HanSolo

Over time, I’d suggest formats have become more mailable within their brands. WPVI’s tempo and constructs vary from morning to midday to afternoon to the 6/11. The differences were more stark in the past, and while not suggesting everything has disappeared, there has been a lot of blurring to adapt to audiences under the big brand umbrella. At this point, no one is sitting in a newsroom saying that they can’t adopt a given tactic because that isn’t what Eyewitness News was at the start; it’s a question of how something works for today’s viewers. Successful brands evolve with the audience.

My schedule means the 4:30 is the portion I watch, and Pellman does fine with that weather segment. Seems a good way to handle it.

And I insist I will have the same hairline and waistline I had back in high school in 2026. Godspeed and good luck to us both.

I happened to like having it on then based on my personal schedule. Sure it got truncated or bumped for sports semi-regularly, but it was a convenient time for some of us. There is ABC sports starting at 12:30 the next few weeks, but rather than the 1/2 hour version they used to run ahead of NBA Countdown, it’s informercials on the schedule. Oh well.

They also appear to have dumped the Sunday noon news.

Somewhat, but it’s more a group of vocal wannabes who shout that some large part of the population wants that, despite evidence to the contrary, because of course they know better than anyone else. And in the cases when such an effort fails, it is because it wasn’t done the right way, or not marketed the right way, or didn’t have time or whatever combination of reasons that ensures the complainer’s theory is never actually incorrect. There’s little question there is some audience for all manner of different approaches, but not all have a sustainable financial model. What there isn’t evidence of is a large, untapped and economically workable audience for the more staid, in-depth approach on a daily basis. Maybe CBS can chart that path and find the balance in which the economics work. Maybe someone else can. Take the swing, and see what happens. But also don’t be surprised if it just doesn’t click.

Good riddance

Dramatically so.

They almost assuredly will not in a form we would consider comparable to how they exist today. If the past 100 or so hours haven’t made it clear, whether Congress authorizes funds or not is no longer material. One person and his band of accomplices are rapidly taking over every disbursement, not to mention previously private personal data. Entire agencies are being dismantled; with control of payment systems, no checks (figuratively) will go to those organizations. Congress is not stepping in to any of this, as we’ve seen. Perhaps someone will mount a court challenge; great. By the time it meanders to the SCOTUS, of which we know the makeup, it’s a moot point. This is not the world of checks and balances. There are no guardrails. There is nothing that is going to stop it.

Unless? We’re so far off the rails that we can’t begin to measure.

Think that would be three in a row. last week was a tiny visual cameo, but the first was a clip with voice.

Humans are human.

That’s a pretty impressive article/post in the context of today’s business world. Not criticizing it.

Those complaints can go right to the circular file after whatever perfunctory acknowledgement they wish to provide. There are a plethora of stations that don’t run news operations. There is nothing that states if your station had one that it must continue in perpetuity, regardless of economic factors. The realities of the ad economy are harsh. Viewers have more choices, the revenue pie gets split more ways, and something’s gonna give. Does it suck for some viewers? Yep. For the hard-working people laid off? Double yep. That is always true with any cutbacks in any industry. But life is rough. If there is some bottomless-pocketed investor out where, and who meets the unrealistic standards people put forth, who is it? Who is going to pump that kind of money into let’s just say the Allen portfolio? What would be their actual return on investment? Much like the contraction of the print news industry, it’s a disconcerting change to people who lived a long time with a different reality. But that world? It’s gone.

The FCC and Congress are not going to “investigate” scaling back news operations for economic factors. And there are few to no unicorn operators out there who will sink money into a pit from which it will never return.

This most recent storm was an example of when it makes sense to work it in. Plenty of days it won’t be relevant.

No, it’s not illegal. (Not sure if that sentence is grammatically correct.) Plenty of stations lack anything beyond EAS capabilities, and have no one on hand to do anything beyond that. Moreover, “life threatening” is a wide loophole you could drive a truck through.

This is akin to the fans of whatever sports team screaming to trade whoever is the subject of their ire at the moment, as if it was as simple as snapping one’s fingers to find a trade partner willing to give you whatever unicorn you think is out there. Followed by the inevitable bellyaching when some kind of trade happens and it isn’t on the terms or for the other player you think it should have been for. The economics are not great. The revenue pie continues to get sliced into smaller and smaller pieces. Who, exactly, has the money to sink into said operations with little assurance of a return on the investment?

And he just referenced it in passing at 4:30 because in this case, it was applicable to the snow moving through. Just not something they need to emphasize as hard as they did initially.

They made their point and don’t keep mentioning it perhaps? If it has reason to come up in a weather segment sure, maybe it’s worked in occasionally. But they ran a fairly extensive promo campaign for it and made mention multiple times in those segments. Maybe it’s just time to stop emphasizing it.

What’s not to get? The audience for the show likes the show. Not every show is for every person. This isn’t yours? Awesome. But it is for someone else, and that’s what matters.

Good for him. Nice to see someone get to “come home.”

Perhaps they needed time to get coverage or for Cecily to be able to go on if she was still there.

As opposed to “everything anyone does I don’t like is wrong?” ”Legitimate critique” and “this wasn’t done this way before” or “that’s not what my journalism school professor way back when preached” are not the same thing. Audiences change. Tastes change. Expectations and needs change. Technologies change. But by god, don’t fade out to a commercial break cold. Don’t do a newscast when I don’t have any actual data but assume it shouldn’t be on. Don’t speak in an active voice. On and on and on. It’s always so easy to pretend to have the magical solutions when it’s not your job to manage the P&L, to make the hard calls with the available resources, to actually use data to make choices and not rose-colored glasses yearning for some bygone era. So yeah, change things the heck up. That’s what millions of people do. They change. They try new things. They evolve. They mix old and new. They change something for the sheer hell of doing something different. They don’t become fossilized dinosaurs.

No one knows what happens behind the scenes, but if he knew his job basically was what it was, part time with no meaningful prospect to be full time let alone off weekends, his decision makes perfect sense. He got a nice weekday, full-time gig. Why the decision was made to keep him in that role is something no one will know, nor should we. Personnel matters are what they are. They long had four weekday full timers, and clearly that’s where the management felt it was worth investing resources. One was admittedly the built in coverage in mornings while handling traffic when not covering, but it got them what they obviously felt was a good setup. Five full timers and one part time, or four full time and two part time isn’t a meaningful difference outside of what needs to be done to make balance sheets work. Either gives them flexibility given the sheer number of hours in an average week they pump out. The new guy gets a dream gig, Sowers got a nice evening gig. Win win.