Matt Buckler: Local TV continues police shooting coverage

Oct. 18—The week started the way it ended for local television newscasts.

All four newscasts had a heavy presence in Bristol to provide continuing coverage of the death of two Bristol police officers who were responding to a 9-1-1 call.

Monday, the emphasis of the late newscasts was on the personalities of the two officers, Dustin DeMonte and Alex Hanzy.

Fellow officer Conor Hogan said the Bristol police department not only lost their two best officers, it lost two great men.

Conor also called the third officer involved, Alec Iurato, a superhero for taking out the shooter, Nicholas Brutcher, with one shot.

Conor said an entire shift of police officers were saved because of Iurato's heroism.

Body camera footage also was released Monday, but local stations either used it very sparingly, such as WFSB-TV3, or not at all.

WTNH-TV8 news anchor Ann Nyberg said because of the graphic nature of the video, and out of respect for the families involved, Channel 8 has chosen not to show the video.

It was the right call. The video is for law enforcement to watch, not us.

Local TV continues to cover the story with respect.

Friday night football

Both WVIT-TV30 and WFSB-TV3 has made a local game as one of its choices for Game of the Week.

The Windsor-Southington football game is on the ballot for both stations.

If local fans want to see Windsor highlights, however, they'll have to start stuffing the online ballot box. Windsor-Southington trails by a lot in both polls. which means fans have to do a lot of voting by the Wednesday deadline.

Channel 3 also has an athlete of the week award and one of the nominees is Coventry High School volleyball player Sara Miller, who had 17 digs last week in a win over East Windsor.

One thing you always can count on at Coventry is great volleyball players.

Barkley's back

A few months ago, Charles Barkley, NBA studio analyst for Turner Sports, hinted that he was contemplating retirement.

One thing might have changed his mind — the offer of Tony Romo type money.

Andrew Marchand said that Barkley was offered $200 million for 10 years to stay at Turner.

It's easy to put retirement on hold when you're making $20 million per year just to rattle off opinions.

Whether Barkley is actually worth $20 million per year is a subject for debate. Barkley is the only TV analyst that gets a reaction from viewers. ESPN has been trying for almost 20 years to find a studio analyst who is as popular and as outspoken as Barkley is.

They haven't found him yet. Turner has something no one else has — and it has shelled out a lot of money to keep it that way.

Stephen A. Smith of ESPN talks louder.

Barkley, however, doesn't have to talk loudly to grab our attention.

Drawing after midnight

For those who are awake all night and are looking for something to watch that isn't an infomercial, Channel 61 has come to the rescue.

"Pictionary," a new syndicated game show, has been placed in the low-profile 3 a.m. time slot with back-to-back episodes.

"Pictionary" was the biggest game show introduced nationally this fall, but the Connecticut market has shown little interest in it.

"Pictionary," for those of you who can't stay up that late, is very similar to a game show of the past, "Win, Lose or Draw."

They are virtually the same show — except "Win, Lose or Draw" had a better time period.

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Matt Buckler is television and radio editor of the Journal Inquirer.

Follow Matt Buckler for more television, radio, and sports coverage on the JI's Twitter @journalinquirer, and see his articles on the Journal Inquirer Facebook page.