sanewsguy

WOAI has now found their new female co-anchor, and it's Evy Ramos, formerly of KGPE in Fresno Here's the source, accompanied with stupid comments typical of the E-N

I figured he was going to take over. Considering he had been chief at KENS over 20 years, it was only natural to promote him. I like him, he's a great meteorologist. Unfortunately, he had an incident in 2001 where he plagiarized material for his Express-News column which cost him his job at KENS. Fortunately WOAI has given him a second chance but a select few viewers have not. Any time there's an article on My SA about him most of the commenters will bring up his plagiarism incident from 2001 and say he's not qualified to be chief and shame on WOAI for promoting him. Sorry but he deserves a second chance and all he did was plagiarize. Give him a pass. He's gotten over it a long time ago. If he was a journalist then yes, I would think about it differently. But he's not, he's a meteorologist, so the standards are a little different. No, I'm defending him plagiarizing but the incident happened nearly 15 years ago. Just forget about it..... Other briefs coming out of San Antonio (I can't remember so much media news coming out of this market before): the original poster didn't mention this, but Mike Hernandez from KABB will be filling in on the morning shift until they hire someone else. Will be curious to see who they hire. Lately, Blaise Labbe has been bringing in a lot of outsiders in to the Sinclair shop here, as you'll see in a moment. Also, I hope Hernandez won't be working seven day weeks since he is currently KABB's weekend meteorologist and does Daytime at Nine during the week. He generally gets two days off during the week. KABB has Robert Luna as a weekend fill-in but I don't see him getting a full-time position because he is a high school teacher during the week. Honestly, I just see Siobhain Anders adding KABB's 9PM news to her plate since it's much cheaper than hiring someone else just to do one thirty-minute newscast two days a week. KABB and WOAI have a direct fiber link that was installed not long after Sinclair took over, so Anders could do the 9PM weather live from WOAI for KABB. Once they move in, that will be a moot point. According to the Express-News, Blaise Labbe is this/close to announcing a replacement for Elsa Ramon. Some believe that Delaine Mathieu will permanently add the 6 and 10 to her schedule, while others think they will hire an outsider. Time Warner Cable News San Antonio has announced it will launch June 2. Currently on cable channel 14, which is where TWC News will be, is a loop of Capital Tonight and Sports Night both from TWC News Austin. Michael Pearson, who is the news director for TWC News Austin, will also work in the same capacity for TWC News San Antonio. Newscasts will be anchored out of Austin but will have local reporters. Eventually the San Antonio channel will produce its own content. My take away: Time Warner seems like they don't have a lot of confidence in the channel if they are outsourcing production to Austin, which is a smaller DMA. They don't even have their own ND. The guy from Austin is going to run the channel. Who's supposed to make daily coverage decisions, especially if one guy has to run two newsrooms? Having said that, I hope this channel succeeds, even if Comcast's proposed merger goes through. It will give San Antonio a fourth English news operation again, since WOAI/KABB are basically one newsroom now (still using two separate buildings AFAIK). Will be interested to see who ends up on the channel. However, I won't be watching it, since I do not have Time Warner Cable and have no plans to switch back to that wreck of a company. Source: http://www.mysanantonio.com/default/article/Time-Warner-S-A-news-network-debuting-June-2-5383548.php [*]KSAT has begun running promos for Adam Caskey. I didn't pay attention to it so I don't know how it goes. I just know at the end, there's video of him along the S.A. river smiling with his name, he will be debuting in June and the KSAT logo on the screen. I'll see if I can catch it. [*]Speaking of KSAT, they have released some details for their new lifestyle show they'll be launching this fall. From TVSpy: [*] I'm sure many viewers are relieved to know Michael and Kelly at 9AM won't be going anywhere. KSAT does the best in that timeslot because of them. Although I don't know why they didn't put it at ten and tape delay "The View". Or, better yet, at 11 so I'm not subject to day-old episodes of "The Chew" where "Extra Value Fridays" airs on a Monday... But it doesn't sound like a typical show. I might actually watch this when it starts. I'd like to know if Fiona will be soloing or if she'll have a co-host. I guess we'll have to stay tuned to this one. Also, I don't think they have the studio space to do it from their main building, even if they wanted too. I'm still wondering if the studio from their old building was left intact because nothing has changed there. However they did get a new CG because the L3's animate in/out sometimes. [*] KABB has announced a replacement for Cynthia Lee. And it's not someone internal like I had thought. Guess Blaise wants to make his mark. This is straight from the Express-News: [*]

The newscast started during the previous ownership group. Nexstar (specifically Brian Jones) was the one who made the decision to cancel the newscast. This would be perfect for Gray. Then Nexstar would be free of any ownership in the Billings market. Then they could make a play for Cordillera with virtually no conflicts. Nexstar is my favorite for Cordillera. I can't see them fitting with Gray like someone else suggested due to too many conflicts.

From my limited understanding, I think they have an in-house designer based at KARK. I think they then hire local companies to actually fabricate and install the set. Before that, they used to use Modular Broadcast Design for at least the old WROC and WBRE sets.

I didn't know Isis and Phil Anaya were dating, nor do I really care. Wish they would've gotten married then had kids but it's their relationship I suppose. Isis is not that great of anchor anyways. And you gotta love the Express-News comments of people gawking at Isis.... I'm not too big into Cinco de Mayo but as for the Spurs, glad they beat the Mavs and even though everyone I talked to says they should have won the series much earlier, I think it's great it took them seven games because it keeps them focused. They don't get too much rest compared to if they had sweeped them.

Cynthia Lee is the next person leaving a San Antonio station. For the second time. Cynthia was originally there until 2009, then left to pursue other opportunities. She returned in 2012 as a weekend anchor then was bumped up in 2013 when Karen Martinez passed away from breast cancer. Here's the article It's unfortunate she's leaving, definitely one of the best at KABB. She may have been getting tired of having to revoice all of those Waste Watch reports... Any which case, they are now going to have to find someone else but it looks likely that Grace White will get bumped up. Now, Blaise Labbe has two female lead anchors to look for. OR, this may have conveniently happened just as they are about to move in later this year. The Sinclair duopoly here is losing people and fast though. Something has to be done and they probably want to have their new people in place by the November book. Could we be seeing some more people bolting KCTV for WOAI/KABB? Keep your eye there.

And you know what that means, HD news and new graphics are probably on the way soon...

How would that be illegal? They mention the call letters and city of license. Not necessarily in the order they should have, but they did nonetheless. Our government has much more important things to be worrying about than if some TV station is identifying themselves properly.....

John Gerard, chief meteorologist at WOAI, is leaving the station after the May book for a weather position over at WFOR. Source: http://blog.mysanantonio.com/jakle06/2014/04/woai-tv-losing-its-weatherman So now, this means WOAI will be without a chief meteorologist OR a lead female anchor. And knowing WOAI, they tend to take their time looking for replacements. It took them a little more than a year to replace Brian Collister. And I understand Blaise Labbe says "it happened pretty quickly" so it will take them a while to find somebody. This is BS because they knew for a while Elsa Ramon was leaving, and nope, still nobody has been hired. Anyways, I'll miss him. He was my favorite weatherman in the market. Hopefully he will NOT be replaced with Alex Garcia from KABB. He is by far the worst in the market. I watch the weather to find if it's going to rain tomorrow, not to get a lesson in meteorology, and Garcia certainly loves to teach more than he does putting things into simple terms that an average person can understand. That and he always likes to remind us when the NOAA will be having their next storm spotter classes. Katie Vossler at KSAT is also starting to get bad about this too...

:bang:

OK hold the phone there. I guess you're counting Jeff Penner who is usually not on the air unless he's filling in for one of their regular meteorologists. I've always seen it as four with an off-air producer who fills in sometimes. I generally don't count the off-air people. And there's nothing wrong with having six meteorlogists at the station. KSAT will soon have six total once Adam Caskey starts. Five on-air and one off-air producer (who never fills in). If you want to get extreme they technically have seven if you count John Honoré who KSAT alleges is still employed by them...

Can Delmarva support three news operations? This is going to be interesting and what's more surprising than this is the fact that WMDT or WBOC never added NBC on a digital subchannel...

According to TVSpy, Stacey Cameron will be joining WOAI as an investigative reporter. His last stop was KCTV, which (probably not coincidental) is where current ND Blaise Labbe came from. So basically he hired his buddy. I'm not shocked but I'm a little surprised. I'm intrigued they say he will be "one of the station's lead investigative reporters". More like he'll probably be the only full-time investigative reporter there. He replaces Brian Collister who left the station about a year ago. Now they have another major vacancy to fill and that is main female anchor. That'll probably take another six months or so knowing WOAI... Anyone from Kansas City DMA, is he a good, hard-hitting investigative reporter?

And at the same time they have hired a new sports anchor, Mary Dunleavy, from WVIR in Charlottesville, VA. Article

I don't think you can. They may have been forced to install the ENG equipment on the bird. Also those radio reports you listen to on WTVN aren't live. They can record them and make them look/sound like it's live from the chopper and then send the recorded product back to the station for broadcast.

I can second this argument for the Sinclair stations. In fact, WOAI lead anchor Randy Beamer now has commentary during the 10PM newscast called "San Antonio's Voice" and his views are generally liberal. I don't think Sinclair shuns people who are liberal in fact I think they embrace them and are open-minded to other people's views. For the newspaper here (Express-News, a Hearst property), not only is its editorial viewpoint very liberal, its newsgathering has started to become evidently one-sided in the past few years, especially after Mike Leary from the Philadelphia Inquirer took over as the executive editor. It's gotten to the point I cancelled my subscription entirely because the newsgathering quality has been embarrassing for a market the size of San Antonio. They give newspapers a bad name and you wonder why people are leaving them in droves and no, I don't think it's necessarily the format so much the quality. Add to the fact TV does a better job and online has a variety of liberal and conservative news sources for your choosing. (I do get some of my national news from mainstream [which is predominantly liberal and supportive of the President] sources but I balance it out with news from conservative [which are critical of the President] sites too--not just Fox News but other conservative sites as well; this allows me to get a balanced view on the world and getting news some outlets don't and won't cover). :rant: I figured. Guessing Caskey will also do the 4 (TVSpy strangely omits it but KSAT does have a 4). Or they will continue to have Katie Vossler do three days a week at 4 and Caskey does the other two days. Somewhat disappointed that Mike Osterhage wasn't promoted but then again that's a good thing because their morning team has such a great chemistry together I can't see that being broken up soon. Looks like TVSpy lifted this from Jakle at the paper: Among other things mentioned: Caskey takes over in June (of course, after the May book). KSAT has six experienced meteorologists (they only have four, soon to be five, on-air meteorologists; the sixth is probably referring to their off-camera weather producer who has never been seen on-air) John Honore has been off the air since January (I told you this before Jeanne Jakle posted it on her blog a couple days later) and according to David Cuiccio (KSAT CSD), he's still on the payroll (a nice way of saying they basically didn't renew his contract and they took him off before it expired and they're paying out the remainder of his contract). Whether he's off-camera there or he's told to just stay home and not come in, I don't know. I'm am 99% sure this was Bernice Kerney's (ND) decision to dump him in favor of Vossler (so KSAT could have a female meteorologist). Also just putting this out there, but for whatever reason, KSAT does not use the term chief meteorologist, so nobody's really getting "promoted" here.

Wasn't WYTV managed by Barrington during Chelsey's ownership? Also IIRC, Chelsey's other station WHOI went to Barrington proper...

I wouldn't put my money on it. It's fairly easy to change the site over. It's more effort for the new look to launch because Gannett is standardized on completely different equipment from Belo and all that has to be installed first. The one constant: both companies used ENPS so that's one thing that won't be switched over. The one thing I hope KENS gets out of this: all-digital tapeless shooting and editing. Yes they still shoot and edit on tape, so field footage naturally isn't HD but it's stretched to make it look HD.

Yes, and lately the trend over at 'KYT is if a reporter vacancy comes up, it's generally filled with someone from WYMT. In a way it's also like a training station for them. The studio building even looks like it's a deliberate carbon copy of WKYT's rural mansion-esque building (but built later on). This station has come a long way from it's days when it was on "Making News Savannah Style" and they were owned by Piedmont which was truly a crappy company. If LIN sells this to be a part of Media General, I hope they end up with a company who's willing to make continued investments in them.

I wonder if Gannett has anything to do with that ie let's get outta there as fast as we can as Gannett is not a great company...

I don't mind This is Home, but yeah, I've made it clear more than once I'm not a big fan of the graphics, will be a definite downgrade to what they're using now. But someone posted that KVUE is getting a new site soon and everyone posted something critical of it. If it's the graphics and music that are bad, I don't know why it's getting lumped together with the site.

Why does everyone hate this layout, just curious? I for one, am looking forward to KENS getting a new site. The current one is way too cluttered and the less photo galeries they post the better.

Curious what he'll be doing. KSAT's weather team is maxed out. HOWEVER, Steve Browne's contract is up soon and he says he'd like to lighten his load. So maybe he'll be doing some of the evening newscasts. Jeanne Jakle might have some details on this soon, so I'll wait to see what she has to say.

Might as well post this here, but what's with GMA's infatuation with the Pharell song "Happy"? They play the song on virtually every promo for GMA. That song has always played to death (not just by GMA, but by the media in general) to the point it annoys the hell out of me every time it's played...

I can't believe this is happening, but Don Scott is retiring from WJZ in July. One-half of the market's best morning news duo is going away. I wonder who's going to succeed Don? Don and Marty had such a great rapport with each other. Would be nice if they could find a female who could "click" with Marty and keep the Eyewitness News Morning Edition on top. Here's the article: http://www.mediabistro.com/tvspy/don-scott-set-to-retire-from-wjz_b119068 Also, from my home base: KENS, the CBS affiliate owned by Gannett that I avoid like the plague, has decided to unveil their response to the "ice desk" (which you can't have in San Antonio in the first place because it generally doesn't get that cold here). They call it the "Fiesta Desk" which is basically a giant pinata shaped like a desk. I'm betting 99% Gannett corporate made them do something so stupid like this (because they didn't do an ice desk during the winter). Now you see why I avoid them like the plague. And I didn't know about this until I read it online... KSAT of course, is the official station of Fiesta and will air all the parades live. If you don't know what Fiesta (San Antonio) is please google it. Better than me trying to explain. Oh, and KEYT is coming under fire. I'll let Mr. FTVLive tell us this: