Here we go. With a certified heat wave, naturally the news outlets have to trot out their hoary weather cliches. This one amounts to: Stay cool and take it easy, as if we'd never been through this before:
If you must be out:
_ Limit outdoor activity to morning and evening hours.
_ Cut down on exercise.
Gotcha. But since I intend to follow one of the other pieces of advice -- Stay indoors in an air-conditioned place if possible -- it's kinda moot. I predict that sometime this week, we will also see some news outlet in town do a piece on what it's like to work in the Edy's ice-cream freezer. And we'll see a photo of an outside thermometer, but ONLY if the temperature hits 100 or better; wouldn't want to waste a shot like that on a mere two digits.
Comments
You forgot how easy it is to "create" a photo-op....just lay the thermometer on a (dark colored) car for a minute at midday....
Then proudly hold it in front of the camera...just to get the "point" across...
The part I love is all those on TV that say how "we" should CUT BACK on usage...excuse me, I ALREADY have my thermostat AT 78 degrees...and the A/C runs almost all day in THIS heat, so don't even go there with me...
;)
B.G.
No doubt we'll see kids running in a fountain or hydrant spray again shortly.
But news cliches aren't limited to heat waves; they often seem to go with the territory, to be passed down from news manager to apprentice, generation to generation.
Why do "shots" always "ring out," for example? What was it, acoustically speaking, that caused the "shots" to "ring" on THIS particular occasion, oh reporter? Why is the headline always more likely to be "Shots Ring Out!" than "Gunfire!" or almost anything else?
In some journalistic outlets the list of non-cliches and non-puns would be shorter, which is a shame if only because, unlike some European languages, English offers dozens of ways to express anything -- and of course the visual arts offer unlimited choices besides fountains and thermometers to say "heat wave."
But don't mind me; if I had only 20 minutes to provide all the news on network TV, I wouldn't waste precious seconds of it saying "A famous Hollywood actor dies" when I could be saying "Don Knotts dies, details next," for example.
I recall a broadcaster in another city whose motto used to be "You give us 22 minutes; we'll give you the world." They managed to make every second count and the audience was always better informed in that short space of time than with any competing offering of the same duration. I wish somebody would aspire to that again.
But I begin to digress. I'm sure somebody from Dr. Gupta to Heloise must offer other useful hot weather tips than don't run your triathlon at mid-day. It would be nice if somebody went after them rather than just dust off the archive. Sure, we need certain reminders, but is there nothing new or area-specific to be learned to stay safer and help others more effectively than in the past?