Amber alert annoyance

Ha! Can you tell I'm not in market today? The station that aired the Chiefs game was, of course, KCTV-5. I'll forward this email (privately!) to management there.

But if WDAF could please to unblock the Gmail, I'm sure more than I would appreciate it.

[Original blog post follows:]

Seems that WDAF servers are currently rejecting all incoming email from my domain. My domain is Gmail.com. A small, insignificant little domain. I think it's a dating service.

Anyway, here's the letter that I tried to forward to its news director, Bryan McGruder. Hopefully he will see it and reply! (And CC his infotech department.)

Aaron,

I’ve written you before, back when FOX was the last hold out on the HDTV bandwagon, and again when one of the local stations were highly compressing their broadcast feed.

Now, I have something that I just don’t understand.

Today, during the Chiefs vs. Falcons game, there were multiple interruptions to the game to display the amber alert for the four Riggs children.

Now to be clear, I have NO issue with the amber alert. At all. I even understand why the station drops back to SDTV because they don’t have the necessary HDTV overlay equipment.

BUT, what I don’t understand, is if the alert is so important, why do they not show it through commercials? There were multiple instances where the game was getting ready to go to commercial, and the amber alert had just started and the alert was discontinued until the game came back on.

Regardless of what hot air excuses the station gives, it comes across as they don’t want to interfere with the commercials they sold during the chiefs game. Period. “We’ll help, as long as it doesn’t cost us money”.

Am I just over thinking this, or does their commitment to the dollar cheapen the effort they put into the amber alert program?

• Rodney T.