memnews

WMC will be adding yet another hour of content, beginning Monday, September 10th. Up first is an expansion of the morning news back to 4:00AM, bumping Early Today to 3:30AM. Then, in the afternoon, a new lifestyle show - Bluff City Life - will air at 3:00PM, leading into the existing half-hour of regular news at 3:30PM. Bluff City Life bumps Right This Minute to 2:00PM, joining Me Time with Frangela at 2:30PM; Ellen is moving to WATN at 4:00PM, replacing Harry. The 4AM newscast and the half-hour lifestyle show were things I had heard or seen thrown about before (mainly in Facebook Lives - for example, WMC has been constructing a new kitchen set for a month or so now), but I didn't want to post anything until it was able to be confirmed.

Meteorologist Sagay Galindo has joined WMC Action News 5. She will be on weekend evenings. Weekday 12/4PM meteorologist Spencer Denton had been filling in on weekend evenings since approximately last September, when Andrew Kozak's contract expired. And speaking of the noon newscast, morning anchor Andrew Douglas now permanently joins Kym Clark for a two-person anchor team at that hour. He will continue anchoring in the mornings as well. EDIT: Forgot to mention that WMC *may* be expanding its morning news back to 4AM in the fall... but it's still a little too early to confirm anything on that front quite yet.

Joy Redmond has joined WMC as their new morning anchor alongside Andrew Douglas. She left WLBT in June and starts at WMC Monday morning. She replaces Felicia Bolton, who left the station in February. WMC's previous morning anchor, Kym Clark, had been filling in for the interim months. With this development, Kym will likely be able to finally return to her new shift of noon and 3:30/4PM (which she only got to anchor for a limited time before having to return to mornings to fill in). On the 3:30 and 4PM shows, she'll be anchoring with Joyce Peterson, who has been holding down those timeslots alongside a daily rotation of either Joe Birch or Kontji Anthony (the station's 5, 6, and 10PM anchors) since March. Joyce herself only joined WMC in February, but is no stranger to Memphis news. Also joining WMC as reporters later this month are Kelly Roberts, formerly of WANE, and Allie Herrera, formerly of WJFW. All of this information comes from various tweets I've been able to find.

Kelli Cook has crossed the street to WMC in Memphis. She had previously served as weekend anchor/reporter at WATN since 2014. Not sure if she'll be serving in the same role at WMC however, since their weekend anchor team has no vacancies.

Investigative reporter Sasha Jones is leaving WMC. "She's off for big, exciting things," the station says... but no word yet on where, exactly.

On Twitter, Brandon Richard from WSIL says he will soon become a weekend morning anchor and reporter for WMC. Jerica Phillips was recently promoted to that position from within the station. So the question is... is WMC returning to a two-person weekend team, or could Jerica possibly be moving to the also-open weekday morning anchor position? (Also, as a side note, Kendall Downing joined the station a few years ago as weekend morning anchor. Somehow, among this all, he was moved from that position and currently doesn't anchor at all.)

It appears WMC and reporter Brix Fowler have parted ways. His bio is no longer on the station's website. Additionally, weekday morning reporter Jerica Phillips, who has been filling in on weekend mornings for the past several months, has been officially promoted to anchor of those newscasts (which were also recently expanded). She will continue to report during the week as well.

Forgot to edit this into my previous post. Confirmed as an anchor/reporter! No set schedule for the anchor role just yet, however. (There's more to that thread that besides what's shown below, too) [MEDIA=twitter]968674083658493952[/MEDIA]

Well, I guess all it took was for someone else to ask: [MEDIA=twitter]968557158509043718[/MEDIA] Now it's a game of wait and see. Personally, I wouldn't see her wanting the morning shift with her husband on evenings, so my bet's going on coanchor from 3:30-5. Anything is possible, though.

I agree about the 3:30. I saw a job opening (in addition to the expected anchor and reporter ones, plus one for a meteorologist) for a producer of a half-hour lifestyle show for WMC on Raycom's corporate site. Perhaps that's the ultimate plan for that slot? Seems very late in the afternoon for such a thing, though. EDIT: Regarding Joyce, good catch on the banner! But hasn't it been four years since she left WATN, though?

Lots of changes at WMC... first, as @NCFLMedia reported on his Changing Newscasts Blog, beginning today the noon newscast is back to one hour long, with Right This Minute moving to 3PM replace Crime Watch Daily... and a brand new newscast debuting at 3:30PM, something new for Memphis. Weekend news is expanding as well, with a two hour block from 5-7AM on both Saturdays and Sundays, followed by the existing 9AM hour on Saturdays and 8AM on Sundays. This adds an extra eight hours (!) to their news output every week. While you'd think all this expansion would require new hires, several people are actually LEAVING the station, including evening reporter Jerry Asking, morning reporter Tiffany Neely, and morning anchor Felicia Bolton. It will be interesting to see not only who staffs the new newscasts, but also who replaces these personalities, particularly Felicia since she was only fairly recently promoted to that position. Jerry is headed to WKMG/Orlando as a reporter; Felicia to WNCN/Raleigh as morning anchor/investigative reporter; and Tiffany to a position in Jonesboro, likely at Raycom sister station KAIT if I had to guess. Their new journeys begin on Friday. Oh, and this may not amount to anything, but I thought it was interesting that the tweet comes from a WMC producer on the day of the newscast début... [MEDIA=twitter]968036168448299008[/MEDIA] Joyce Peterson, wife of WMC Chief Meteorologist Ron Childers, has been off the air since departing WATN several years ago not long after that station's rebrand.

An update here: looks like Brandon Artiles has left the station after all. Apparently there was a TV send-off, but otherwise this one slipped under the radar... [MEDIA=twitter]923985683152277505[/MEDIA]

And the good news is NBC already has a brand new set assembled for the show...

A couple of updates here - Kozak did indeed leave WMC at the close of September (as has been mentioned elsewhere in this thread), which he suggested was due to a contract dispute. He will be freelancing at KVUE in Austin beginning next week, but continues to call Memphis home for now. Kirkham, meanwhile, has announced that she will be joining WTSP in Tampa for "Great Day Tampa Bay" beginning in November. Many viewers have been commenting that WMC has made some major mistakes in losing these talents. Whether it is his fault or not, I've also noticed that many others are pinning the blame on the station's new GM (as of August) Jonathan Mitchell.

And whatever was going on behind the scenes with this seems to have been messy. Not long after posting it, Kozak removed his farewell Facebook Live video (in which he confirmed that it wasn't his decision to leave), and for all intents and purposes it appears the station management did not let him come back for his scheduled final newscasts at 5 and 10PM on the 24th.

More changes at WMC Memphis: Meteorologist Andrew Kozak has seemed to indicate that he will be leaving the station by the end of the month. No additional details yet, however. Kozak was moved to weekends from the weekday 12/4PM shift a while back. Here is his Twitter post (see replies as well): [MEDIA=twitter]910996747996008448[/MEDIA] Elsewhere, anchor Kendall Kirkham, who was also moved to weekends recently (from the weekday morning show), will now be anchoring weekend mornings for a little while instead of weekend evenings. She posted on Facebook that she hopes to have more news in the future as well. And Janeen Gordon has announced that she will no longer be anchoring the station's weekday morning 4:30AM newscast, although she will remain on-air from 5-8:30AM as traffic tracker. She, too, posted that she has "more to come."

Ah. My bad! I know I had seen a 2015 July ratings report in my research and must have mistaken it for 2016 instead. Meanwhile, (before Kendall Kirkham begins anchoring next weekend) the whole weekday evening anchor team is in tonight before schools start back tomorrow. They're sure taking this "Official Back to School Station" thing pretty far!

Been meaning to post this for a while, as this has actually been slowly taking place over the past several weeks: WMC has undergone a pretty major anchoring shuffle. Kym Clark asked to move from the weekday morning news to noon and 4PM, and finally received permission from the bosses. She displaces morning anchors Kendall Kirkham and Janeen Gordon at noon, and evening anchor Kontji Anthony at 4. This will be the first time WMC has a designated anchor for this shift. Replacing Kym in the morning is weekend evening anchor Felicia Bolton. But the rest of the morning team has been changed around, too. Instead of Kendall Kirkham, Andrew Douglas is now at the anchor desk with Felicia. He moves over from the "Alert Center." Weekend morning anchor Kendall Downing is currently stationed at the Alert Center in place of Andrew; not sure if that's permanent or not. This has also resulted in Kendall Kirkham being sent to anchor on weekend evenings (and of course report during the week). Unsure if that's to be permanent either, although it's possible she may have asked for a reduced shift to spend more time with her child. Weekend mornings are rotating anchors for the time being as well. All of this comes after a meteorologist shuffle I posted about earlier this year which found all but Chief Meteorologist Ron Childers swapping shifts. WMC must be trying to do all they can to beat WREG, which has been vulnerable since Richard Ransom parted ways with the station. And come to think of it, I still haven't seen any July Sweeps ratings for Memphis, which WREG normally posts in a heartbeat when they've won...

Looks like WMC has just debuted their new "First Alert Drone 5."

WMC Action News 5 in Memphis has shuffled around their meteorologists again. Brittney Bryant has moved from weekends to weekday mornings, while Spencer Denton has returned from weekday mornings to his original 12 and 4PM shift. That likely means Andrew Kozak, who was morning meteorologist before Spencer and on noon/4PM most recently, will be on weekends, although I haven't seen confirmation on that just yet.

Kendall Downing has joined WMC-TV as the weekend morning news anchor (and weekday reporter). Previously, weekend evening anchor Felicia Bolton had been hosting the morning shows as well ever since Ben Watson left the station.

Some changing faces at WMC-TV... - Jessica Holley has joined as a reporter and the 4PM Alert Center anchor, replacing Jason Miles, who left recently for KHOU-TV - Crystal Howard is the latest new reporter, as one of the current ones will likely have to move to mornings while Jerica Phillips is on maternity leave - Matt Stark, former WHBQ-TV sports director, has replaced Carrie Anderson, who departed the station last night for a position at FedEx

WMC Memphis has quietly expanded their noon newscast back to one full hour after truncating it some time ago to 30 minutes. I'm not sure how recently this took place, but their own online guide does not reflect the update yet, so it was almost certainly within the past few weeks, if not launching today.

At WMC Action News 5, Andrew Kozak and Spencer Denton have switched shifts... not sure what spurred the switch, but Kozak has been out seemingly random days in addition to week-long vacation multiple times over the past several weeks, so that may have been involved in the decision. Additionally, traffic anchor Janeen Gordon has added the role of co-anchor of the 4:30AM half-hour. [MEDIA=twitter]723126094216462336[/MEDIA] [MEDIA=twitter]723124263151144960[/MEDIA] [MEDIA=twitter]723086756761985025[/MEDIA]

I was noticing the same thing. I can't say I'm a fan either. Too much movement for an evening newscast, and the font for the headline (as well as the red color) doesn't match the font or colors used elsewhere in the package.