Critique of WLKY

WLKY has a very small news hole. They only have about twenty minutes for news after their commercials. Sports and weather take up about five to ten minutes of this time depending on the day. So in the end they have about fifteen to twenty minutes for news. It isn't easy to cover every

A small news hole can either cause the stories to be rushed or it can lead to the exclusion of some newsworthy stories. Neither of the effects are positive. Rushed stories can cause even more issues such as details being left out and people not knowing everything they need to know in order to comprehend the story. If the stories are not included at all, the people will know nothing of the issues and will have no way to be prepared. Of the two possible effects the rushed stories could be considered better but WLKY did not do this. WLKY excluded some major news stories because there wasn't enough room after the inordinate amount of crime stories, sports, weather, and commercials.

One story that wasn't shown in WLKY that was very important was on October 22. This issue was about the Ohio Bridge. It caused some lanes to be closed because of work. The reason this story should be included is because people need to know that if they are trying to cross the Ohio River. Of course with fewer lanes, there would be more traffic. If someone needed to get to work, they would need to leave early and be prepared for the situation. If the only source of news for a person was WLKY, they could be late to work. Obviously this is a dramatic version of the consequences of the exclusion, but it still should have been in the show because it was extremely newsworthy. This story can be found at http://www.courier-journal.com/article/20131102/NEWS01/311020074/-1/7days archives/Ohio-River-Bridges-Project-will-close-lanes which is the Courier-Journal's paper for that day. They had the story and included the impacts on different days for that week.

Another reason WLKY has a short amount of time in for their news is because they spend too much time on some stories that are irrelevant or not quite as important as they seem to be. The David Camm trial is one of these events. They had David Camm updates in six shows. In one of these shows there was three stories about David Camm. That is a total of eight Camm stories in one month. Another example of spending too much time on one story was a story on October 24. It was about a JCPS student who was bullied. This story is obviously important because bullying is a big issue and it will help to put it into perspective for some people. The reason I feel that this story had too much attention was because after commercials, weather, sports, and David Camm(x3) there was only six minutes and twelve seconds spent on news. That is very little time to do seven stories. They spent about two minutes on the story about bullying. That is one third of their news block. So they did six stories in about four minutes, this time does not include the tosses. This is the link to a very similar story to the one broadcast on television; although, it was slightly longer on the show: http://www.wlky.com/news/local-news/louisville-news/family-demands-jcps-protect-bullying-victim/-/9718340/22619022/-/bkma2mz/-/index.html

The short news hole causes many problems because the station will end up not being able to include every story. They may be shortened if they are included. The interruptions to the news hole are not nearly as important as the news stories that should be shown. The commercials are necessary for the station's income, but the sports and weather do not need to be as long as they are. A longer news hole is better for the people because they have a better opportunity to receive their news.