When local channels are no longer locally run, but just part of some big corporate conglomerate, bad things happen. Bad things like this:
CHCH’s vice-president of news Mike Katrycz said he believes the station ultimately aired around a minute of “hardcore pornography.”
“But as I say, it seemed like an eternity,” he said in a telephone interview Friday.
Katrycz said he noticed the issue right away and frantically called the network’s master control to try to fix it. But since the problem originated elsewhere, they weren’t able to immediately pull the material off the air.
“It was out of our hands,” he said.
CHCH is — or WAS — a locally owned/operated station in Hamilton. It’s now being run out of Toronto by a conglomerate called Channel Zero. Sounds very faceless and anonymous, and no doubt it is. There’s no more local content, outside of the news, and even that has been suffering in the name of maximized profit and minimized cost.
And if the viewer reactions are any indication, it’s gonna be suffering a lot more:
“Just eating some pancakes this morning watching .CHCH … I no longer like pancakes or the news,” wrote Twitter user (at)derek1913.
Others weren’t quite so amused.
One woman, who said she was angry, tweeted that it was lucky no small children were in the room when the pornography came on.
Apparently, no one was paying attention at the controls, either. And no wonder, since porn literally shuts down the brain.
See, kiddies, this is what happens when corporate honchos get greedy. Even local news isn’t local anymore when some jerkoff is wanking at the switch.
And it isn’t news, either.