Abraham J. Simpson

Paul is the full time producer. Chris has sometimes done some coverage, like one ti e with a tornado warning when they referred to him instead of Paul. He started as the producer, left for on air work then returned. I’d wonder if that’s chicken or the egg. If you’re only getting two and a quarter days work on average, Karen’s days off notwithstanding, heck, I’d spend the time with the kiddos, too. But it’s a little more than that. They’ve clearly limited his exposure on the air.

The posting for that job was up a while ago, so the timing makes sense. What the plans are for using her is another question. While Cecily is giving the party line answer that they've been down a person since David Murphy left, that's also a bit disingenuous. Insomuch as they don't have two meteorologists on the morning shift with built-in coverage when one is out and just making Matt Pellman cover traffic, they made Matt a permanent part of the morning show, effectively replacing Karen's primary role when she took over for David. Still four bodies. The main difference is Chris and Brittany now cover Karen, while there was almost never an "outside" meteorologist before. Brittany is, if not officially, clearly effectively full time, on a Wednesday-Sunday schedule. Noon Wednesday-Friday, plus afternoon coverage as needed, and weekend nights for the most part. And for whatever reason, they refuse to throw much more to Chris except the occasional coverage. Is there any compelling reason not to have him do Monday and Tuesday at noon, vs. Adam being in there regularly? But whatever, so be it. So where does this new person fit in the mix is the question. Is she full time, yet again bypassing Sowers getting a full time role? Is she part-time? Does she do the extra-early morning gig and let Karen sleep in a bit to do the second portion of the morning show + 10 am? Where do they need another body on a regular basis?

Yeah, not seeing a compelling reason to shoehorn the new package into the existing open style. Tweak the final graphic of the open, ok, sure. That’s been done plenty of times. And while the current graphics for the newscasts are fine, so are the new ones.

And Steve Harvey has done Feud something like 20 years, far longer than the likes of Dawson and Combs hosted.

Pat Finn as an example was a weathercaster and reporter. He segued into hosting as part of a career path. He may have bounced from comparatively short-lived show to show, but someone like Pat Sajak, Drew Carey or Wayne Brady have made a career of their shows…they’ve just run for a nice long time.

Those game show hosts also came from other fields. They were not sent down from on high to become game show hosts from day 1. Alex Trebek’s own book details how he wound up where he did.

Your commitment to the program and the kids is wonderful.

Warminster? That’s been gone a while. The tower is there, but the big ball (heh, heh, big ball) is long gone.

A courtesy…to who? It’s not a courtesy to anyone.

Wait, signing off is a matter of the public interest? Huh?

Maybe the 432nd time will be the charm.

There may well be exceptions, but by and large, they don’t need to do that. People are tuning in for quick hits, not long blocks. You can adjust the tone and story selection approach to provide different feelings at different times of day, but people aren’t looking for a local version of the cable primetime shows.

Maybe it’s a figment of my imagination, but it seems like I always hear so-and-so is joining us today, or some variation thereof, when someone is there. But that said, it also wouldn’t phase me if/when they don’t.

That era is over. Yes, many office types do get some flexibility, but anchoring from home? It was a concession to COVID and it’s not coming back save for a similar circumstance.

Catching the 4 pm open (hooray for a day off?), and the winter 2023 open includes a Chopper 6 shot.

And there is plenty of coverage of world events from a multitude of sources. Were there to be something truly monumental happen, it might be bare bones initially, but the major national and international news outlets would get the coverage going. There are correspondents out there filing for the web, and it stinks many of them are far from loved ones today. That doesn’t mean every news outfit needs to act like it’s just any old manic Monday. The regulars would be off, for the most part, and you’re not using fill-ins for no meaningful purpose.

Good. For crying out loud, it’s Christmas. Skipping a morning newscast is perfectly fine.

Absolutely they will, in due time. There’s a zero percent chance they will forego having a helicopter as part of their news gathering in the long term. Much as the newscasts must go on even when they have to report on their own sad event, they’ll eventually need to go back to having a helicopter.

The winter openings were also used at 10 am and noon. Don’t know about the morning hours or 4/5 pm. Normally, they don’t roll out the new season openings until after the official arrival time, which would have been the 11 pm today. Absolutely understandable if this was the reason (not that they need a reason), as it was a bit sad to see the prominent shots of the copter in some of the openings used yesterday.

There’s plenty of time for investigating particulars. Perhaps people can hold off on casting aspersions for just a bit.

Horribly tragic. They’ve confirmed both individuals aboard were killed, which seemed inevitable from what little was shown of the crash site.

This is unfortunate https://6abc.com/action-news-helicopter-6abc-chopper-6-crash-new-jersey-philadelphia-crew-wpvi-tv/14205051/

The reality is that to a viewer, it's just TV. And that's the way the business needs to operate. Yes, for the time being, they're feeding out some things in linear fashion, but that is one component of a video business. Consumers braving more choices is a good thing. If enough people want a soap, great, Days can happily do its thing over on Peacock, and if you want to watch it at 1 pm daily, that's a perfectly fine option. Being "free" to do things is always preferable.

I would also say teachers don’t deserve to be begging for, or dipping into their own limited pay for, basic classroom supplies. They also shouldn’t be working in (in far too many cases) unhealthy and outright dangerous conditions. They shouldn’t be held to impossible standards and being told to do more with ever-fewer resources. And yet here we are. The intent isn’t about magnanimity, it’s putting things into the larger societal framework. There are a whole lot of people in a whole lot of jobs who could fairly be called massively underpaid. And these groups will sometimes commiserate with each other, but also turn on each other. Take teachers - when a strike happens, particularly in working-class/blue-collar type areas, communities often split into factions of “they deserve more than they’re getting” and “they’re overpaid; they only work 9 months; they’re grooming kids” and related vitriol. “Let them try to do my job” (whatever that is) “and see how they like it.” It can get really ugly. When newspaper journalists go on strike…wait, do those still exist? Anyway, there’s a lot of the public that respects what they do and understands they get paid crap wages. Lots of us get paid crap wages. But there’s also a huge part of the population that sees it as no loss that there’s less journalists at work. They’re all just liberal mouthpieces or some such thing. They’re hacks. They’re whatever. Empathy and sympathy are in short supply for industry upon industry. It’s sad, but it’s reality. I don’t know that a deeper societal change is possible, but I feel safe in predicting one-off skirmishes are generally not going to move the needle all that much. A little symbolic win here and there, sure. But not without trade-offs, and sometimes losses that counter the gains. I’m old enough to say my generation isn’t going to be around to see a structural shift. I hope the upcoming generations make progress, and find ways to move from less successful battles that pit groups against each other to more productive changes that benefit everyone.

Hiring Oscar-winning writers isn’t going to change the trajectory of soaps. They are a relic of a bygone era with a few left chugging along, closer to the end than the beginning. Throwing money you don’t have at a dying genre isn’t going to change it. So great, squeeze what you can out of it and look toward the future, not the past. Audiences aren’t the same and aren’t going to want the same things. Splitting the soaps down on the broadcast schedule to alternating days is pointless beyond getting a portion of the schedule open for something else. Daytime is a 5x a week pattern for good reason—it’s the most common way we live our lives. Of course there are exceptions to this, but by and large we go to school and work during the same times (primarily daytime) weekdays. A soap twice a week simply makes no business sense; daytime doesn’t follow the prime time approach (although CBS has been turning prime time this fall into a good approximation of daytime with so many Price is Right and Let’s Make a Deal specials ). Viewers aren’t going to burn out if you offer more news because they’re not watching all of it. That just isn’t a thing that people are tuned to one channel from 4 am to midnight, actively engaged and suddenly experiencing news fatigue because the station added a newscast. They watch bits and pieces that fit their schedules. There seems to be a fascination with counting the number of hours in forums like this, but your average viewer is not doing that. (And if people totally burned out on news available much of the day, someone better warn Ted Turner back in the 1980s .) NND fits better in today’s reality than Days. Sorry old-schoolers, it just does. It’s more economical, it connects to the brand and it’s helping some affiliates. And while ABC rides GH into its inevitable sunset, GMA3 is a better fit than if they’d kept another dying soap. Heck, it fits better than the Chew. That was a perfectly fine effort that had a nice solid run. But this is strategically better. CBS is a bit different in that their morning show has never had the success of a Today or GMA. It’s harder to build a base there for an afternoon news hour, though certainly not impossible. Just a heavier lift with results that would need to be viewed in that context IF they ever went that way. Not saying they will. They managed to get new life out of Price is Right, and have a decent enough counterpart in Let’s Make a Deal, so what comes next in a post-soap world will be interesting to see.