Media Response
The local TV news stations went to wall-to-wall coverage starting Wednesday, June 11. KGAN-TV (CBS, channel 2) and KCRG-TV (ABC, channel 9), in Cedar Rapids, and KWWL-TV, (NBC, channel 7), in Waterloo all stayed on air giving local coverage, preempting network programs, even to include preempting the network evening news program. KCRG moved ABC's coverage of Game 4 of the 2008 NBA Finals to its digital subchannel, while KWWL broadcast NBC's coverage of the 2008 U.S. Open Golf Championship. Stations resumed airing regular programming June 15.
Des Moines television stations aired all local coverage during the day on Friday, June 13. WHO-TV left briefly to allow NBC to announce the death of Tim Russert. After the Des Moines flood threat proved to be not as bad as once thought, stations returned to regular programming that evening.
KCRG and The Gazette, both owned by Gazette Communications and located right next to each other in downtown Cedar Rapids, continued to operate out of their respective newsrooms despite the nearby flooding and loss of electricity. The Gazette's editor at the time, Steve Buttry, officially began his duties just two days before waters rose above flood stage in Cedar Rapids.
At about 9:30 p.m. on Monday, June 16, KWWL went off the air due to a small electrical fire in the studio. An electrical motor in the ventilation system caught fire and sent smoke through the building. There were no injuries and hardly any damage. They resumed broadcasts at about 1:00 a.m. on Tuesday, June 17.
Read more about this topic: Iowa Flood Of 2008
Famous quotes containing the words media and/or response:
“One can describe a landscape in many different words and sentences, but one would not normally cut up a picture of a landscape and rearrange it in different patterns in order to describe it in different ways. Because a photograph is not composed of discrete units strung out in a linear row of meaningful pieces, we do not understand it by looking at one element after another in a set sequence. The photograph is understood in one act of seeing; it is perceived in a gestalt.”
—Joshua Meyrowitz, U.S. educator, media critic. “The Blurring of Public and Private Behaviors,” No Sense of Place: The Impact of Electronic Media on Social Behavior, Oxford University Press (1985)
“Because humans are not alone in exhibiting such behavior—bees stockpile royal jelly, birds feather their nests, mice shred paper—it’s possible that a pregnant woman who scrubs her house from floor to ceiling [just before her baby is born] is responding to a biological imperative . . . . Of course there are those who believe that . . . the burst of energy that propels a pregnant woman to clean her house is a perfectly natural response to their mother’s impending visit.”
—Mary Arrigo (20th century)