Dear Editor
鈥淚 dream of Jeanie with the long brown hair鈥� or something like that used to be a popular song. I was recently reminded of it while watching a newscast. The reader had long hair and a long cleavage, made strange affirmative sounds and unsolicited comments and asked long convoluted questions.
I long for the days when the newsreader simply read the news. Today they smirk and smile and repeat their names several times. They use air time and my time to converse with colleagues about their health, holidays, and families and waste even more time on hellos, goodbyes and see-you-soons. Peculiar new words which I don鈥檛 understand are used, for example, 鈥渕eme鈥� 鈥渨oke鈥� and 鈥済ranular.鈥� There is little awareness of the proper use of adjectives and adverbs, past and present tenses and dare I mention subjunctives, but there is command of grammatical and even geographical errors.
I would ask them to get pronunciations right and never refer to the citizens of Edinburgh, Scotland as Edinburgers. They are not 鈥渂urgers鈥� 鈥� they are not even 鈥渂urghers鈥� they are 鈥渙ld smokies.鈥� If you don鈥檛 believe me, find someone from Scotland and ask them.
This is the perfect newscast 鈥� no interviews and no expert opinions: read the headlines then the lesser lines and then recap the headlines so we can get back a.s.a.p. to the adverts and the rom pomp and virtual circumstance of the throne speech which we long to hear.
Dr. R.H. Wood
North Battleford
