News 8 Austin: the new local leader for lousy weather coverage

Finally, Jim "The Sky Is Falling!" Spencer has some competition in the area of bad local weather coverage. Last night, as a torrential downpour with what had to be 50-mph winds was falling on far south Austin (and during which the winds changed direction 180 degrees), Maureen McCann over at News 8 Austin blithely showed downtown Austin, in which no rain was falling at the time, and spoke about how all the rains had now passed through, and everything was fine. She never showed a local radar at all during any of at least three "Weather on the 8's" segments I watched, so I had no way of knowing if the rain I had previously seen on KVUE's radar approaching the city was going to come anywhere near us. (It didn't, but we had no way of knowing that.)

Congrats, News 8, on losing my trust.

Way to listen to your viewers, KVUE

KVUE's 10 pm newscast tonight (which we watched with the sound off) featured, as did every other newscast in the country, Paris Hilton's return to jail. Right after that, some poll results appeared on-screen stating that 83% of the respondents did not want to see any Paris Hilton stories on any KVUE newscasts.

So, KVUE producers:

1. Why had you just shown that story?

2. If you were going to show the story regardless, why give people a poll to make them think their opinions counted for anything?

Internet Radio Update

Not much of an update on the internet radio mess here, but I do have a couple of observations:

1. The honorable Mr. Doggett (TX-25) did finally get back to me in April (a month after I wrote him), stating that he would "keep [my] concerns in mind as this matter continues to develop." This, from what I can tell, is code for "ignore until enough other people bug me about it," as Mr. Doggett does not appear on the list of co-sponsors of the House bill to vacate the CRB's decision, shown on this site. (He can be bugged here.)

2. (Hat tip: Instapundit, as if he needs it) My former (until the latest gerrymandering) representative, Lamar Smith (TX-21), certainly cannot be counted on in this fight. His name does not appear as a co-sponsor, and I wouldn't expect it to do so, since according to this site, Mr. Smith took the second-highest amount of campaign donations from the RIAA ($7,500) in the last election cycle. Given Mr. Smith's previous responses to constituent concerns (such as mine regarding the FairTax), I'm not surprised.