There were days at TV stations when the phones just rang off the hook: When the end of a football game got clipped, when a show got preempted, or when a distressed animal was the lead story on a newscast. Other calls from a reliable collection of local dipsticks just made you crazy: Asking to […]
Product placement secrets revealed
June 2, 2009 by
The bloodletting taking place in local TV news operations around the United States is shocking. Newscasts are being cancelled, established talent fired, staffs cut. Frankly, a good chunk of the value proposition in local TV news died a long time ago, but the Great Recession and the demise of auto-related advertising has sped the process […]
KING with fingers crossed
May 29, 2009 by
Anchor tenure, quality content, powerful marketing and lead-in programming are all parts of any TV stationís success in news. A strong element can compensate for a weak one. For instance, a station may have given itself a truly mediocre and constantly revolving anchor team with no promotions, but have Oprah for the lead in. They […]
Chopping choppers
May 20, 2009 by
My dreams of working in television were formed back in the “good old days” By the time I got into the business the good old days were starting to wane. By the time I got out, the industry was on the precipice of what is happening to it currently – a paradigm-shifting retrenchment. All the […]
Kiss your Mom with that mouth?
May 7, 2009 by
I don’t think Iím an old fuddy-duddy. I’m hip to technology and am really pretty easy-going about a lot of the social issues that seem to work-up so many. My “who cares?” thing probably comes from a pretty strong Libertarian streak, and dose of cynicism about the nature of people. I watch what people do […]
Media malestrom
March 31, 2009 by
More of the “shoes” we’ve been talking about in this forum for the past month or two are starting to drop. Unfortunately, Belo has decided to chop 15 bodies out of its operations here in the Seattle area with cuts coming at KING, KONG and NWCN. Much to my surprise, I think they’re laying off […]
Hope for bastards
March 17, 2009 by
The pace of newspaper failures (folding?) is going to pick up. It’s sad, but true. Here in our area, the PI is obviously in dire straights – the Bellingham paper has one foot in the grave – the Puyallup Herald is going to be making some changes I hear – and the News Tribune is […]
Fisher News
March 16, 2009 by
Fisher Communications’ 20 local TV stations, radio and network operations posted a $61-million dollar loss for 2008 – this despite what may be a once-in-a-decade opportunity to cash in on a hotly contested presidential election. Revenues are actually up, but that didn’t stop the bleeding. What will this mean for KOMO? Hard to tell: But […]
Oh KOMO
February 10, 2009 by
Look in the dictionary beside the phrase, “Conflict of interest” and you’ll find a picture of the newspaper media critic. For years, newspapers thought they could fight back against television and radio news’ immediacy, emotion and credibility by shooting little rhetorical arrows at the medium, and the people who worked in it. On of the […]
Broadcasters Get Caught
February 9, 2009 by
News Tribune Executive Editor Karen Peterson did a nice column on the ancient practice of broadcast news operations stealing from newspapers. Make no mistake, it is stealing in the strictest sense of the word. If you take somebody’s work product without permission and turn around and sell it, that’s stealing. Now, I’ll give you a […]
