I know Xan was pissed about this so I thought it was worth a note...
The CBS News producer who made the call to break into CSI:NY with the news of Yasser Arafat's death has been fired. After complaints from several viewers, CBS issued an apology and took action.
Look, nobody wants to waste an hour of their evening getting hooked on a show, only to miss the critical last five minutes. Sure, its not the end of the world and if the news was truly shocking, unexpected and critical to know, people probably would have understood. But the guy had been on his death bed for two weeks (hell, he probably WAS dead for two weeks). So they couldn't have waited until after the show was over to tell us about it?
Actually, they had a perfectly good solution in place--run the news crawl at the bottom of the screen. But in typical media fashion, everyone wants to be the first one out with the scoop.
The moral of the story? Don't mess with our favorite TV shows!
That is, unless the world is about to end.
Posted by geekchik at November 15, 2004 04:19 PM