The Weekly's ruthless cephalopod takes a beady-eyed look at local nightly newscasts.

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5am>>KION

Squid is up early. And damn, Squid looks good in the bathroom mirror, even at this hour. “Screw coffee,” Squid says to Squidself, “Squid’ll get ready for a banner day with a splash of cold water and a jolt of real-world awareness: pre-dawn local news. And maybe a banana pancake.”

Two minutes into the broadcast, Squid is armed with information: A tsunami from north of Japan is scaring up warnings along international coasts. Then newsman Hunter Finnell throws it to morning weatherman Adam Stiles—in the Weather Center, no less.

Squid expects more knowhow. Here’s what Squid gets: “Let’s talk about the tsunamis just briefly here now,” Stiles says, with the first of a flurry of earnest gesticulations. “Picture yourself with your bathtub that’s filled up. Halfway. You’ve got your foot already in it. Now, when you lift your foot up, what you’re doing is displacing mass. So when that earthquake hits, the earth is shifting—it’s either dropping, or sinking…so when you take your foot out, it creates a wave and a ripple, and that wave and ripple continues, and most of the time it just hits the front of the bathtub and splashes up, but when you have a gradual coastline, that water will continue to flow inland.”

Squid goes back to bed.

6pm>>KION

Squid is busy making a Christmas list and sorting through Squid’s change stash when KION reports that the Natividad Medical Center’s new CEO will make $600,000 a year. Squid’s beady eyes immediately turn to dollar signs. As Squid learns later in the newscast, that’s enough to buy 1,000 Sony PlayStation 3s. Heck, Squid could afford to buy health insurance for all of Monterey Bay’s mollusks with that kind of cash.

New CEO Thomas Winston’s expertise comes at a high price. Reporter Joel Moreno says that the former head of the county-owned hospital made less than a third of that amount. In a live follow-up segment, Brian Speciale asks Moreno: “It’s not like a surprise that he is making $600,000, right?” Moreno reports that the issue was debated in public and the county Board of Supervisors signed off on it. Whew, that was close. Fortunately anything the Supes rubber-stamp must have undergone careful scrutiny.

11pm>>KION

Squid has seen a lot of stomach-churning stuff on TV over the years, like people eating bugs on the reality TV show Fear Factor and the horrific footage of a squid harvest (shudder) on the PBS program Secrets of the Ocean Realm. None of that prepared Squid for a segment on tonight’s KION news.

The culprit was a piece of journalism promoting an interview with O.J. Simpson on the channel’s sister station, Fox 35, about his new book, O.J. Simpson: If I Did It, Here’s How It Happened. In it he describes “hypothetically” how his former wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and her friend Ronald Goldman, were murdered.

That Fox is giving the guy publicity with an interview is sad. That KION is cross-promoting its sister station’s program is sadder. But here’s the clincher: The book is being released by Regan Books, which is owned by the same company that owns Fox. Admittedly, Squid’s a starry-eyed idealist, but Squid is horrified when Squid sees this kind of advertising posing as “news.” The countless “news” segments about upcoming Fox shows is bad enough. This is a new low.

KION should have cued some Jaws theme music for the next segment. In it, one of Squid’s maritime buddies, a sea lion, is reported to be attacking members of a San Francisco swim club that has been using the bay to swim laps for years. What’s amazing is that local park officials and law enforcement didn’t get involved after the first attack, because by the end of the day, 13 swimmers had been bitten or bumped.

Later, there’s a piece about thrifty grocery shoppers who use Web sites like Grocerygame.com, where they can print up scores of coupons. Though the featured shoppers saved big bucks—a $104 bill came down to just $31 for one shopper—they were forced to purchase lots of hot dogs and fish sticks. That’s sad, too. Squid doesn’t even know what kind of fish those sticks are made from.