Exact Same News Different Channels

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There was another mass shooting and this time it in was in FTVLive's backyard. 

The shooting at the Jacksonville Landing was at a bar that was hosting an EA Sports tournament. 3 people were killed and 11 were injured. 

The local stations here in Jacksonville were all over the story.

If you tuned into WJAX the CBS affiliate, you saw this coverage: 

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If you tuned to WFOX the Fox affiliate, you saw this: 

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Yep the only change was the bug on the bottom right of the screen. 

The coverage looks familiar,  because both stations are owned by Cox and the signal was simulcast over both stations. 

The same thing if you watched the ABC and the NBC stations in Jacksonville. Both of those stations are owned by Tegna and it was the exact same coverage for both channels. 

Now, this is an important story obviously, but why are stations preempting programing on both channels?

WJAX was supposed to be carrying golf coverage and the station did move that over to the MyTV station, which they also own.

But, if you wanted to watch the football game on WFOX (Fox), you were out of luck. 

Cox could have shown the game and then crawled the breaking news and pointed viewers to their CBS station. 

In other words, you could have had the breaking news of the shooting on WJAX (CBS), you move the golf from CBS to the MyTV station (which they did) and then keep the football game on WFOX (Fox), with a crawl pointing viewers to WJAX if they are interested in the shooting. Problem solved and no programing lost. 

Also, watching news Anchors talking about the gaming community was cringeworthy at best. It's a problem when your Anchors know so little about gaming, tournaments or the community as a whole.  

Another head shaker.... An Anchor asked the station's law enforcement expert as to why the cops don't want people just coming down to the area to gawk and look around? 

Really? 

Another Reporter asked a witness, "Have you ever seen anything like this before here at the (Jacksonville) Landing?"

Well, since a mass shooting has never happened at the location before, you know what the answer was.

She then followed up with, "Briana you're alive, how do you feel right now?"

Of course as often is the case, the stations stayed on the air longer than needed and just kept rehashing the same stuff over and over again. This is always the point where news people stop reporting on the facts and start giving us possible scenarios and motives and guessing what kind of gun was used, or the type of bullet?

It is at this time that stations should leave the coverage, go back to programing and break back in if anything significant comes up.   

But, no station wants to be the first to back to regular programing in the market. Also, if you the last to stay with the breaking news, then you get to put it in a promo. 

"As the other guys went back to regularly scheduled programing only "Blank Blank News" stayed with the story giving useless informations that you heard 150 times before and a whole lot of conjecture you didn't need at all."

I'm not sure those will be the exact words, but it will be close, I promise you. 

Video from the scene as the shooting happened was uploaded to social media.