All-night TV and other Gazette readers' concerns addressed

This is my column from the Sunday, Nov. 21, Gazette. You can read printed version of The Gazette online, for a small fee, (really small) at this link.

 “I have only one complaint about The Gazette,” a reader wrote recently in a note to us. “I wish you hadn't discontinued the all night T.V. programming from midnight through 6:00 AM. I miss it so much.”

The reader is referring to the television schedule we publish in our newspaper. Her question is one of a handful I'll try to answer today in a recurring attempt to share our mailbag with you and respond to the comments.

For our late night viewer, I'm afraid we won't be returning those overnight listings.

More years ago than I care to think about, before I was married, I worked a 2 to 10 p.m. shift. I'd stay up late and watch television after getting home. I still remember the schedule: late night talk shows or local programming on KCRG-TV9, KWWL-TV and then-WMT-TV, which now is KGAN, until the stations signed off for the night. IPTV had programming, too, but also signed off.

Now hundreds of channels exist on cable or satellite with overnight programming. A lot of it is paid programming, or infomercials. Sports, news, movies, music videos and reruns of old television shows round out most of the programming.

We don't have space for all of those listings, and the night-owl audience that would use it relatively small.

We along with others are not happy (with) the way death notices are posted in The Gazette. The top death notices have when the funeral is going to be and etc. The bottom part just has the name…”

Our list of death notices on our obituary page informs readers at a glance whose obituaries are in the page.

Families are not obligated to put an obituary in the newspaper. One reason they don't is that newspapers charge for the space an obituary uses. Charging is a common practice of most daily newspapers, including The Gazette, to ensure that families get space that otherwise would be used for other news. Also, the family gets to write what it wants in the remembrance.

At The Gazette, however, we think people want to know if an Eastern Iowa dies, even if the family decides against buying space for an obituary. So we put the names of those people and the funeral home where you can get information about services and visitation. Those names are the ones the reader refers to as being at the “bottom part” of the list.

More local high school sports coverage.

That's the entire comment. It came on a feedback form we sent when billing people for the paper.

The reader should have been pleased this past fall. We added pages and color photos to our prep fall sports coverage. We had complete reports from the state volleyball tournament in Cedar Rapids and did a special Game Day section leading into the high school football playoffs. We know from what many of you tell us that you like high school sports. For example…

PLEASE give Mid-Prairie better sports coverage.

That's a little more specific than simply high school sports coverage. Go Golden Hawks. By the way, having three Johnson County schools in state football championship games this weekend was an amazing feat.

Related to high school coverage, I hope you saw this month the photos of Linn and Johnson County students who attained All-State Band, Choir or Orchestra status. This is no small feat, either. We devoted our Saturday, Nov. 13, and the following Wednesday's Accent sections to showing you these students.

Use less bias, less promoting Republicans in your articles!

I've written about this before, usually coupled with a complaint about promoting Democrats too much. I didn't want you to think I ignored it.