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NBC Fakes Plane Crash...No One Alerted The Media


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A little after eight this morning, WGN reported that a small aircraft had landed/crashed on the city's south side. People were all over the scene, a few emergency vehicles were there, and a few civilian vehicles appeared to be involved. Channel 9 broke from their usually lighter fare to monitor the still-developing story. After a few minutes, though, anchors Larry Potash and Robin Baumgarten were told that the whole scene was in fact staged for the NBC drama "Chicago Fire", that is filmed (at least in-part) in Chicago. The neighbors were told, the first responders were told, yet the news stations were not. WFLD, the wonderful station they are, did not report the story this morning (probably due to lack of competence) yet made a point to take a jab at the "other station" that mistakenly aired the footage on their noon news. Naturally, the folks back at 'GN had a little fun with the story for the rest of the morning, referring to the show as "...a show that nobody watches on NBC" and telling Jerry Taft to "stick it". So, I guess this really isn't any kind of ground-breaking story, after all...NBC, WFLD and WGN did nothing out of character this morning. In other news...

 

http://landing.newsinc.com/shared/video.html?freewheel=91046&sitesection=wgn&VID=23904334

 

I love this show.

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I watched the video on TVspy. Despite what WGN said on air, a pre-planned event like that does *not* happen without the media being told beforehand. Especially (and I hate to use this phrase) in a post-9/11 world.

 

The fact that there was nothing on scanners (as mentioned by their traffic anchor) should have been a big tell to the desk, who should have informed the producer and/or EP.

 

I obviously don't know how WGN's assignment desk works, but from my experience here in Houston the desk vets everything sent in by the chopper before passing it to the producers for air.

 

So it's either one or the other: The desk failed to properly vet the story before passing it to the producer/EP...or the producer/EP forged ahead with the story anyway.

 

WFLD, the wonderful station they are, did not report the story this morning (probably due to lack of competence)

 

No, more likely due to an abundance of competence and knowledge. Fox 32 may be the cellar dweller in Chicago, but my guess is they (like WGN) was informed ahead of time and therefore ignored the non-story.

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WGN dropped the ball on this one. It doesn't take much effort to pick up a phone and get confirmation/clarification as to what's going on.

 

It's my understanding that no prior notification was given to the media from the film/tv office because it wasn't deemed important/a grand scale event (like the filming of Transformers 3) nor out of the ordinary given that there are a handful of TV shows filming at any given day/time/place around Chicago.

 

It's a bit childish to "refer to the show as '...a show that nobody watches on NBC,'" but that's WGN for you.

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I just had a thought. If the producers of Chicago Fire and/or executives at the network ever heard of that smart comment by Baumgarten,

they might use it as an excuse to make a thinly-veiled "take that" at her and WGN in a future episode. If that happens. But that's just me.

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Not only is ND Greg Caputo is standing by the claim that WGN had no prior knowledge of the filming, but he also says that law enforcement they contacted initially had either mixed signals or no warning at all...in fact, some police were called to the scene for the faux emergency. Caputo defends the decision to air, based on the fact that the "other major stations in Chicago were on network news at that time", a not-so-subtle jab at FOX 32. Officials say that other stations in town called with questions, but WGN was the only one to go live. The Chicago Film Office says they will improve their communication in the future. WGN may have been a little quick on the trigger, but it seems like the blame should be spread around. have a feeling we haven't heard the last about this.

 

http://www.mediabistro.com/tvspy/wgn-news-director-explains-how-staged-plane-crash-was-mistaken-for-actual-news_b71633

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"Do they always intro breaking news stories in that very awkward way? That threw up red flags for me, like they did this on purpose to be 'hip' and 'cool' and 'viral'."

 

Not exactly...that cue is left over from their old theme (5 years later). It is usually a lot more fluid than that and is acompanied by a graphic. Based on the comments made in the video, it sounds like they broke away from weather for this, so the transition wasn't exactly smooth.

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Do they always intro breaking news stories in that very awkward way? That threw up red flags for me, like they did this on purpose to be "hip" and "cool" and "viral".

It almost seemed like Larry couldn't keep a straight face when the news first "broke". I see what you mean.
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