There are school bands in the inaugural parade that worked hard to be there, Native American groups, state representatives, and others, and there are hundreds of thousands of family and friends who wanted to see them in this parade. So what does every single damn network coverage do the moment the parade begins? They drop the coverage to stations who go back to the news where they're re-capping the early news and not showing what's happening now. Channel 11 is carrying the MSNBC feed, but we have to listen to Chris Matthews bellowing instead of the parade and they're having flipping commercials. So much for WXIA's promise that they were going to cover "everything." The only channel Dish carries that is covering the parade is KLTA in San Francisco, and they've just quit yapping so we can hear the music.

I could just spit.

(And, yo, KTLA, will you quit cutting to the observation booth every two seconds? We don't want to see people's reactions...we want to see the parade!)

[5:30 p.m. Now flippin' KTLA is replaying the oath of office and the entire speech. Happily, WXIA has now gone back to the parade. Of course we don't get to hear the parade, we have to listen to the announcers yap about their day.]

Labels: events, television

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. . . . . noted and logged by Linda at 5:15:00 PM

Comments:

Did you try CSPAN? I watched their coverage of the ceremony itself, so I don't know whether they covered the parade or not. But the coverage was exactly what I wanted: pictures of the important people entering from the building down to their seats, the Voice of God telling me who they were (as if I didn't recognize most of them anyway), random shots of the crowd when there was nothing going on in the hallway, and no commercials! The best part was that you could hear snippets of conversation: Bush senior wondering whether there was a handrail for him on the stairs (he was using a cane to walk), Hellos shared between the Bushs and the Carters. The band playing before the ceremony started and afterward. Quite nice!
Caran

# posted by  Anonymous : 11:53:00 PM

 

James suggested that when he came home, which was too late. NBC's coverage of the portion up to when the parade started was not at all bad, in the whole coverage from 10 to 5 there were only three or four commercial breaks, and those were at "dead" times, like at the private part of the luncheon. I really was looking forward to seeing the parade in HD, though, like the rest of the coverage.

# posted by  Linda : 9:34:00 AM

 

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