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Media Mélange
by Mike Gibson
The first and most important thing you need to know about local media is that this city is the home of Metro Pulse,—i.e. Knoxville’s Weekly Voice, bastion of excellence, locus of hipness, the finest fishwrap this side of McPaper. Heck, with an introduction like that (you might well ask), what more need be said?
Well, the answer is plenty, for better and worse. While it may be true that we here at MP have the best and most interesting publication/media outlet/all-purpose information source around, with the best-trained, best-looking, shrewdest and most discerning staff, we’re not the only game in town. Oh, no, far from it.
The thing to remember about Knoxville media is that our best outlets are rarely (if ever) the most obvious and visible ones. Our local daily, the News Sentinel, for instance, is a standard-issue mid-city paper, owned predictably enough by a standard-issue corporate media giant—which also controls the locally headquartered HGTV cable television network.
The Sentinel, once a bastion of stultifying mediocrity, has arguably improved with the coming of editor Jack McElroy two or three years back. The paper does employ a handful of good reporters; mostly, however, the Sentinel remains a mundane mouthpiece for the Knoxville Establishment, a veritable Greek chorus for whoever happens to be in office at the moment.
More interesting are The Hellbender Press, a left-of-center, bi-monthly tabloid with an environmentalist bent, and the Knoxville Journal, a weekly muckraker published by local crank extraordinaire Phil Hamby. What the Journal lacks in quality writing and overall journalistic integrity, it more than makes up for in voyeurism and pot-stirring with its outrageously biased, yet intermittently accurate “news” coverage and its sheer volume of lurid local gossip.
If our daily newspaper is staid and frequently superficial, you can bet your bottom dollar our TV news is a damn sight worse (that’s just the way of the world in media; no matter where you go, those jackals in broadcast news generally have all the substance of a beer fart. But I digress.) WBIR Channel 10, the local NBC affiliate, offers the slickest and most-watched local news programming, although ABC affiliate WATE Channel 6 has improved, content-wise, over the last couple of years under the guidance of former WBIR reporter/anchor Gene Patterson. Other local stations include WVLT Channel 8 (CBS) and WTNZ Channel 43, the Fox affiliate. If you’re looking for loads of local sports and weather, any of these options will prove more than acceptable. For the rest of you: Move along! There’s nothing to see here.
Knoxville radio is another matter. Again, be forewarned that the best options are rarely the most obvious ones. WIVK-107.7 FM is a megawatt dinosaur that has ruled local airwaves since time immemorial with its hit parade of hat-of-the-month contemporary country singers; WIMZ-103.5 FM has long been the dominant rock outlet with is hoary library of spin-damaged classic Rawk warhorses; WNOX-99.1 FM/990 AM is the preeminent gab outlet with a humdrum admixture of local and nationally syndicated programming (although the station is worth having around solely by virtue of its nightly broadcasting of Coast-to-Coast AM).
But our city is also home to a couple of decent public radio stations, the University of Tennessee’s WUTK-90.3 FM (college rock) and WUOT-91.9 FM (classical/jazz/NPR/local issues), an almost startlingly diverse adult alternative station in 105.3 FM, and everyone’s favorite bluegrass/roots/Americana outlet, the local WDVX, with transmitters broadcasting on 89.9 FM and 102.9 FM.
Which brings us back around to publications (just in case you weren’t paying attention before), and to the paper you are at this very moment holding in your hot little hands—the fascinating, free-spirited, wildly independent Metro Pulse. The point is: we’re pretty damn good. And maybe that really is all you need to know.
December 30, 2004 • Vol. 14, No. 53
© 2004 Metro Pulse
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Media Mélange