Abraham J. Simpson

It is often popular and easy to blame some general group of people and paint them as some kind of Snidely Whiplash cartoon villain, but sometimes people with a specific skill set who excel in their field make what the market will support. Is it fair someone who can hit a baseball will collect whatever hundreds of millions the most recent contract was for? Makes me roll my eyes, but in reality, if they think that investment will fill the seats and move the merchandise to recoup the cost (and of course, I know it's part of a team, and the team being successful is part of the filling seats/selling merch equation), then whatever. Lots of other people in the organization undoubtedly work hard and do their best, and they aren't making that bank (I'm talking staff here, not players). Strikes are powerful tools, and if someone can organize one and make it successful, more power to them. It's not easy. Hell, it's often very risky to understate it. It's also not always an easy sell to garner public sympathy--sometimes yes, sometimes no. We're in a bit of a time in the nation where more attention is paid to the CEO/average worker gap, and there may be ways to leverage that, or it could end up backfiring, so to speak. I would suggest that the best target is the CEO type position, it's an easier concept to sell. Joe the sales guy who happened to make a nice living because he's darned good at selling doesn't make the same compelling comparison when you're trying to get sympathy on a large scale. Bob Iger? Ok, that's doable. Not going to win over everyone, but there's a difference there. (And not to pick him specifically, he was just the first example that popped to mind.)

Facts aren't blame, really. Some things just are. And there isn't always a unicorn out there, "if only" someone spent more or wrote better or whatever. People were leaving soaps for long time. Then gas tanks almost empty there; throwing more money at a dying genre is pointless. Its not blame to say key audiences in 2023 aren't the same as in 1983. It's also overly broad to just label all news division programming with one brush. It struck me on a recent NY visit to the NBC store the distinct merchandise for the third and fourth hours of Today. There is, of course, the main show umbrella, but the other hours are treated as somewhat unique entities. The content isn't identical, and that is typically true at the local level as well. There's a whole thread here somewhere about how the 10 am hour on WABC is noticeably different from the other newscasts, and even among more traditional newscasts, tonality varies. 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. You have a population segment that gravitates toward the likes of Maury and Springer. Some that like the Kelly and Mark or Kelly Clarkson type shows. Some who can't get enough court shows. And then there are a bajillion streaming options, sports galore, cable channels with movies out the wazoo, dramas, sitcoms, etc. That pie has been sliced six ways from Sunday. It's easy to say "do something different." It's much harder to actually find that "something" that delivers the profits it needs to. This is really interesting. Cutting back from 5 days is one thing, but that is a guarantee you're off the broadcast network. You're not getting a three-day a week slot (or whatever) there. But to the point of less characters and sets...from what I saw of those days seeing Y&R, there were very few characters. Generally the same old actors from before and a few seemingly disposable new ones--generally offspring or other relatives--and that's it. Two or three people to a storyline being told that day, and maybe 2 or 3 storylines being covered max. Even then, the characters seemed to them mix and match among scenes, so you really weren't getting more actors, they just shuffled among the sets and fellow castmates in some kind of weird, soapy square dance. Also didn't count many sets. At least a half dozen over that span looked pretty much like they did years ago. I'm assuming they got some fresh paint here and there. The others looked like SNL skit sets--in that they could easily be repurposed with minimal effort to become something else generic for limited use. Of course, casts and crew cost money, so I am not literal when I say this, but I have to wonder where the money is going. It isn't into the product. And I know the soaps were never high production value. They were cheesier than cheesy. Always. But it looks like they're down to fumes, and that makes sense. Tastes change.

Many things in life aren’t excused, they just are. Some careers pay more. Some fields pay more. Sometimes those overlap. Every place I’ve worked, sales got perks beyond what anyone else did. Life isn’t perfectly even.

A commission based team gets rewarded for successful sales. Good, bad, anywhere in between, it’s not any one group of people or one industry where that doesn’t happen. And if you’re not a successful seller, you’re not bringing home that big payday. I could never, ever in a million years be good at a sales role. So I’m never, ever going to be getting commissions commensurate with what I bring in. Oh well, that’s the world.

Not sure it means anything for “credibility.” We all understand people move on, and of course some settle in for long stretches, too. As for the money aspect, for better, worse and everything in between, the bottom line is what it is. You aren’t going to get the same viewership and ad revenue in a world that has splintered into a million different viewing options. The slices of those pies get smaller. It undoubtedly sucks, and like many fields, sucks more as time goes on. But there are far bigger macroeconomic issues at play that aren’t unique to the industry and aren’t going to be solved in one industry alone.

We all know, however, the issue is demographics and the bottom line. You can’t spend on a soap in 2023 like you did in 1983 (adjusting for inflation, of course). The audience isn’t there and the ad revenue isn’t there. There may be “many people,” but that isn’t what it once was and isn’t as profitable as it once was. There are theoretically infinite choices available for people who want “escapism.” Corny soaps may work for some, but there are streaming options and satellite channels out the proverbial wazoo offering other options. How Y&R continues to milk the same stories from the 1980s confounds me. My mom was a Y&R and eventually B&B viewer. As her mental state failed in her final days, I’d put on her recordings of them on occasion, not really expecting it to break through the haze of dementia, but maybe something familiar could be comforting on a subconscious level. Dear lord, it was the same people on the same sets telling the same tired stories as when it was on in the college lounges back in the day. It looks stale and cheap to be blunt. There will always be people who resist losing something, and their complaints tend to be disproportionate to the actual viewership. The audience, of course, is the product. And if you don’t deliver the product the client wants…even this non-business major knows that’s a bad business plan. You don’t need the same raw numbers, you need an audience that clients want to buy and pay decent money to do so, while controlling your expenses.

If something is airing inside a show I’m already watching, that’s about it. Click on gossip? Pass.

It’s so interesting to me. Be they colleagues, friends or family, no matter what they’ve shared with me, or me with them, I will always respect without objection when they want to keep something private. I certainly would not presume that just because someone I watch on TV has talked about “X” that they have ceded any right to maintain privacy over “Y.” The “borders” can be wherever they need to be for each person and are free to move and change at any time. Then again, I also don’t care who you get it on with. If there’s an HR type violation, ok, whatever the consequences are, they are. I’m also not presuming anyone needs to share those details, assuming no criminality and a resulting public record. I might be moderately curious, but no one owes me anything. Life will move on just fine. Maybe I’m just an outlier.

If the anchors of a midday “news” show aren’t medium famous, who is? More obsessive special interest fans aside, it’s not like they’re Hanks, Aniston or Clooney. Said in a bit of jest, of course. Seriously, however, the over focus on people’s love lives is just absurd at times.

I’m not sure I see news as low effort. People do put in work to do their parts and do it well. No one I know in that space dials it in. Are there exceptions? Heck, of course. There’s not an industry where that isn’t true somewhere. But people put in the effort to present content that gets viewers in a world where viewership is ever-more fragmented. But that’s just me.

I never understood the degree of hullabaloo over two consenting adults doing whatever it is they do. The issue with their spouses is among all of them, not anyone else’s business. But whatever, what’s done is done and the world goes on, ideally not hearing one more word about their love lives, wherever they ultimately go.

They’ve had a pretty good group of incoming reporters of late.

Two on that same hard shift can’t be easy, but “having it all” is a mirage, regardless.

Even for dear old grandmom, outside of the one thing she paid attention to, the rest didn’t matter. Did anyone (in any significant numbers) really watch (as in engaged) all day long? In the days of games and soaps, were the Price is Right fans really sticking around through four soaps or whatever it was? And look, if someone really does actively watch all day, on say NBC, is that all that different from someone watching CNN etc? Today occupies four hours but by design the 9 and 10 am hours are different. NBC News Daily is different again. The one-man band crews, yeah, that’s hard. But then again, many jobs are rough, and you push through and hopefully move on, whatever your field.

They likely do, but that’s not important. This has proven to be a good, compatible option and a better fit in their lineup. If the viewers reject the newscast, then by all means, take a look at what you can do. They aren’t, at least as of today, no pun intended. Yes, stations have added local news as a trend. But repetitive isn’t an issue if, like most viewers, you’re not watching it all. I leave the house by 5 am most days, having caught some of the 4:30 newscast. It doesn’t matter if that content repeats in large part as I’m not watching. My kid typically watches just the 6:30 segment ahead of school. Doesn’t matter what they ran earlier. People by and large aren’t watching 3 hours intently. Some may have it on for hours for background noise, or the feeling of company like my grandmother did back in the day. She didn’t much know or care what most of the lineup was…other than All My Children…it was simply sound in an otherwise empty house.

It’s not as if improvement in a key demo and improved content retention for your (sometimes rambunctious) affiliates are nothing. Those are wins unto themselves. And there is runway to build. Days is what it is, and you’re not going to be able to do much more with that on the broadcast network side. If they can make it work on the streaming side, more power to them. That’s a bonus.

Good for NBC. This is a much better approach than sticking with Days.

A good question. Doesn’t seem likely to be cost effective to return to having two in the morning. At the same time, you don’t need one to just do noon. You have two covering all the evening shows.

And it’s hardly like any job anywhere is perfect, news most certainly included.

Hmmm, a new meteorologist role? https://empleos.disneycareers.com/trabajo/filadelfia/wpvi-meteorologist/391/57586125536?utm_campaign=google_jobs_apply&utm_source=google_jobs_apply&utm_medium=organic

Just saw that same article. And for wheat it’s worth, she was still named in the closing spiel of today’s 5 pm news. Crossing Broad got plenty. They don’t meed to stoop to invading privacy or spreading rumors.

She is (or was as of Sunday) still in the opening spiel, and supposedly still is on the website. Since they have an opening without talent, and they usually move quickly to put that in place when someone is officially gone, it’s unusual, but entirely possible there’s private reasons she’s not been on.

People asking questions does not require any news outlet do the same. People noticing someone is gone does not mean it’s newsworthy, particularly the often salacious way it’s portrayed. It needn’t actually spread a specific rumor to be clearly invasive. Yes, they covered the bachelorette party, because she chose to share that. She also chose to share details of her medical diagnosis some time back. We would, as a society, be better served by observing the mind-your-own-business approach.

Oh my gosh yes. The mining of social media for the most insignificant issue and portraying it as a “big deal” is really a problem. I’m not even knocking the use of some social media content in the news. God knows there are moments the world is heavy enough that a cute or “bubblegum” story helps lighten the load. Even then, moderation is key. But why someone is away from their job, or if they look different, or whatever along those lines…that’s not a story. Even public figures have private lives.

Honestly, posting rumormongering stories like "why is so-and-so not at work" calls into question the status of being a "legitimate" news outlet. Even as a public figure, some things are no one's business unless and until someone feels they want to share.