THOSE “GOOD NEWS STORIES” Chris Byrnes One Thursday night in October, I was watching the late news from my hotel room and was impressed by a couple of “good news” stories amongst all the carnage, death and tragedy that seem so commonplace in the news these days.
A 25-year old man, who is a mechanical engineer from Bell River, Ontario, kicked a 50-yard field goal at a CFL game and won $1,000,000. Later in the same newscast was more information about the seventeen Alberta workers who won the $54 million lotto jackpot. I went to sleep feeling a little happier with the world that night.
I awoke the next morning eager to hear how the various morning shows in the market I was in would deal with these two events. Obviously they would be “water cooler” topics in many offices and work places that day. The first morning show I monitored featured a discussion between the two hosts about how they will all have to put up with each other for a bit longer because they did not win the jackpot. The next morning show host complained about how unfair it was that someone in their province never seems to win the big ones. “After all” they quipped, “Alberta has enough wealth with all that oil and gas.” They continued by saying, “to add insult to injury, these winners were oil and gas workers and we all know those guys already make the big bucks!”
I’m sure that many morning shows handled these stories the right way, but both the morning shows I heard clearly missed the opportunity to reflect the positive feeling that television had created the previous night. With the passage of hours between the late news and the following morning, more information was available about both events. By then we knew that Brian Diesbourg had never kicked a football in his life, but had received a brief 30-minute coaching session from Argo’s placekicker, Noel Prefontaine, the previous day. We also knew that he missed the goal posts from the 20, 30 and 40-yard lines, and that he had to wait around in the middle of the field for 5 minutes before making the 50 yard kick because TSN had gone to a commercial break.. There was audio from TSN President, Phil King saying, “I think we’ll be seeing the kick on highlight reels for years to come”. We knew that it was a promotion set up by fast food retailer, Wendy’s and that Brian was randomly selected from the 200,000 entries received. In short, there was more “good news” information available to radio on the Friday morning than was available to television the previous night when that story was written, filmed and edited. Yet television did a much better job of delivering a story that showed one man beating the odds and walking away with enough money to change his life forever.
By the Friday morning there was also plenty of human interest information about the 17 oil and gas workers who had won the biggest jackpot in Canadian history two days earlier. We knew they came from a town of only 900 people about an hour southwest of Edmonton and that the winning ticket had been bought by Darrel Thompson, who shared the good news with his co-workers after the daily safety meeting on the Thursday morning. The newspaper I read was full of “belly laughs, beer, and happy talk of early retirements.” They painted the picture, both in photos and in words, to drive home the fact that these were hard working folk from a small town who had hit it big. “We want to get our debts paid down and hopefully get a holiday in, and spend a little money. Financial freedom is what we’re all after just like everyone else” was one of the many quotes in that newspaper story.
Bottom line… radio, and especially morning shows, too often miss the opportunity to take those rare, human-interest, good-news stories and use our powerful medium to paint positive word pictures that help our listeners feel better about the world. We have it so much easier than either television or newspapers, which must dispatch camera crews, reporters and photographers to events. When so much of what our news departments report is negative and hostile, make sure you use these opportunities to brighten your listeners’ day. |