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That implies they have a file of those somewhere. Somebody grabbed the wrong Friday.

That last part I’ll never understand… unless he’s terrible at finances he’s made of money… so he could take that kind of pay and be fine. It’s that kind of thing that makes the press releases about how much they love making a difference ring slightly more hollow. There are a lot of normal folks whose HOUSE is worth the same money he’d make in a year.

Entertaining the thought for a minute… is 32 still the cellar dweller with poor quality relative to the other stations in town? My knowledge of the other stations is pretty out of date.

What if he just wants to ride off into the sunset? The guy is 69… it’s check your watch to see how much longer he can do this time.

I know of at least one station that used the 5pm anchors for the noon newscast back in the day… that may be 6 of one and a half dozen of the other to do it that way. It saved killing the morning folks in terms of a grueling day.

Joel Sebastianelli is joining WDIV from Buckeye Cable Sports Netork as the weekend sports anchor. Hobie Artigue will officially become the weeknight sports guy.

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

Really it says something about humans being creatures of habit. Like anything else disrupting routines is usually a net negative.

Yeah one of the more enjoyable things about this week and next is seeing weird things like the lead sports anchor doing the 6pm newscast as an anchor or some young street reporter giving it a try when few are watching anyways. It’s a break from the mundane.

If you listen closely to what she says some of it sounds a little poorly worded at times too.

There is a reason a lot of TV folks hang around past their expiration dates. Many of them will go until they literally can’t anymore.

WXYZ Has added former WJBK reporter Randy Wembley who spent 10 years there before leaving in 2023.

Good reason for that…. She did a program on public TV that was current affairs focused.

Their weather lineup isn’t exactly a group of world beaters…

To not examine what has been and take lessons from it that you can use because they are simply good ideas that make logical sense is foolish. I understand that times change… but folks under 35 or 40 or something aren’t the only ones watching (actually they don’t really watch)… sometimes it really is the details that matter. Being in first sometimes doesn’t indicate greatness… just being the least bad option.

Actually everybody who is in second or third did market research that said what they were doing would work great so there are limitless numbers of examples across all industries of market research not doing a heck of a lot for companies or biting them badly… I would recommend not trying to use this angle. Market research asks the folks you see walking around that make you wonder what rock they came out from under answer questions about what they want to see. The idea that those folks can speak for everybody accurately is preposterous. In the end if you had 4 stations in a town and absolutely had to watch one you’d pick what you believed was the best. That doesn’t mean you are head over heels in love with the product… you might want to make 25 changes to it. But it’s the least bad option. Some people might have it as appointment viewing because they just can’t get enough of gods gift to News but the biggest winner is… shutting the thing off and doing something else. Consistently.

Breaking news in this market isn’t what it used to be… the area is improved markedly from where it used to be and crime and such is down as a result. I figure they record it in the 9pm hour if they do… they need the studio at 10 for the WMYD newscast. I’ve also seen some that were live and only sports seemed to be recorded so it’s inconsistent. The field reports are never live unless there is breaking news and that goes for the flagship 6pm newscast too. They are 100% live in studio for that one with everybody at the anchor desk. Same for the 5.

Are you a proponent of change for the sake of change or something? You come off as some sort of apologist for the way things are done right now being somehow superior and anyone who thinks otherwise has something wrong with them…

Perhaps… but the folks who gave us “New Coke” went on measurable info too.

It’s also not the way people talk normally. One of the things I remember being endlessly bombarded with in college was the need to make it conversational… well… nobody holds a conversation in active tense about something that happened last week. But I have a couple of simple production issues with WNT too… the tease needs to be 30 seconds with the top 3 or 4 stories and a sentence or two about them. Instead we get an explanation long enough to be its own story about everything they are gonna talk about. It’s dangerously close to being able to watch the tease and shut it off knowing what happened. The other thing that bugs me is they adopted the old music and then the rest of the newscast everything goes to break in silence and they end the newscast in silence. It looks a bit unkempt and thrown together that way. I don’t get it and I don’t think it’s some broader trend in news.

Some of that may be true. On the other hand they may have alienated a bunch of people and attracted a bunch of different people or fewer people by changing the format as radically as they have. The times “straight news” has been tried incidentally the marketing for it wasn’t very good and the execution was poor. Think CNN. You have to do the FOX style pro wrestling thing… by calling out FOX on a daily basis in a less than statesman like way. But you have to use facts as your weapon. Not only that but FOX has slick marketing and is extremely polished and flashy… that’s execution and not content. You see that in which local station is number one in a given market. Often times it’s flashier and more polished and just feels official. It’s kinda like a sports team.. the good teams LOOK good and do things well. But mostly my biggest gripe is why Muir talks the way he does. If someone walked up to you and started talking like that you’d try to either run or have them have some sort of evaluation as their mental well being would be a primary concern. Second gripe… why in the world is “those powerful storms, millions under the gun” news? Keep the weather off the national news as a daily thing. The local stations already cover it so unless a school bus with 50 kids gets washed away in a flood or something just gripping and tragic it’s a waste of a reporter and 2 minutes and that’s not time they exactly have to waste in a 30 minute show. To keep this relevant to the thread… local news hasn’t changed so much that I want to scream. That includes WABC. It’s more or less what it’s always been with different people, graphics and segments.

And one of the most cited reasons people don’t watch is because it isn’t the way it used to be. Just because times change doesn’t mean you need to throw the baby out with the bath water. The 90’s weren’t radically different from the 70’s really. But now is radically different from the 90’s. Legacy media is as ignorant of what ails it as the American automakers were while they declined for 30 years.

Is it that hard to watch some old newscasts, take notes and then do that? It’s a hell of a lot easier than losing viewers by reinventing the wheel and annoying them endlessly.

Go watch any of the big 3 evening news programs from 20-25 years ago and then ask yourself… why don’t they do that anymore? I remember when Peter Jennings was anchoring World News Tonight it was news from all over the world. They had stories from civil wars in various countries and other things that had nothing to do with the U.S… in a world where we are more connected than ever and information is endlessly available that should have increased not disappeared. Not to mention that David Muir has the most bizarre speaking style in the history of anchoring. It sounds like William Shatner is reading the news and speaking in bizarre flowery meandering sentences. “That crash, those victims screaming in terror, the first responders rushing into danger pulling the victims to safety.” Speaking straightforwardly is so very much better.

The 11pm Newscast on WXYZ is now fully recorded except for the weather which is live. On the one hand it’s really polished and probably the best it’s been in years. On the other hand there are no interactions with the sports or weather anchors… they just show a weather or sports intro graphic and there they are. It’s rather jarring. It also leads to the editing not being perfect and the anchors start the next story faster than they could possibly stop one story and start the next. I get that Scripps is trying this out but there are ways to make it work better. The good old fashioned fully live newscast isn’t really so bad. They’ll probably back off this eventually. Their 6pm is the newscast of record and it’s fully live still I imagine for that reason. The update show (it literally was once called Action News update) is an ok place to do this I suppose.