Clarke's Bar

I Want To Discuss Who You Think You Are

Working at a television station provides all manner of opportunities to speak with public … at least the TV station-calling public. We get asked for information about stories that aired on other channels. We get asked to provide our competitors’ phone numbers. We get asked to help find something on our website by people who have ostensibly never used a computer.

And we get inundated with phone calls when something goes wrong with TV programming, which is what happened recently when FOX launched a new reality show based on the First Family of Rock, the Osbournes. Since the show was scheduled to come on after family-friendly American Idol, the bosses decided to air a locally produced product-review special instead of the Osbournes and push back their show until midnight.

The only problem was, we didn’t really tell anyone we were going to do this. The TV Guide didn’t get changed, we didn’t mention it during Idol commercial breaks, nor did we say anything when Melissa Painter began her tour of products reviewed in her Deal or Dud segments.

As you can imagine, the public got mad. They let us know how mad they were with countless e-mails and phone calls, including this particularly rich voicemail. Enjoy.