Speech Issues

Tonight's post is all about a problem that seems to be growing.  There are only 2 choices for local news in Syracuse (the local affiliate for NBC also owns the CBS affiliate).  But even before that, we watched the ABC affiliate because it's actually got the best local content.  But there is a problem that is growing at the station.

We've slowly noticed the deterioration of the speech of the anchors on the channel.  Sure, we could watch the other broadcast but those are actually very bad (painful comes to mind).  So what is so bad?  They are constantly screwing up words.  And by constantly, I mean at least once for each paragraph.  Want an example?  How about Pennsavania rather than Pennsylvania?  What about some shnow chowers?  The worst part, as far as I'm concerned, is that they don't even try to correct themselves.  I've been avoiding this for some time because the chief meteorologist has Multiple Sclerosis and I don't think it's something to pick on him about.  And I'm not saying that he should be fired, but I am saying that he should give up his screen time.  He is an intelligent person, it's just that his condition causes him some speech issues.  Let him be behind the scenes and put someone out there that won't struggle with pronunciations.

So why now?  In all honesty, it isn't because he has gotten worse.  It's the rest of the crew that is the problem.  We aren't talking about complex words, we're talking about simple words.  It's really getting annoying and part of the reason I'm very willing to skip the local news cast more and more often.  But don't go thinking that the world broadcast is any better.  The difference there is that they generally try to correct themselves.

These people are supposed to be professionals.  I'd be nice if they were and if they were held to high standards.