One of my New Year’s resolutions is to visit the FTVLive website every day in 2019 to keep up with breaking news about big-market and small-market television newscasters.
Yep, not a profound goal, but I’m not a profound guy and I expect nothing profound from FTVLive, its Twitter account and its YouTube channel.
Just give me FTVLive’s happy, sad, funny, outrageous, amazing and unbelievable stories about television anchors, reporters, sportscasters and meteorologists you might watch and follow in your own hometown.
There’s nothing fake about FTVLive. It lives up to a quote in a prominent place on its site:
FTVLive gives you the Straight News about TV News 24/7 365
There is an appetite for this kind of stuff because, as pointed out in the 2017 social science book “Fandom, Second Edition: Identities and Communities in a Mediated World,” many newscasters attract love and adoration.
The book is a collection of 18 essays, and I paraphrased “love and adoration” from University of Wisconsin media and cultural studies professor Jonathan Gray in his essay, where Gray also writes that “we must acknowledge that news fans exist, and in significant numbers; thus, clearly, entertainment, fiction, and supposedly ‘low culture’ are not alone in inspiring such audiences.”
Now that is profound, but that’s not what this post is about.
Gray writes about famous news people and their fans in his essay and FTVLive focuses on not-so-famous news people, including some who become infamous because of the site’s arrest reports.
I became aware of FTVLive three days ago when I saw a tweet that linked to a story on the site. Here is the tweet:
Seattle TV Meteorologist Katie Boer Got Lit At A Company Christmas Party; Fought Other Party-Goers Who Wouldn't Let Her Drive Drunk https://t.co/8VMd81kVzi
— Front Page Buzz (@frontpagebuzz) December 27, 2018
The FTVLive story is the only one I’ve read so far, but I have 365 more days of free retirement time coming and a resolution to keep.
