HanSolo

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.

Aw, was that supposed to be an insult? When it comes to a track record of the complainers who seem to live to find imaginary fault or people with the actual data and accountability, the armchair QBs come up short.

Objectively, the people making the decisions have far more information than speculation. I don’t need to know every single piece of data to understand why station X decides it’s fitting to run their normal schedule, albeit with a reduced staff, while station Y tosses on filler material. Nobody is just burning the bosses’ money for kicks and giggles.

It likewise comes up repeatedly to nitpick when the newscasts do air as normal. The problem, to the extent there is one, seems to be with people who insist, repeatedly, what is or isn’t necessary based on their standards.

Noon to 1 something in the morning is all day, my friend. More than that.

Thus, “aside from morning.” And apart from that and the Disney parks commercial, it’s 13 something hours of NBA, so yeah, it’s all day.

AKA by whom? Aside from that, and aside from morning, what news? It’s all NBA all day and all night.

And why are we even speculating that is the case? Some things just are.

Decent filler choice until the new show is ready.

How about a proponent for understanding that the world moves quickly, audiences are more fragmented and diverse and it’s not 1995? I don’t have to like everything that changes, and quite frankly don’t. But I do understand my nostalgia is not a reason to ignore the reality now. My generation had different experiences and expectations than my parents. My kids have different ones than me. They don’t consume media the same way I did nor should they as they make their mark on the world.

I could have guessed that was coming. A flameout in a different industry in a different era that is quite obviously the exception to the norm, but we cling to it as if there aren’t a multitude of examples to the contrary.

Honestly, it doesn’t matter if that’s the way people hold a conversation in day to day life. Things change no matter what we all were bombarded with however many years ago. Production methods change. Approaches change. Viewers change. Viewing habits change. I’d be willing to bet they have oodles of data that inform all of the decisions and they go deeper than “it wasn’t what we were taught.” Not every decision is going to appeal to any one of us, but guaranteed they’re making those decisions based on measurable info.

Indeed. I was thinking about the GMA setup and how it could effectively be any studio anywhere. Heck, it could be a much more spacious and modern studio somewhere and that would (will?) be better for the production than needing to sit in Times Square just because. (Or Rockefeller, or wherever, not to make it only about ABC and GMA). Streetside is all well and good, but not make or break.

Outdatedness is a key point. J-school, like any discipline, can’t be frozen in time with the “this is the way it must always be” as if God Almighty decreed it as the 11th Commandment. It’s hard for all of us to change what we know and are comfortable with. It can downright suck, but sometimes it’s needed, even among the experts.

Sure they were there on the way and the way . It’s perhaps evidence the location is not relevant to a major degree.

Quality is subjective. Audiences are not looking for the same thing. If there was a big hole out there for something else each night, someone would have exploited it. The hangup over active tense that seems to permeate so often is kind of amusing. And that comes from someone old as darned dirt. Does it work for them? If not, they’d change. And the numbers bear it out. It isn’t what I was taught. It isn’t what I grew up with. That doesn’t make it wrong, and my professors weren’t god almighty. It sometime seems collectively that we’re “ok with change,” so long as it’s the change we deem to be ok. That’s not how life works, though.

“One of the most cited.” Which would suggest someone would thoroughly clean up by simply rolling back the clock. And yet, they don’t. Maybe because whatever is supposedly “cited” is rubbish. The entire world shifts around us. Technology, tastes, demographics…and “news” does not exist in an isolated bubble in which the same approaches from decades ago magically work. How many times did we hear “viewers told us they want a straight news approach”—no fluff or whatever one wishes to call it. Yet when tried, it fails. Because what people supposedly say in dubious polling isn’t what they do.

Everything is for sale at the right price. It’s not “just” going to be a standalone. Whether it is a buyer or seller or both over time is all crystal-ball stuff, but there’s no way there won’t be deals entertained if they’re serious viable offers.

My guess: because it’s not a quarter-century ago anymore? Related: what was being done a quarter-century ago differed from a quarter-century before that. Time moves on. Few things, particularly in any form of media or art, are the same over that time span. Audiences change. Styles change. Business realities change.

Meh, it seems fine with one anchor.

They’re different t than 10 years ago but don’t adapt. Maybe it’s a dislike of what they’ve adapted to, but that’s something different. And it’s subjective.

Well…that was a bit of a surprise