This is the famous ABC video where the station’s prices jumped a dime during the segment. When a station raises or lowers prices, and the marquee is digital and remote controlled from the inside, of course the prices will change in an instant. Duh.
You’ll find out that individual stations’ margin on gas is only a buck in 50 that people spend at the pump. Really, it’s not even 2% in my experience. The gas stations’ real money tree is the quickie mart, especially on the non-age-restricted goods.
I wouldn’t be surprised if the station was watching the news and did it on purpose just to elicit a reaction.
The reason why I don’t think so is that the network newscasts are live from 6:30 to 7 PM ET, and this reporterette was in LA, so she was doing it live some time between 3:30 and 4 PM PT. LA market like all PT TV markets won’t see the evening news until 6:30 PM their time, three hours later. So the station employees could not have known just by watching their ABC affiliate that they were on the network national news show.
But…on the other hand, backing up your theory, maybe they saw the reporterette and cameraman, (the network probably used a local ABC affiliate camera crew), put two and two together, and then raised the price when they saw her talking in the direction of the camera.