Breaking news: It was warm in Chicago in January

It is the middle of January, and it is raining and 60 degrees in Chicago. A thunderstorm even.

That led the TV news tonight. Pretty hard hitting stuff.

Note to TV people: if you are going to cover something so lame, at least provide some sort of perspective. For instance, maybe an explanation of why it has been such a weird winter. Or a look at how rare 60 degree days in January are. Something besides tourists in T-shirts and joggers along the lakefront.

Those TV people sure do love weather stories. I like how they have to stand outside in whatever the strange and/or wretched conditions my be, as if we wouldn't believe them otherwise. It's sort of like auto racing -- you watch because you secretly hope someone will die a violent death.

Last month Chicago stations even sent reporters and camera people to Indiana to show us a band of lake effect snow that caused a blizzard in a narrow swatch of that state. Not to be outdone, at least one station sent a helicopter.

It's as if we were all Australian aborigines who had never experiences winter before. But the TV people all look so damn cute in their outdoor gear, you can't help but watch, for fashion tips if nothing else. OK, for the guys, some of the news chicks look like cuddly ski bunnies -- or icy snow queens, depending on your level of inebriation.

The most ridiculous TV news coverage here in Chicago recently was a fire last month at LaSalle Bank in the Loop. About a year ago, there was a fire at a county building downtown, and the media types believed the fire officials who told them that everything was under control, when actually it was a clusterfuck and a bunch of people died. TV pulled back its coverage and wound up with egg faces.

So, this December most of the channels dwelled on the bank fire. Some of the footage was pretty frightening, flames shooting out of office windows and firefighters battling the blaze from adjacent rooftops.

Again, one of the news teams had to break out the news chopper. Why have a toy if you can't play with it in dangerous situations?

Despite this, after a couple hours, coverage got mighty old, and redundant. They ran out of things they wanted to say, like people at a 10 year high school reunion. Fortunately, no one died this time. Though TV seemed to be on Death Watch 2004.

As usual, there was no attempt to give any insight into the situation, just microphones pointed at officials, interviews with some who made it out of the buildings and the occasional politician blathering about fire codes.

Chicago has major universities, filled with smart people. Not one of them was put on the air to give clue as to how a building is engineered to control a fire, or how a fire spreads, or how it is fought, or anything about the science of what was happening.

Note to TV people: Please be smarter.

I said smarter, not smarmier.

Like that's gonna happen.