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All the petty arguments on the forum need to be let behind in 2024 and start fresh in 2025 by focusing only on WABC in this thread and respecting decisions to air less news on certain holidays. Have a nice New Year everyone.

Losing Aaron is a major loss to TV news. His first day at CNN was 9/11. The rest was history. Aaron was also part of a great team at KIRO in the late '80s - all reunited in the skies now (Harry Wappler and Wayne Cody). Very unique charisma and PROFESSIONAL on the air. He will be missed!!

Imagine 9/11 being your first day at your new newsroom as a journalist!!!! What a story to tell. RIP Mr. Brown

Can you guys take this conversation or whatever it is offline? Thanks. It is way off topic.

Congratulations to him! I knew he would be ending up at WPVI eventually, especially after seeing that he had left WTVD recently.

Thank god nobody put you in charge of say product safety or getting potholes fixed.

As opposed to “everything anyone does I don’t like is wrong?” ”Legitimate critique” and “this wasn’t done this way before” or “that’s not what my journalism school professor way back when preached” are not the same thing. Audiences change. Tastes change. Expectations and needs change. Technologies change. But by god, don’t fade out to a commercial break cold. Don’t do a newscast when I don’t have any actual data but assume it shouldn’t be on. Don’t speak in an active voice. On and on and on. It’s always so easy to pretend to have the magical solutions when it’s not your job to manage the P&L, to make the hard calls with the available resources, to actually use data to make choices and not rose-colored glasses yearning for some bygone era. So yeah, change things the heck up. That’s what millions of people do. They change. They try new things. They evolve. They mix old and new. They change something for the sheer hell of doing something different. They don’t become fossilized dinosaurs.

No one knows what happens behind the scenes, but if he knew his job basically was what it was, part time with no meaningful prospect to be full time let alone off weekends, his decision makes perfect sense. He got a nice weekday, full-time gig. Why the decision was made to keep him in that role is something no one will know, nor should we. Personnel matters are what they are. They long had four weekday full timers, and clearly that’s where the management felt it was worth investing resources. One was admittedly the built in coverage in mornings while handling traffic when not covering, but it got them what they obviously felt was a good setup. Five full timers and one part time, or four full time and two part time isn’t a meaningful difference outside of what needs to be done to make balance sheets work. Either gives them flexibility given the sheer number of hours in an average week they pump out. The new guy gets a dream gig, Sowers got a nice evening gig. Win win.

It's a fact. All you ever do is just find a way to contradict/dismiss what people say and advocate for station management. Your answer right now shows a lack of self-reflection. You think legitimate critiques of the way our collapsing industry is being run is "finding imaginary fault". Most of your answers on this thread are chalked up to "the people in charge have all the answers and we should just accept anything because they know best." What is the point of this website if not to critique decisions and offer alternatives? Exactly.

Metromedia owning an independent like WTCN. When I think of that time, I think of stations like KRIV, WTTG, WNEW (now WNYW), KTTV that became the original O&O stations with the then-new FOX network. As far as use of that news theme from 1984 (9 Country/11 Country), I'm more partial to the use on sister station 9NEWS KUSA in Denver from the Mike Landess/Ed Sardella years with the voice of Mr. ABC himself Ernie Anderson opening for 9NEWS About the Magers brothers: had Ron came back to the Twin Cities when his brother Paul came, these two brothers anchoring together would've made a splash in icy Minnesota. Sounded like Gannett back then had a boatload of money to spend on its stations, its equipment, its people and news production. Seems like they were a wealthy media group. Today, with all this standardization going on, that's just not the case.

This might be the best history video about local broadcsat news yet...from Twin Cities Public Television A forensic look at the rise of WTCN/KARE after Gannett acquired it with interviews from KARE and the competition, lots of great video clips https://www.tpt.org/minnesota-experience/video/broadcast-wars-ep-3-out-of-nowhere-pzx0vn/ There are 2 other episodes from earlier years https://www.tpt.org/minnesota-experience/video/broadcast-wars-ep-1-just-the-facts-xk330t/

I thought I posted this, but I guess not. ATV-10 Melbourne’s version of Collier Concept’s “The Team to Watch” promo:

KSDK Eyewitness News 1985 (including Show me 5 Promo)

The were okay but I found the previous 2003 package and the following 2012 package to be stronger.

I miss those gfx WNBC-TV had at that time. Very ahead of it's time.-- matt

Today Show 60th Anniversary 2012, full 4 hours

Objectively, the people making the decisions have far more information than speculation. I don’t need to know every single piece of data to understand why station X decides it’s fitting to run their normal schedule, albeit with a reduced staff, while station Y tosses on filler material. Nobody is just burning the bosses’ money for kicks and giggles.

Ratings on Christmas are higher than you'd think. A lot of people are at home with not much else to do, or maybe they get enough of family time after a while. Plus, now there's football on Christmas Day. With that said, a skeleton staff and maybe an hour show in the morning and half hour at 10/11pm is more than enough to suffice on Christmas. Run the yule log and pre-taped specials for the rest of the day. In my experience, the most pointless holiday newscast is the morning news on New Year's Day. That's the hardest one to rustle up content for. Even less is happening then, and even fewer viewers are watching.

What I appreciate about using the DBL space is it’s not a set that’s a desk pushed up against a big monitor. Even more idiotic are the number of big monitors that just have a still graphic skyline in them. Here we have dimension, texture, and some halfway decent lighting. All of those are lost arts these days in local news studio design. What is interesting about this space is that a lot of sets use flats for their walls so the exit sign would never really appear on a set wall, but that must be the actual exterior wall of the studio space. I was in here in 2020 but barely remember it, but appreciated it for what it was and how well they used the space they had.

I think we are conflating the two. It's not that an anchor can't bother to anchor an additional hour, it's how the talent's contract is wrtitten. If Liz has a contract that says she anchors X show and fills in X amount of times, the station has to adhere to that legal agreement. All parties signed off on that. Additionally, each year we revisit the topic of anchors being off on the holidays. Just let the tenured anchor live and enjoy time with their loved ones. On the flip side, let's be OK with the green talent getting a few at bats so they can hone their craft. The topic doesn't need to be revisited annually.

My problem with suing is that the copyright people will nearly always win. Better just to either hope the appeal goes through and I get two of the three channels back... OR I fold completely, go to internet Archive and for the next 6-8 months rapidly upload everything I have minus anything 'questionable'. Of course the latter option means a massive loss in views and reactions compared to YouTube. Some of my videos got over 50,000 views, and 100s of likes. Plus most of the public would likely use YouTube vs. the Internet Archive for classic TV footage. YouTube is 'THE video-sharing site' and has been for many years. I wish I could go back to my YT accounts and find a way to tell my subscribers what happened...but I'm sure a lot of them know already. The problem is how many will be able to transition their clicks from YT to I-A.

Aaron Brown, formerly of KING-TV and KIRO-TV in Seattle, ABC (one of the original anchors on World News Now), and CNN (Newsnight with Aaron Brown), passed on Dec. 29 at age 76.

Just got word from Michael Pannoni that WQED Pittsburgh content is being pulled down. Even just random promos from that PBS station got a copyright strike for him. Anyone with Pittsburgh recordings yet to digitize - please don't bother uploading anything from the PBS station.

CBS Sports tribute to Greg Gumbel narrated by colleague JB that aired during halftime of the first game of the HBCU college basketball doubleheader today & likely to be shown again tomorrow on The NFL Today.

Richard Parsons, former Time Warner CEO, dies at 76 https://variety.com/2024/biz/news/richard-parsons-dead-time-warner-cbs-1236260229/

I hate to say it, but I think the NFL did this because they are uber-insistent on today's NFL being "the" NFL, and CBS in turn having a hand in it because they think today's AFC NFL on CBS should be "the" NFL on CBS as well.

If you have sporting content in your hands + are willing to share with the world, be careful out there because one of the most followed accounts in the archival community, Dave Volsky of DV's back door channel got terminated this past week, according to fellow archivist "Bart Simpson". I agree with one of the posters that channels like Volsky put a spotlight not only on how far the game has come, but the forgotten or underrated players not often mentioned in the sport discussion. You'd think they would create a museum where they could show highlights or full games in theaters for attendees, Pro Football Hall of Fame aside. (hell, something similar should be built for pop culture or news, but I digress) Hell his channel has even made it thru the press at times. Example: https://www.fox2detroit.com/news/lions-fan-who-attended-tragic-1971-chuck-hughes-game-left-shaken-by-bills-damar-hamlin-incident https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC2yrvPZ9Mmu_jEdVGGqYNKA/community?lb=Ugkx_d6PfJmWUe7wuWkpdRUlkh5CQBYHvDbZ