kjohnson

On 1/21/2024 at 9:17 PM, mrschimpf said:

St. Louis before the traditional 'cable guys' got their hands on Charter and moved it to CT is still in many ways, Spectrum's true 'home' market Charter-wise; it's really surprising that they haven't had a Spectrum News outpost in STL for years, and it seems like a severely missed opportunity. I know the big three organizations seem to 'serve' enough, but it's a very entrenched and conservative market where even changing the graphics (as KMOV just did) is akin to a gaudy plastic surgery to the market core in St. Louis County. Some kind of competitor would be welcome, but they have to balance the city and county viewers and find a niche that works.

 

KDNL's move meanwhile isn't shocking as for their netlet/lower Big Four stations, SBG prefers a small studio to do what they need to do for commercial clients and the occasional public affairs show. I would worry about deferred maintenance for those Cole St. studios though.

Funny you should mention Spectrum.  Gregg Palermo is a KTVI/KPLR alum; They also appear to have an executive producer, a digital producer, a meteorologist, and a reporter, too.  A small team, for sure, but more than KDNL, and it's comical The National Desk. 

22 hours ago, mrschimpf said:

And that is a whole lot less important considering ABC News's current direction; if we were talking 2005 ABC post-Jennings with Charlie Gibson and such, that could have been a priority to tie into. But with their news division now hyperfocused on weather, crime, and politics, there's less of a need to drive that full-day viewing, and pragmatically they'd still be deep in fourth even if the news division wasn't mothballed and went through the News Central and 'fake news cold read' eras unchanged with Sinclair.

 

The move towards streaming and Hulu also makes it easy to just be happy with what you can get through KDNL, and both Disney syndies, Kelly and Mark and Tamron are on their schedule in the morning; whatever complaints they have about three hours (!) of talk/court reruns (!!) in the afternoon and TND, as long as they have viewers back at 7 or online, that's more important now than building around a low-rated news operation, and after The Allman Report, they're probably just glad that Sinclair has stopped messing around with news at all in St. Louis.

Realistically, Scripps is pretty much done with developing news beyond their odd Alden/Gannettized 'evergreen for the siding companies instead of breaking' direction; an "ABC 46" would make WGBA look like a juggernaut in comparison.

 

I could still see Weigel do it for KNLC, but the studio issue would be a lot to overcome (do you build in town, on the edge of town, or deep in St. Louis County?), but the problem is the market, where you have to provide enough news coverage of St. Louis City that would be original and worthwhile, but also have to deal with balancing St. Louis County and MetroEast coverage and not alienating those viewers by being too St. Louis-focused (a major issue with Midwest cities).

 

There has to be a niche to stand out, and unfortunately the only one in STL that stands out right now is the 'cancelled' one Larry Connors, Jamie Allman and Vic Faust have honed, and that isn't Weigel at all. For them outside of dealing whatever wacky things the NLEC does on their second sub in the public file, they probably have fewer headaches just dealing with common MeTV complaints about commercials and schedules and such than dealing with ABC complaints.

Studio space might not be an issue. KDNL's old studios at 1215 Cole Street were up for sale last year, as they jumped ship to Brentwood, MO where the Allman Report was being filmed. If Scripps and/or Weigel wants an in town studio that's turn-key, 1215 Cole is it. 

https://www.loopnet.com/Listing/1215-Cole-St-Saint-Louis-MO/27232037/

On 1/20/2024 at 3:02 PM, Weeters said:

If ABC was truly that concerned about St. Louis, then the affiliation would have been taken elsewhere a long time ago. ABC could have even bought a station and started their own news operation if they were that concerned. But, I think they know St. Louis is news saturated and doesn't need another newsroom. They don't have to be "happy" about it, but they also know there's a slim chance that the affiliation would end up on any of the existing news-producing stations, and it's not worth building a new one.

If we are "news saturated" that seems to be news to people here.  A quick look at any newscast that KMOV has proves a lot of news is being left on the table. KPLR isn't really producing much of anything, other than essentially a rebroadcast of the previous KTVI newscast. It's leaving KSDK and the Post-Dispatch to find rest of the news out there, but they don't have the resources. We need another functioning newsroom. Spectrum News doesn't really have any sort of obvious presence.

Too much is going on there. Reduce the text size by about 15-20%, and it'll look a lot cleaner, and a lot less crowded.

Great. Time to watch Scott or Brian, then.

Well, the anchor on the left reminds me of Jared Harris (Lane Pryce, Mad Men). Professionally done. Graphics were worse than our graphics before acquiring Tristan Bresnen's "Southern Prime" graphics in 2008.

What I really like? It's an actual local newscast. Way up in Market 21, by minute 3, we'd be into AP wire copy. They just need a solid graphics artist.

I'll try to catch the web stream at 10ET/9CT.

Which is what we use. FCP makes all the difference. I'd say $2500 bucks and they could get up to about market 100. Right now, they are better than Glendive's "newscast" but only just.

Is that station even trying? I don't doubt their commitment to keeping the community informed, but the graphics look they came out of Windows Movie Maker. They also overcompressed their video for YouTube.

We need another station makeover campaign. I nominate WSVI.

Ah Yes, Image VII by Gilmer Music Productions. Those packages have good, if not dated sound to them. They scream small market.

Station presentation isn't that bad. We've all seen much, much worse.

If was in-house, they did a good job. The main reason I would have thought Stephen Arnold might have done it is because the regional flavors packages end up with. A good Example is KABB in San Antonio. (KABB Sinclair News Package)

Stephen Arnold did a good job integrating a "Thai" sound into Signature.

As for NBT, they only use one cut from Evolution? Further, the female anchor (I stopped watching after about 4 minutes) kept talking. Am I missing something, or in a two anchor setup the other anchor talks at some point?

I don't think I've ever heard the morning cut for Eyewitness News.