Television: *CHOMP*

^ That was the sound of your television eating energy.
California Seeks to Curb Appetite of Power-Hungry TVs

California's Energy Commission (CEC) is attempting to put a restriction on television sets; they want TVs sold in the state by 2013 to use 50% less energy than they do now! The Electronics industry is protesting because they say consumers are able to do so on their own, by adjusting brightness/light/etc. settings on their TVs themselves. However, the CEC is countering by saying that the standards they have proposed can be easily, efficiently, and cost-effectively done.

The article also taught me that the good old cathode-ray-tube TV sets are actually the most energy efficient, compared to the newer, fancier plasma or LCD screen sets. Intriguing. You'd think that since the latter two were newer, their energy efficiency would have increased...guess it isn't so! But then I suppose that is somewhat the same way for cars...the fuel-efficiency hasn't changed all that much since Ford's lovely Model-T.

But I digress.

This was a dandy little article, packed with information even though it was quite short. The lede was straight-to-the-point, which was appropriate for this type of article, yet it was quite clever as well. I liked how the headline and lede tied in together (though they probably weren't written by the same person, there had to have been some sort of collarboration) to the idea that TV's "consume" too much power.

The reporter also did a good job at presenting both sides of the issue, even though she was given very few words to work with. She let her sources do the talking, which also shows an excellent use of quotes that further the story rather than simply reiterate what has already been said. This also let the reporter say more in a short amount of space...however, she also didn't say too much, or try and cram as much information as she could, which is what I often see in articles as short as these.

The end of the article was also good in that it provided a little bot of background information that was not essential to understanding the story but helpful in understanding it. This also shows good use of the inverted pyramid form of writing a news story, which worked well with the subject matter.

All in all, a really sweet story, which is normally not the case when it comes to articles this short!