Good Morning America is an accumulation of news, weather, entertainment and more. The show is divided into breaking news, pop culture, interviews, sometimes sports, and after watching various episodes, it seems more entertaining that straight news. The episode that I watched carefully for this class was on Tuesday, November 11th. It started with some breaking news, and as the show continued, talked about other news stories and then into more entertainment news. The show started with breaking news that they would elaborate on further in the show, and then with the weather. There was a lot going on on the screen and the ticker at the bottom was moving extremely fast, which to me, was distracting. The first few stories, which were heavily news based, went very fast. They did not spend a lot of time on them, and it was hard to keep up with due to how fast they were moving. There were some stories that they put more emphasis on, which in turn, made me more in tuned to them. For example, they spent a good amount of time on a sinkhole that occurred in Florida, as well as the death of Joan Rivers. I also enjoyed learning abut the “miracle mom” that returned from the dead. Apparently her heart stopped, and she saw parts of the afterlife, and unexpectedly, came back to life. I also enjoyed learning about the shark attack and how one of the reporters/anchors on the show went and immersed himself among sharks to experience what it is like.
There were many other stories, yet those are some of the ones that stood out to me. Good Morning America is an extremely different feel for a newscast than lets say, CBS or FOX. A lot of the stories were made out to seem very dramatic, with the music choices in the background, as well as the tone of voice used. Because of this, sometimes it did not sound like a newscast. The music choices in some story, took away from the severity of it. It also gave more of a talk show feel, due to all of the anchors/reporters sitting around the table conversing about some of the topics, and laughing with each other.
An example that stood out to me with how they don’t seem like they are “real news” was when they were discussing the story of a girl who got kidnapped from her bed. About two minutes after they explained the story, they went into how you can make your house safe in order to prevent cases like this happening. They moved away from the news story pretty quickly, and it went into a case where it reminded me of a reality television show. The show ended with a lot of pop news, including information about movies/TV, music (Interview with Taylor Swift) and celebrities.
I definitely enjoy watching Good Morning America. To me, it is more entertaining, lighter and easier to watch than hard news, like the CBS morning show. I worked at CBS News over the summer, and comparing the two, CBS was a lot more serious and did not include as many visual effects, as well as music. Some may argue that Good Morning America is not real news and does not include information that should be herd, which is possible. Yet, the way they made this show made it more entertaining for me to watch and listen to news. I think it depends on who is watching the newscast and their motive for watching that depends on which newscast they enjoy the most.
Good Morning America has a lot to offer that some of the other newscasts does not. I enjoyed how Good Morning America included a lot of b-roll, which allowed the viewer to see what was going on, and not just hear about it. For example, in the sinkhole story, they included a visual effect showing how sinkholes are created. Therefore, for those who are unaware of what exactly they are, they are able to see it and understand the severity of it.
Overall, I was captured by the show, for the most part, and enjoyed all of the different types of stories and topics that were included.
Jenn Stone 