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Top Five: Historic Hurricane Made For Riveting, Heartbreaking TV

Regularly scheduled TV took a backseat this week — whether you lived in the hurricane zone or not — as the Storm of the Century wreaked havoc in the northeastern United States.

The storm named Sandy cut a huge, wide swath on the East Coast, leaving an area of destruction and mayhem that was so vast that TV news organizations struggled to cover it all. (Here in New York, we happened to notice that at least one of our local stations, NBC-owned WNBC/Ch. 4, flew in reinforcements from KNBC, the company’s L.A. station.)

We watched hours and hours of the coverage starting last Sunday and we thought TV really rose to the occasion. To include every unforgettable scene here would turnfor allegedly telling residents in direct path of Sandy to stay put. That was an unusual TV moment, to say the least — a governor bawling out a mayor during a natural disaster. Well, like him or not, Gov. Christie is never boring.

Here he is at one point during the week, taking a break for an interview on NBC News:

2) An enduring symbol of Sandy: One of the images from the storm coverage that captured viewers’ attention from coast-to-coast was the spectacle of that construction crane, bent in half and hanging precariously over West 57th Street in Manhattan. This limp crane, it’s worth noting, buckled from the winds that were whipping around New York City before the actual storm hit — making it even more miraculous that it