WLOS dailies for Wednesday

Shameless publicity stunt nabs WLOSers
If you ever want WLOSers to put you on television, there’s one surefire way to lure them – suck up.

That’s what the owner of a crappy little tubing business did on Wednesday, and he got a big story out of it. The business consists of little more than a small hill, some fake snow and a few rubber inner tubes.

But Sheraldo reported the hell out of how the business owner invited some kids over, put four frozen birds in their own inner tube and had the kids push them down the hill. He kissed WLOSers asses by slapping a sticker on each bird, naming them after Diva Darcel, Larry “Bluntman” Blunt, Tallahasee Tammy Watford and Mike “Cabana Boy” Cuevas.

In the end, it came down to Cabana Boy and Larry, was it? Cabana Boy won. The kid who pushed the gobbler down the hill got to take it home. Awww.

Back at the anchor desk, Cuervo said yeah, he should have won because he talks fast. Then he put on a fake Southern accent – hey, don’t be mocking us Southerners, boy. Then Tammy made some lame joke about “talking turkey.”

Put me out of my misery now.

Dunce Darcel
I think Diva Darcel was on Quaaludes or something Wednesday, because she said a couple of really stupid things.

In a report about a preacher who got punched, WLOSers show us the video. That’s the only reason it’s a story – they got video. So after they show us some madman punching the slick preacher in the face, the Diva comes back and says, “Oh, that was planned.” What? What about that was planned?

Then, in her health report, the Diva gave us this little gem: “Pill splitting is a good way to save money on medicine, but is it safe?” One word, Diva the Dunce: NO.

Turkey smasher
The funniest report of the day came from Jay Seltzerwater at noon, who told us about some redneck in Cleveland or something who saved someone from a burning car by using his frozen turkey to smash a car window, unlock the door and pull the poor sap to safety.

They had a taped interview of the redneck “Good Samaritan,” who said he just did what came naturally – using a hard, frozen object to beat shit up. But he did add that he wouldn’t be eating the battered bird.

Blasted weather words
I tried to keep track of how many times WLOSers used the word blast in weather reports this week about the snow flurries we had. I lost count at 1,387. It was a “blast of winter weather,” or “when will we get another blast of winter…” I think Diva Darcel took the cake with her intro to a snow story by saying, “Old Man Winter delivers a frosty blast…”

God help us all.

Odds and Ends
Loyal reader Bulldog had a comment from this past week’s big reveal of the Ingles Giving Tree:

WLOS reached the epitome of a two-for-one advertiser suck-up Monday night when 5 minutes into the news they went to Julie Wonderful for “live” coverage of the lighting of the INGLES GIFT TREE at the ASHEVILLE MALL. In a longer than normal story, Julie interviewed an Ingles executive, gasped over the company’s beneficence, then had two kids throw the switch. Breaking news from Western North Carolina’s No. 1 news team, and “live” from the Asheville Mall. But Julie, let’s do something about the hair, sweetheart. It looked as if you’d just gotten out of the shower.

The only thing missing was a guest appearance by Rhett Blanchard and his cast of idiots from Asheville Dodge.

You’ve got to give Julie credit for one thing, though. She works. Saturday morning she and a cameraman apparently were the only WLOSers on duty as she did the news, weather, sports, intro’d Mark Hyman, and happy talked single-handedly. Of course, she had to talk to herself. At least, they’re not re-running the previous night’s broadcast anymore.