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Sean O'Flaherty, WTMJ (and Scripps') longest-tenured employee, passed away on Friday, at the age of 74. He had been with the station for 53 years, holding the position of Newsroom Operations Manager for the last several decades. https://www.tmj4.com/news/local-news/longtime-tmj4-news-employee-sean-oflaherty-dies-at-74 Sean had started out as a reporter at the station, some of his packages are available online on UW Milwaukee's digital archives of WTMJ's film collection. One package that's not on there is coverage of a failed hot air balloon race in 1975, the crew of which coincidentally included the balloon pilot from WITI's "Look up to TV6" promo from a few years prior. A sad loss not only for WTMJ, but the entire Milwaukee market. Sean also moonlit (literally) as the station's weekend overnight photographer, and was well known at the other stations in town, even by those who never worked at WTMJ.

It always never fails to see certain people in this fandom bleat the age old cry that mOaR lOcAl nEwS is what the marketplace needs. Sure, let's divvy up a shrinking pie of TV viewers even further while overstretching existing personnel to do more work for less pay and merely rehashing the same content with the same McStation graphics and same unimaginative cuts from another generic Stephen Arnold music package. YAWN. Here's a news flash: if either big three network pulls out of programming the 10pm hour, that's nothing but a devastingly dire outlook for the entire industry. It means that local television is in trouble and in an unsustainable path to insolvency unless you implement the Scrippscast model (or even the Rogers CityNews model) across-the-board or utilize AI to do everything for less. But then again, it's not the first time the TV fandom has been so utterly detached from reality.

Don't forget the aging uninspired set that's 13, going on 14!

Not only that but also, Fox Stations would just defeat any station which tries to air a 10pm newscast because their network just gave them 10pm to their affiliates. That's why the Early Prime-Time idea failed in San Francisco, (and why ABC didn't allow KGO-TV or any other station to participate in the idea) because they were getting defeated by KTVU (It's bot exactly the same since they still had 3 hours and not 2 hours, but the point's exactly there.) And for WTHR in Indianapolis, Early Prime-Time would be used because of Time-Zone weirdness.

“Reimagining” my a**. Reference: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/my-mind-reimagining-local-news-adam-symson

According to this article in the Acadiana Advocate, KATC's (Lafayette, LA) main evening anchors are leaving the station as Scripps "will [reportedly] end the station’s live shows at 5 p.m., 6 p.m. and 10 p.m. and replace it with prerecorded shows with local reporters filling in content." https://www.theadvocate.com/acadiana/news/business/katc-anchors-leaving-amid-reported-end-of-evening-broadcast/article_77ce3476-5bbe-11ee-9518-2319ff3556ba.html#tncms-source=aca-featured-top This after the station recently got a studio overhaul and new set.