If you're looking for cable news coverage of Hurricane Gustav, now that Shepard Smith is on Fox, there's really no reason to watch anything else. The Weather Channel, I guess, has good meteorological data, but Smith's knowledge of his home state and his experience from the Katrina watch makes him the authority. Of course this also means having to put up with occasional dispatches from Geraldo Rivera, but that's a good time to check out TWC.
Chip Franklin and I talked about the fact that Gustav gave President Bush an out on the Republican National Convention. He won't be speaking tonight and won't even be attending the convention at any point this week. Here's our talk from San Diego's news-talk giant KOGO Radio this morning:
KOGO-9-1-2008 (MP3)
Also, you may recall the outstanding job that New Orleans broadcaster WWL-TV, in partnership with Louisiana Public TV, did in covering the aftermath of Katrina. Well, it's back live again, and though a lot of it is anchor-desk talk, it's compelling in a super-local way. If you're in Dallas, btw, you can watch WWL on its sister station, WFAA, via its secondary digital channel 8.2.
Shep Smith, Steve Harrigan, and Jeff Flock are all so good, they're kind of wasted at Fox by having to compete with all the political nonsense. This morning, while the other two networks went wall-to-wall with live reports, I saw the Fox and Friends hosts in St. Paul waste several minutes tongue-lashing Andrea Mitchell for something supposedly insulting she said about Sarah Palin.
CNN seemed to be everywhere all at once. Unfortunately, about half of their reporters were using that crappy "broadband" system. It always seems to go out whenever anybody coughs, so I can't imagine who thought it would be a good idea to use it in a hurricane.
Posted by: Andy | September 01, 2008 at 03:38 PM