Another Reason KPRC is in Last Place

[bhratbrat 423]

Please tell me you were kidding about Channel 2 newsman Owen Conflenti designing co-anchor Lauren Freeman's wedding invitations.

 

Jeff Herrick, Houston

 

"He's an amazing artist," says Freeman, who'll sprint down the aisle with her betrothed, Forrest Roth, in a few weeks. "I wanted intricate map sketches on my invitation, rather than a traditional one. It was very expensive to get them professionally done. Owen started drawing this map of the city with important destinations on there. Within a couple minutes he had a wonderful sketch. He worked on it for a couple of days, and it's perfect. They are fun, not too serious. It's this crazy cartoon map of Houston, and since many guests are coming from out of town, they can use the invitation as a map to get around our wonderful city."

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So they can make Cartoon Maps but they cant compile a good newscast that viewers want to watch. WOW!

[WXmanTim 88]

No...but little stunts like that (which they usually promote endlessly as if it were news) have eroded their credibility over the years to the point that there is very little they could do to recover - beyond completely blowing the place the place out and replacing anchors, reporters, producers, etc from top to bottom.

[nbc9houston 21]

To add on this thread, KPRC Local 2 has done other things that had eroded their credibility. One example was the "Watch 2 Win" cash contests that were held from 1998 to around 2000. These contests made News 2 Houston look like a game show (although the contests were held during commercial breaks). Sometimes, these cash contests that KPRC held temporarily put their newscasts into first place. But in its later years, KTRK held its "Guaranteed Cash Give Away" that put KPRC back to last place in the ratings.

[WXmanTim 88]

There was a time, oddly enough during the 2004 Olympics when "local 2" first premiered, that it appeared they had turned away from tabloid infotainment journalism to more serious endeavors.

 

That dream was busted by the time November sweeps rolled around that year.

 

It wasn't long after that that "Radar the weather dog" made his premiere and Frank Billingsly's cred went down the tubes too.

 

I had hopes that the transfer of Steve Wasserman to Detroit and the dismissal of news director Nancy Shifrin (sp?) in late 2005 were signs that Post-Newsweek was going to get serious with KPRC. It doesn't appear to have done much good.