MorningNews

I don’t necessarily understand why companies wouldn’t be advertising. We have seen unprecedented spikes in consumption of goods and services. Outside of public venues or the energy industry, I’m curious to understand why other industries are reducing advertising. Probably just a reaction to a global recession?

I know it’s a competitive industry but in a city with about 6-7 news options, being a solid and steady #2 isn’t reason to change. The industry is so obsessed with who is first but in saturated markets, #2 is not a bad place to be at all.

Dari had coronavirus.

Good to know. Regardless of which started first it’s just always entertaining to me to see both shows following the exact same formula to a T from the consumer segment to pop culture headlines to the “play of the day”

Rarely watch Today M-F so when I did today I was surprised to see that they have a segment called “Steals and Deals” similar to GMA’s “Deals & Steals.” Gotta love the creativity of these two staples.

Pretty embarrassing. Pretty embarrassing.

Owen Confleti, her co-anchor has been there for about 15 years and was there during one of the station’s worst periods. He’s not particularly strong as an anchor either so it’s amazing to me how he’s weathered the revolving door. The anchor of Houston’s perennial #1 in the AM has been there for nearly 40 years I think.

Weekend GMA should really consider staying in TS even after corona has ended.

And also not the he most conventional anchoring line-up either. One anchor team is responsible for just one 30 minute broadcast. Election year dollars are hard to pass up though and it’s good to see some news back on KIAH.

KTRK-TV (ABC 13) is launching a new hour long newscast on KIAH (CW 39) anchored by long term anchors Tom Abrahams and Elissa Rivas with chief forecaster David Tillman. It’ll air 7 days a week.

Unless there is a reason to be at home for them then I don’t see why they cannot be in the studio. Hoda mentioned a few weeks ago that being the studio provides normalcy for her.

David Wright is back apparently. Just saw a report filed by him at the end of WNT.

To that point the morning shows have been doing a terrible job as well. They’ve got nothing to talk about after non-stop coverage of the virus for 3 weeks and the information is basically being regurgitated day after day.

This is an incredibly fair point but I'm not entirely sure it applies to Norah. In particular, her interviewing style is more more accusatory or insinuative that it provides the viewers a particular narrative. Dan Rather was very similar in my opinion. That said, I am surprised with how little ground she has gained. Her newscast has a little more than half of the viewers as ABC and NBC. I don't remember it having been that wide of a gap before.

I’m encouraged to see that I’m not the only one noticing this. While there is a lot of bias in journalism today, Norah may be one of the most blatant examples on broadcast television. It made slightly more sense on a conversational program like CTM but she hasn’t dialed it down much as anchor of EN either. She’s just all wrong for this role.

Is Saturday Today now 7-8:30 around the country? KXAS, WNBC and others air it for 1.5 hours but WMAQ is still showing a 2 hour program. Anyone know when this change took place?

There were viewers flooding the WCBS station chatter here months ago upset about the random and unexplained personality swaps on the morning show. And before that there were complains about traffic segments being dropped and inconsistent with no explanation. Obviously COVID-19 is a special circumstance but that has never stopped this site from being a discussion on broadcast news and production, whether it’s praise or criticism. It’s my opinion that WCBS has had some unfortunate luck as of late and it’s showing in their production decisions. If you’re not surprised, then why are you saying anything to me? This isn’t the first time you’ve felt the need to jump down my back because I gave an opinion. Is the ignore button still an option on this site? If so please feel free to use it.

My thoughts as well. She was a perfectly competent anchor at CNBC and Bloomberg so I'm not sure where she went off the deep end.

I'm really confused why some people are taking this so personally? Do you work for WCBS? Absolutely no problem with broadcasting from wherever in the world they can. But dropping an entire newscast with little to no explanation for viewers and at a time when the city is being deemed the epicenter for a global pandemic warrants questions especially when viewers have complained about frequent unexplained shifts in presenters and traditional segments. Obviously this doesn't matter much at all and we're all hoping for the best for them and their situation.

FBN has terminated Trish Regan after her comments that the coronavirus was an attempt to impeach the president. What a full from grace for her.

Sure there are bigger issues at hand here and WCBS has been impacted by elements out of their control. But this is another example in a trend of lazy efforts for this news department.

Gimmicky. Al presented the weather from his kitchen today. Seems like they could easily find someone to fill in.

Exactly. Especially in morning television you don't have to be #1 to still make an insane amount of cash for the network. It's much cheaper to produce more Today instead of finding a syndicated program and it's a model that Good Morning America is trying to mold around to as well.

The stripped down GMA of this week so far has been quite nice. No studio audience and less focus on pop culture crap.

KXAS also extended their 6 PM broadcast to an hour as well. They mentioned that they would continue to do that throughout the health crisis.