers.
Now maybe I should clear the air on a few things here. While KTAB is our sister station and we share our resources, we both still compete with one another for viewers.
So, how could such a thing have happened? Well, in this case it was a mistake so simple, it's hard to believe it's consequence could be so glaring. But, it also speaks to the changes going on in television right now. It was human error. Somewhere along the line, someone put the wrong commercial number into the computer system and the spot that should have run on KTAB, ran instead on KRBC, It happens -- We are, afterall, just human. I think my counterpart on the other station summed it up best as we joked about it after the show: "Thanks," he said, "we need all the cross promotion we can get." But with more and more "centralization" going on and more and more responsibility being placed on fewer and fewer people, things like this will be bound to happen more frequently.
Now, a comment about something in the news this week: the Fox Television Stations and E.W. Scripps have created a local news service for their stations in Detroit, Phoenix and Tampa. Starting this month, the service "will pool content-gathering resources at general market news events, allowing the stations to save on duplicate efforts" and Fox and Scripps are amenable to opening up the service to other media partners in the three markets.
The idea isn't new: The Abilene Reporter News (which, by the way is now owned by Scripps) and KTXS-TV have been doing it for years. The trade publication Broadcasting & Cable noted recently that these are challenging times we live in and and TV stations, once bitter competitors, "are increasingly in a sharing mood", at least in the boardrooms where the bucks meet the bottom lines. Maybe the "news" business is becoming more about "business" than about "news".
There was a time when this kind of "centralization" would have been scorned, but in a study submitted during the recent duopoly hearings, it was suggested that keeping stations from owning more than one station in a market was outdated thinking. In the Information Age, there are now scores of places the public can turn to "get the facts and opposing viewpoints". Everyone's interests are served.
Those are my thoughts: what are yours.
Downing Bolls
Now maybe I should clear the air on a few things here. While KTAB is our sister station and we share our resources, we both still compete with one another for viewers.
So, how could such a thing have happened? Well, in this case it was a mistake so simple, it's hard to believe it's consequence could be so glaring. But, it also speaks to the changes going on in television right now. It was human error. Somewhere along the line, someone put the wrong commercial number into the computer system and the spot that should have run on KTAB, ran instead on KRBC, It happens -- We are, afterall, just human. I think my counterpart on the other station summed it up best as we joked about it after the show: "Thanks," he said, "we need all the cross promotion we can get." But with more and more "centralization" going on and more and more responsibility being placed on fewer and fewer people, things like this will be bound to happen more frequently.
Now, a comment about something in the news this week: the Fox Television Stations and E.W. Scripps have created a local news service for their stations in Detroit, Phoenix and Tampa. Starting this month, the service "will pool content-gathering resources at general market news events, allowing the stations to save on duplicate efforts" and Fox and Scripps are amenable to opening up the service to other media partners in the three markets.
The idea isn't new: The Abilene Reporter News (which, by the way is now owned by Scripps) and KTXS-TV have been doing it for years. The trade publication Broadcasting & Cable noted recently that these are challenging times we live in and and TV stations, once bitter competitors, "are increasingly in a sharing mood", at least in the boardrooms where the bucks meet the bottom lines. Maybe the "news" business is becoming more about "business" than about "news".
There was a time when this kind of "centralization" would have been scorned, but in a study submitted during the recent duopoly hearings, it was suggested that keeping stations from owning more than one station in a market was outdated thinking. In the Information Age, there are now scores of places the public can turn to "get the facts and opposing viewpoints". Everyone's interests are served.
Those are my thoughts: what are yours.
Downing Bolls
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