Studio B

Craig Melvin is probably the host but I do think they still have a rotation male anchor team cause Craig Melvin still works for MSNBC.

Well Ruhle will also anchor on MSNBC and will be the regular Saturday co-host so I presume to think that Melvin will be in the same boat.

 

Fox 5 has recently started airing a new set of promos, describing how they are producing a different, more "modern" newscast. This is an example of one of the promos, but I have seen many different versions, with each of the weekday anchors (Good Day Wake Up - Ben Simmoneau/Juliet Huddy; Good Day NY - Greg Kelly/Rosanna Scotto; Fox 5 News at 5 & 10 - Steve Lacy/Dari Alexander; and Fox 5 News at 6 - Ernie Anastos). Each promo essentially consists of each anchor team having a conversation with Byron Harmon, the news director/V.P. of News, describing how Fox 5's newscasts are unique. One promo even refers to "the NEW Fox 5 News." There are also clips from the various newscasts, and certain reporters/segments are singled out (Alison Morris, the business reporter, is described by the news director has having spiky, platinum hair in one of the promos). The promos certainly seem much better produced than some of the other more recent promos that the station has released, but I think describing a reporter's physical appearance in a promo is a bit strange. It's also rare to see the news director featured in a promo, but Harmon appears in every version I've seen.

 

Generally speaking, I've noticed that Fox 5 anchors also seem to be much more active on Facebook (especially with Facebook Live) lately, and the lower-thirds now often include a link to the reporter's Facebook page, instead of his or her Twitter handle. The anchors are also sharing their personal opinions or viewpoints on certain stories more and more often on air, from what I can see. This is especially apparent on Good Day Wake Up and Good Day New York, where it's not uncommon to see Ben, Juliet, Rosanna, and Greg share their personal opinions about a certain story. I do not watch the evening newscasts as much, so I'm not sure if this is happening at night, too.

 

This is quite a change from the traditional local newscast, where personal opinions were rarely, if ever, shared. The anchors have alluded to the fact that the station is encouraging them to use Facebook more often, and to share their opinions on air.

 

Has anyone else noticed these changes? Does anyone have an opinion? Is this the future of local news, or is this a misguided attempt to modernize the newscasts?

There's really no reason for Harman to be in these promos but I guess he wants the facetime?

Too bad Andy what's his name is working to bring the two networks together and end the apparent discord the two have had for years.

Andy Lack and the strategy makes sense. If you want to push MSNBC more in the hard news direction in the daytime (which I think is the right idea), aligning it closely with NBC News makes a lot of sense.

I think it's a matter of time until GMA expands, they're leaving money on the table. After all, there was some speculation a year ago that Ben Sherwood wanted to cancel The View and put a third GMA hour at 11 (which I don't think would have been that great an idea). As others have said, Live is too successful for it to be outright cancelled and moving it to 10 could face some resistance from the affiliates.

GMA's problem to me is that they just have too many cooks in the kitchen and this just compounds that. They're obviously all hands on deck since Today is gaining some and has the Summer Olympics coming in the distance but what will Lara's role be with Strahan in the mix? Seems to be there's another move coming.

I bet Jenna Wolfe is getting the last laugh. There was no reason for Jenna to be kicked off as a co anchor and then news reader.

Except for the fact that Jenna was terrible on Sunday Today. The drop-off from Robach to her was pretty stark.

As I've said before, I've always been pretty meh on Hill. Doesn't stand out but you could do worse. She and Wragge never stood a chance on the last rendition of the Early Show and she wasn't really going anywhere at NBC. Given that there's no regular Saturday co-host as is, I'm interested in seeing what NBC will do here.

Jose Diaz-Balart could be poised to lose his MSNBC show as well while staying with NBC Nightly News on Saturday.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/msnbc-will-cut-ties-with-show-host-who-wrote-critical-email-to-colleagues/2016/02/27/bce30c8e-dd82-11e5-891a-4ed04f4213e8_story.html

What a great add by WNBC. I hope he gets more than just the 4pm. I wouldn't be surprised if Stefan is Chuck's replacement in a few years.

 

My guess is they will want Sibila on the 4pm just like Liz was added to the 4pm so that they can get more people interested with a known NY anchor.

But don't forget, they then took Cho off of the 11 so would WNBC put her on the 4, 6 and 11?

Personally, I think they'll try to make a splash and bring in an outside hire to go with Holt at 4.

Yeah, outside of those who are still pissed over George's Clinton Foundation contributions/political history, I've not once heard anyone say George is the one dragging the show down. If anything, he keeps the insanity in-check.

I agree with this, he gives the show the kind of gravitas that it desperately needs with their tabloid direction regardless of what you think of the Clinton Foundation stuff. However, I don't think that Lara is necessarily the problem either because don't forget, bringing her back to the show in 2011 did play a role in the show's ratings rise as well as bringing on Josh Elliott to do the news and doing the whole everybody at the table thing. I know it's always easier to fire somebody or to move the chairs around but I'm not sold that changing out anybody will make the key difference needed.

Did Shiba Russell leave or go to the national network?

In an FTV Live exclusive, she's interviewing with WFLD Fox 32 today.

http://www.ftvlive.com/todays-news/2016/2/5/look-which-ny-anchor-is-interviwing-in-chicago-today

bad move by Fox 5, in my opinion

Wow, what a shock there!

Last week was a big week for CTM, closing the total viewer gap with Today to a little under 900,000 viewers, their best week in 22 years.

http://www.adweek.com/tvnewser/cbs-this-morning-has-biggest-audience-in-22-years/283921

And that 1994 mark was set the morning after the conclusion from the Lillehammer games so for CBS to eclipse that mark without having the benefit of something huge like those games were is a BFD.

The thing is that msnbc might have been forced into announcing something they're not ready to announce...fortunately for them alsmost 24 hours later it doesn't seem that many outlets have picked up on this story so they're off the hook... also normally tv stagings send out a press release first then stack up on staff second.

Exactly, normally there's an announcement that the show is ending before they start to staff up. If anything, that's pretty unfair to Hayes to start staffing a new show while he remains in this sort of limbo. Just because it's been expected that his show will get canned doesn't mean he deserves this sort of treatment.

FWIW, the posting has been updated.

https://sjobs.brassring.com/TGWEbHost/jobdetails.aspx?partnerid=25354&siteid=5108&jobid=299280

Wonder for what position. Maybe the CBS Evening News someday.

I don't see Pelley going anywhere soon and he isn't that much older than DuBois is (I believe it's eight years).

Next CBS gig likely to open up would be Charlie Rose's spot on CBS This Morning considering he's in his 70s but he did also sign a "long-term contract" last February.

For the second time this week Chris Wragee is anchoring the 5 with Kristine Johnson.. Not sure if Maurice is off or doing the network but if Maurice were to move to network in the future I could definetly see Chris moving back to evenings

I always thought that when Rob Morrison got canned that they put Wragge on mornings as a temporary bandage but he has stuck. IMHO, I think he's a better fit for mornings than evenings and he works well with Calvi. Personally I'd prefer to put Dick Brennan on evenings over Wragge but I don't see DuBois leaving anytime soon.

A much needed improvement! Even though, I wish ABC didn't confine everything in the middle but rather stretch the L3 more evenly throughout the screen.

I totally agree but even then, this is much better than the previous look.

WPIX's ratings at 6:30pm will sky rocket once the other local stations go national. This pairing is gonna be a slam dunk for WPIX and its viewers.

Other posters have noted that PIX has tried a 6:30 newscast before and it failed. I understand the appeal of having a local newscast during the network time (we have that down here in DC with WRC with them having Nightly News at 7) but what makes you so sure this will be a big hit with the ratings?

Apparently the graphics department at ABC is looking at a new way to make GMA's graphics look even shittier...

 

[MEDIA=vimeo]149977449[/MEDIA]

My goodness, that looks terrible. That idea should be left on the drawing board.

what nbc did it splitting the 5pm news into half hour shows wasn't it because llamas left to abc?

It probably was IIRC, but why not pair Ushery and Russell for the 5 and then bring on Chuck and Vargas for the 6?

Forgive me if this has already been discussed but why does PIX 11 need to have a separate team at 6:30 pm than from their 6 pm? I do get that they're promoting this as an alternative to the network news but I've never been a big fan of having a separate team at the half hour. I'm not a fan of what WNBC does in the 5 pm hour with a new team at 5:30.

I know what you mean, but just for the record, Kate is an NBC person appearing on MSNBC, not the other way around.

 

I think Thomas Roberts or Peter Alexander should get the Saturday spot. To me, when I see Carl Quintanilla, I think business and financial news as he is one of the main faces over at CNBC. When I see Jose Diaz-Balart, I think Spanish and Telemundo as he is the face of that network's news division. There's something about him that's not appealing. I don't like him on The Rundown on MSNBC either.

That's a fair point, although my point was ultimately that they want MSNBC and NBC now to be more interchangeable, particularly in daytime.

And to be fair, I'm not the biggest fan of Diaz-Balart on MSNBC but I do think he's better on Nightly. I do wish NBC would appoint a regular person to that gig instead of contuining this hodge-pose, if you will.

I think that Thomas Roberts, he filled in for Lester the past two days, should get the Saturday anchor position. He could keep his MSNBC show similarly to what Kate does. Jose is ok but he just lacks something for me.

I think either Roberts or Diaz-Balart would make sense because it would then reinforce the notion of how MSNBC and NBC News are one (again) with having prominent MSNBC folks doing Nightly News on the weekends (including Kate Snow).

It is a quota system caused they have plenty of qualified reporters who could've got the Saturday gig with respectable resumes who people recognize.

Peter Alexander, Carl Quintanilla, Harry Smith, are considered logical shoe in anchors for the job.

 

Jose is being used as quota, they have a woman hosting the Sunday edition and now they have a spanish speaking Latino.

I don't agree with this quota thing. Why does it have be some sort of quota that he's getting more prominent work instead of his qualifications for the gig? And it's not like he's some guy they just pulled out of nowhere, he's been around for a while now including of when he was on the This Morning on CBS in the late 90's (and yes, I know this was when you couldn't pay somebody to watch morning news on CBS but still). It is 2015, right?

As for Erica Hill, I've been all that fond of her but I don't think she's terrible either. She's capable but never really stood out to me. But she's perfectly fine filling in on MSNBC and considering she's a fill-in, that's all you need IMO.

I can't believe the number of posts there are already speculating what Liz Cho and WABC *might* do if it's true that Cho's husband Josh Elliot *might* join FOX Sports and *might* have to move to California because his new job *might* be based in Los Angeles and Liz *might* move there, too.

 

Maybe we should wait to hear first where Josh ends up and then wonder if Liz *might* move anywhere?

And while I do realize the Elliott-Horowitz connection at FS1, but who's to say that ESPN won't be in the mix? They're launching a 7 am SportsCenter in February and Elliott would give them a high-profile anchor (and he did help start the 9 am with Hannah Storm) to lead off with.

Would hate to see Cho go because she's very good but playing into the hypothetical of if she does, would love to see Charlesworth get that gig but I do think you probably would see Stokes slide into that role and maybe have Charlesworth take the morning. Fortunately for them, WABC has themselves a pretty good crop of anchors to work with (although I'm not the biggest fan of Sade TBH).

Can't judge what I don't watch. If what I'd think they look like is anything close to reality, they're probably not good.

Here's a pic of the Fox broadcast graphics:

Phil never should have been hired to begin with but as an NBC Lifer it's hard to see him do anything but get moved elsewhere in the company... He's needed to go ever since they started the tilt leftward (remember his "lean forward" slogan that FNC ripped into MSNBC on?) What a joke...

I think it was Inside Cable News that likened him and CNBC president Mark Hoffman to cockroaches in that they keep surviving against the odds. I was surprised to see Lack keeping him on as they were planning to wholly revamp the channel.