Don't Mention Them!! You Know Who, Them

I watch a good bit of cable and network news. Something I've noticed is that they don't have a problem mentioning their competition by name. You might see a story on ABC's World News Tonight where they say something like, "Rumsfeld told NBC News that...." When Peter Jennings announced he had lung cancer, there was a story on every channel about it.

But local stations across the country find it very taboo to mention the competition. In the years since I've been watching local television news, which is pretty much my whole life, I can count on one hand the number of times one local station has mentioned another local station.

I'm not sure why this is so. I'm sure the fear is that if you mention the folks at other stations, somewhere in the viewers subconcious mind a voice will say, "You must watch this station they speak of." So I won't use the numbers 31 or 48 on this blog. And just to make sure I don't cause any problems of that sort:

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