Thank goodness for Wikipedia.   It’s an essential resource when your TV station has made a commitment to devote much of its newscast to an unplanned, live event — yet your news team has run out of things to say about it.

Aeriel image of pig near I-75,1.27.11

This was the corner into which an otherwise-respectable Atlanta TV station backed itself when, one fine day in January during evening rush hour (and its evening two-hour block of news), a Vietnamese Pot-bellied pig was spotted alongside I-75 in Cobb County.  A chase ensured.  Helicopters and live trucks were dispatched.  It was, in some quarters, a “wow” moment.

I didn’t see the station’s extended coverage.  My friends who observed it say it went on for forty minutes and was a classic example of local TV news at its most overwrought.

My Suspicious Package parody is not intended to mimic any actual local TV news folk.  The anchor voice is a generic basso profundo; the hairpiece is on loan from Big Mike, with thanks.  The “field” material was shot by Richard Crabbe in the parking lot behind WXIA/WATL world headquarters.

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