Oddly enough...

[bktheirregular]

I hear stuff all the time about TV stations breaking into their programming to show car chases as they unfold, live, from chopper-cams and sky-cams and the like.

Funnily enough, though, I can't recall an instance - not one - in which the New York television stations interrupted the viewing schedule to show a car being chased on a New York highway. Of course, I hardly watch any television, but it hardly even makes the local 11:00 news unless the car ended up crashing into a minivan, and even then, the only video you get is generally the mangled aftermath.

Is showing the chases live an LA thing? Or maybe not showing them - or not detailing choppers to follow - is a New York thing? I wonder which way of handling it is more common?

Hm.

Close entry.

Comments

[lizbetann]

Is showing the chases live an LA thing? Or maybe not showing them - or not detailing choppers to follow - is a New York thing? I wonder which way of handling it is more common?

It is ridiculously common in LA. I blame OJ and the slow speed chase. I have to confess, though, that there is sort of train-wreck facination with watching them sometimes. Which doesn't mean that I think they should be televised.

Is it *possible* to drive fast in New York? I thought that you pretty much lived at a crawl in the streets there...

[bktheirregular]

On the *city* streets, you're kinda limited, yeah, but Manhattan's got highways on both sides, along the Hudson and the Harlem Rivers, and people will go like blazes on the West Side Highway - if you try and hold to the speed limit, you'll have an SUV half an inch off your bumper. And in the outer boroughs, the highways can be even *more* nuts.

What brought it to mind was an episode of NYPD Blue, when Upstairs John's just-purchased car got carjacked on him and they were carrying the chase of the carjacker on TV. I was just thinking: they don't *show* those things in New York. Not the chases, anyway...

Maybe because it's far too easy to choke off the idiot who runs...