MediaZone4K

It's always cool to see field reporters like Tony Aiello and Dave Carlin anchor over the holidays.

Agreed. Let's be fair. People work 300+ days out of the year. I see no issue in setting aside a few holidays for rest. We really need to drop our live to work attitude. Let's be reasonable. One of seven stations slashed a news block designed for people waking up for work, where not many are going during America's biggest holiday. That's totally fine. On a day like Christmas, all you really need is morning news starting late, and 10/11pm. Previewing the day and end of the day wrap up. Christmas is typically a slow news day. In the internet age, skipping a newscast is nothing. Even Today and GMA usually go pre recorded on Christmas with a live headline insert. I'd say it's cool to see the world pause, even the always on TV institutions, for just ONE day. Empathy. The notion that because someone works in news they don't deserve to be with their family and should be at work on a day with below average ratings and dry content is overkill.

I think HSV means tv channel affiliation.

Agreed. And let that mindset be a warning to anyone thinking about entering the industry. If you have to move away from home, don't do it unless you have enough savings to carry you through a few contracts of small market sweatshop pay. Being on tv is not worth being working poor. This applies to almost every job, not just news: your job does not care about you. You are just a number. Ideally, companies would exist for the shared wealth of every one involved. Realistically they're set up to befit the owners, share/stakeholders, and to a lesser extent the customer. The employees be damned. People realizing this has feuled the "great resignation". On top of all this, employers will cry of a labor shortage while being highly selective despite paying low...back on topic. I used to be turned off by big-name anchors demanding huge salaries. Now I see you have to squeeze these companies for as much as you can get because they'll pay you as little as possible given the chance.

John just like Marcia Kramer and a few others have what CBS o&o's need more of...uniqueness and personality. This in contrast to the the clean corperate Spectrum News feel that they're going for.

Oh no.

Agreed. The new color scheme, logo, and anchor desk are all pretty decent. The branding is questionable. I'd call this a better looking WANF. I'm not against the use of red as main station colors but it conveys unncessary urgency just like the "First Alert" branding.

Bialik and Jennings were pretty good. Found it strange that they opted for alternating dual hosts, but it worked. Bialik aside, Jeopardy had a gargantuan task in filling Trebek's shoes, unfortunately it seems any successor candidate has come under intense public scrutiny. It's just a gameshow hosting job, not the presidency, give the new host a chance.

EDIT: Agree to disgree. I'd like to think of this as ideaological back and forth rather than spamming. To it's credit, News Daily much like NBC News Now is a straightforward newscast. Something MSNBC and the rest of cable news could use more of. It's just one of too many newscasts. As a longtime soap watcher my self I can see why networks would have to cancel them. Ratings are low, they're expensive, the demos are old, they've been in a crap quality production and writing state for years. They aren't exmept from a lack of creativity, you are totally right that they're running on auto pilot. Watching B&B you'd almost think the writers were deliberately trying to get the soap axed. Ideally we could salvage them though a number of methods but that is unlikely. The crux of my ranting is...if or WHEN soaps do get cancelled, can you find something, anything, other than another newscast (or infomercials) to replace them. I say this as someone working in news, watching the trajectory of the industry turn journalism into time filler, not just as a disgruntled viewer that's "bashing news". But alas we are all free to watch whatever we want on streaming---to the detriment of linear TV, and myself a linear tv employee.

All I can say is, If a job insists on paying people near minimum wage, stop asking them for experience or a degree. We have a major issue in this country with employers demanding ready-made employees, ripe with experience or education, yet no salary to back it up.

Sidebar: Given the cheap quality of both their products —as well as Sinclair's media bias — these companies need to be nowhere near owning a broadcast network.

Hope I haven't veered too far from NN Daily. *Network executives keep soely pointing to (rather saying blame) shifts in viewing habits without recognizing bad writing plays a role. If you look at the trend of when viewers started leaving soaps--the mid 90s--that's when alot of bad writing trends began, in addition to the OJ trial, shifting viewing habits, etc. "If there was some magic formula for success and a profitable bottom line, someone would be trying it. Millions upon millions of dollars overall are at stake, people's jobs are at stake. No one is just sitting around ordering up another hour from the news division on a whim or so they can get out the door in time to make it to happy hour." --- I would like to belive that, but it's clear, whatever sells milk it. We see it in the movies with heavily recycled franchises and now we see it on tv with news. Not to stray too off topic but As for soaps, they don't have to be five days weekly. They've locked themselves into that model. As we can see having one hour scripted content five days a week with no summer break is an expensive model that is collapsing. If they did Y&R Mon to Wed and one hour B&B Thu/Fri *might* work. You are absolutely right, tastes do change, but the appetite for serialized drama is still there as we see with streaming. Y&R just got a ratings bump from bringing back old characters, showing that there is still an interest (the demo is a different story). All in all, the worse programing gets, the remaining viewers will also turn away and networks heads will still point to streaming as the only reason they can't pull an audience. Just like cable execs keep citing cord cutting as the only reason for it's collapse, without acknowledging the loss of niche programming and poor content. NBC News Daily is just symptomatic of a larger programming issue. We saw it with the over proliferation of soaps, talk shows, and cable dramas. The bubble burst and the same is likely to happen for news.

I respect your 'life is unfair so buck up and keep going' attitude but these news heads don't dererve the magnanomousness you are affording them. The journalists making the product (news) that's being sold, deserve to benefit in it's profits aswell. I'm not saying a reporter needs to be paid $300K, but there is no excuse for a television news job requiring a bachelor's degree to pay the salary a teenager can get at Dunkin Doughnuts. At the end of the day, journalists don't have to go into the industry...but again, no journalism isn't exactly great for democracy.

Totally agree. The look is very Sprectrum News. Flat. White. Uninspiring. Not awful but not remarkable. As we know from their tract record, NBC can do better than this. People may object because news is not supposed to be "flashy", but whoever handles graphics and sets for sports networks like FS 1, ESPN, and NBC sports, need to help out network and cable news. CNBC has always been heavily graphics oriented so it can apply.

This is also true. Soap executives cheifly blame splintered audiences and working women for poor ratings, when bad writing is also a factor. The genre may have to cut back from a one hour, five day per week model so they can need less characters for airtime, less sets, and less scripts to write, reducing costs if any supposed to be rebooted.

It's not the fault of news emplyees, it's the network heads who keep demanding more news. They keep blaming splintered audiences for low ratings. That's only part of the puzzle. Low effort or *low quality* programming is also to blame. Spitting out cheap Byron Allen court shows, repeditive newscasts and recycling tired police procedurals is bound to negatively affect ratings. I know countless people who say TV sucks now so they watch Netflix It is lazy in a sense. Rather than being creative with programming, networks can simply have their news crew that's around (doing a lot as it is) churn out yet another newscast for no added cost. Profit comes first but, there has to be a way to achieve that without showing news 17 hours a day.

Amen. TV news started out as networks filling their government mandated public service quota. Once they realized news divisions could be profitable, the problems we have today began. It's the American way. The people running the business make all the money while the people at the ground level make small potatoes.

What you're saying is not wrong but I'm gonna have to hold greedy executive's feet to the fire more on this one. We proclaim that journalists are these "beacons" who hold truth to power. Yet, we don't pay journalists a livable wage, so they leave and work in PR for people like politicians who spin reality. That can't good for a democratic society. Not to sound extremist, but journalists need to be the next group to strike. This especially as stations rely more on news departments for direct ad revenue with syndication options drying up.

Adding to this, smaller market stations pay less money. If a reporter is in market 115 for example, they might keep climbing up markets until they can make it to a top 30 market station where the pay is better. Larger markets require experience. If your hometown is a larger market like NYC, you're at a disadvantage trying to enter the industry. You'll most likely have to move to a small market (away from eveything you know) and rack up years of experience in order to make it back home. I respect the fact that someone has to toil in the D leagues before reaching the NBA. But to set up the industry in a way that talent has to move their life for a job that pays near minimum wage --despite being required to have a bachelor's degree -- and be locked into a near two-year contract at often toxic newsrooms is pretty nasty. This is a huge reason why so many people leave the industry.

Thank you for this question. A lot of us are enthralled by tv news, but learn the harsh reality upon working in the industry. The short answer is money. A reporter contract is 1-3 years and reporters typically ask for more money every time they extend their contract. It's cheaper for stations to have a revolving door of one contract term reporters than to keep paying them more every renegotiation. Sales department, management, and the corporate bosses make significantly more than the news. Trust me, the pay at alot of stations is a few dollars above minimum wage for reporters, even less for producers and photographers.

WCBS 2006. Big visual improvements to graphics and set over 2003-2005. The skyline lookes better than the plain blue backgrop they had for a while. I dont recall this graphics era but it looks good. By 2007 the station would be back on track after going off the rails since about 1996. EDIT: Dare I say this graphical look is better than their current.

That's refreshing when you hear so much negatives about companies like Nexstar etc..

Who here is saying any of those things? In your personal opinion, does doing that add anything to the broadcast? In the same way, if WABC did a live shot from Columbus Ave to talk about a shooting in Newark would that make sense to you?

??? The entire purpose of a reporter doing an outdoor stand up is to have them at the scene or a related location. On local news you don't see a reporter standing on a random street in the Bronx in front of nothing to talk about a shooting on Long Island. Exactly. The NY thing is my cynicism getting the better of me but they could have thrown "Upstate" into the lower third.

Fair point. Similarly, Somara is live in NJ for a story about storm threats in the south. Phil Lipoff is live from some -- again -- undisclosed street in NY for a story about anti semitism in Pennsylvania. I get "presence" but it feels nonsensical to do these elaborate field live shots from locations unrelated to the story/topic. I haven't seen this on the local level.