KTVU Goes Low-Tech to Solve 'Clockgate'

What time is it?

​Back when Charlie Finley owned the Oakland A's, an underling was often tasked with keeping the legendarily unpleasant executive abreast of the team's progress. This was accomplished via the low-tech, but effective, method of attaching a telephone to a radio with a rubber band so the owner could simply listen in while he went about his business.

KTVU-TV this morning has employed a similarly low-tech -- but effective -- method of solving a problem. Faced with a computer glitch yesterday that left it unable to superimpose the time-of-day on-screen, the Channel 2 morning news today resorted to simply filming what appears to be a five-dollar digital clock and cramming it in the lower right corner of the screen.

The blood-red digital readout is a dead ringer for the clock radio that bolted the morning news show's sonambulistic viewers out of bed. But what it lacks in aesthetics it does make up in accuracy.

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And while the clock may appear to be a vestige of the past, it has inspired its own twitter hashtag: #KTVUclockgate. And if that isn't progress -- what is?

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