Irresistible Charm

It’s been almost two months since NBC 10 introduced their virtual anchor, Irresistible Ella.

In typical NBC 10 — and, to an even greater extent, NBC10.com — fashion, it’s absolutely ridiculous. It’s a news organization, a TV station, with a freaking cartoon character who narrated a news story updated every weekday on the website. Somewhere, someone decided this was a good idea, that this was something that would interest their readers, that this was a benefit for the viewers! Probably more than one person, too. (You might say that someone, somewhere — more than one person, even — decided that hiring me to write this every weekday was a good idea. To that I say: Touché.)

Really, though, what do we expect? It’s a TV news station’s website — we expect the ridiculous and such. Today’s Ella news brief hit new levels, though. There was nothing all that weird about it — except I didn’t already know the story Ella was narrating — but look at the photo up there: She’s outside, in DC, so she has a raincoat on. I’ll repeat it: NBC 10 put their cartoon anchor in a raincoat because the photo she was reporting in front of — in the fictional cartoon world — was outside, at the White House, and it’s raining there.

There’s nothing left to say but: Well played, NBC 10. Well played, indeed.

Irresistible Ella [NBC 10]
Archives: Irresistible Ella