The Attack of the Video Journalist

Thanks to a recent comment saying KAKE will soon hire another video journalist, VJ, one-man band or reporter/photographer. (I would like to know if this replaces a photographer, reporter, both, or adds a staffer.) For those not familiar with the term it essentially means hiring one person to shoot, edit, report and everything else. This has happened for years in smaller markets, and apparently even here for some time. As a previous comment mentioned KAKE has had a history of Larry Hatteberg, Chris Frank and even Alan Shope with sports shoot their own material. I haven't really focused or know what Shope shoots, but Hatteberg's and Frank's stuff are just as good as the others in town. I guess I had heard about them shooting their own stuff, but forgot about it. Now as budgets shrink and the technology gets lighter and cheaper its happening at a faster pace. Recently stations in other towns have announced moves in that direction. A recent comment mentioned how sales staffs are even shooting in other places (is it happening here) and its all part of our YouTube generation. Is it a good thing? No not at all, but will viewers notice? I do not think they will, sadly. We live in a culture of more, more, and more. With that wanting of more, more, and more, the society doesn't care about quality. You can see that with Wal-Mart, many restaurants, other businesses and now I guess with broadcasting. We probably will get all the content we want from shootings, fires, car crashes, a cat stuck in a tree and even the blooper of a 80 year-old falling into their cake for their family birthday party all on-line. Its more content, but not memorable, except the cake on the old man's face, and sadly probably the industry. Sure there will be the comment to the dinosaurs who have to get over the old days and move to change, but you have to realize we are moving in this direction not for quality, but simply economics. -Hal

Update: Please vote in the Poll on the right as to when or if you think the majority of reporters in Wichita will be one-man bands. -Hal

Sweeps Has Began

Lets get off of the topic that seemed to develop from the comments of who has the better Sunday sports show, to the first day of Sweeps. All three stations had what seemed to be special stories for the day. KAKE hoards the "Skinny on Diets," KWCH tabulates the cost of murder and in one of the better promos KSN explored the dismissal of an employee at Exploration Place. Before I get to the stories, I liked how on KWCH and KAKE's websites you could watch and read previews of their stories. Although it was a nice promo on TV, KSN had no mention on the web site. All three need to stop acting like they care about the internet and ACTUALLY DO something INNOVATIVE online to compliment these stories.
KAKE's piece clearly was one which would draw viewers, but did nothing else. Rachel Phillips' story was a complete waste of time and that was clear by watching the promos. KWCH's was good and provided some interesting info on the multimillion dollar cost of a murder than multiplied by city and state numbers. If the personal and emotional loss isn't enough, the piece puts it in a different perspective in monetary value. Reporter Michael Schwanke got cutesy with an on camera appearance with coins in a jar. I thought the piece of the night was by KSN's Josh Wittsman on a lady who claims harassment from Exploration Place which led to her job being eliminated at one point. A lot of documents and an in-depth feel made this the piece of the night. I would think when the ratings period is over, this will probably be one of KSN's better ones. -Hal

Sweeps Woody

I write this a couple of times of year, but here it goes again. Its time for all the scary music and goofy stories. Its time for the ole ratings time known as Sweeps. I am not sure when it begins this time around. May's usually begins then or a few days before, but I hear it may be a little sooner, according to an LA paper. Have fun and enjoy the stories, whenever it begins. We'll tell by the promos and gimmicks which make it Sweeps.

Scrap the Breaking News and Go Back to Storytelling

A commenter sent me a great link to a blog from Lost Remote. I have linked to the articles on their site in the past. The blog has a variety of topics, but much of the time details TV and other mediums' ventures to the web and the many issues it raises. In the post entitled "Make Local TV News More Like TV News Again," Cory Bergman writes how TV has stepped up its urgency and speed to offset the frantic pace and schedules of viewers that make up life in these times. Bergman writes the web gives viewers that quick look at the news, so TV is trying to replicate it while losing focus on its strength. That strength is a medium that merges sound and pictures for good storytelling. So could a station abandon the daily house fires, car chases, shootings and just do 3-4 long stories a show? Heck, maybe even do it in the form of only 1-2 newscasts a day, but at least it would separate itself from the web rather than chasing after a technology which it cannot beat. It may not be able to beat it, but TV certainly can do storytelling better. I know this goes against the thinking of many TV news managers who all say, "Web, Web, Web, AND MORE WEB!!!!!!!!" They should think outside of the box. However, a Decade ago thinking about the web was thinking outside the box, now it is common place. You have newspapers and even radio now jumping into the race of video on the web. If you design your broadcast content for the web, while still doing TV, is the content on TV watchable? I say, no and it even speeds up the death of TV news as we know Today, rather than complementing it. Interested in your thoughts. -Hal

Dusting the Blogger Poll off

After about a 5 month absence, I decided to have a poll question. Its located on the right side. I have noticed based on the mapping software the readers of this blog come from all over but I am real interested to see how it looks like readers come from all across the state. Since I've never said much as to my background, other than I was once involved in the media, I ask one simple question. Simply, best describe yourself with one of 4 answers. -Hal

KSN Appeals Million Dollar Verdict

The Wichita Eagle reports that KSN has filed a motion with the Kansas Court of Appeals in its case ordering them to pay $1.1 million to the estate of a man who was revealed as a suspect in the BTK case. -Hal

KU Win and Coverage

Congrats to KU and another example when sports becomes your lead story. Leading up to the game I thought KAKE's coverage was really limited by their lack of talent in San Antonio. Dave Phillips and Ben Arnet just don't do it for me. As was written in a previous comment, Phillips is obnoxious and seems like a giddy fan along for the ride at the Final 4, while Arnet seems more concerned about acting suave and coming up with bad not-so-like ESPN catch phrases.
KSN did a decent job. I have never been a huge Case Walkup fan, but for Casey he did a fantastic job. Keep in mind what I wrote, "for Casey." Mark Davidson did a decent job for who he worked with, but I couldn't tell when they appeared on camera they were at the the Final 4. The other stations' views showed a background with a Final 4 logo, with KWCH having the best view.
As for KWCH, they obviously had the largest crew as previously was debated in previous posts. It didn't bother me one way or another. Cindy does provide a nice break from the constant Sports talk with side stories. The other 2 did offer them, but with KSN and Casey Walkup, although not terrible, you could still tell they were done by a sports guy forced to make it newsy, while I have no clue where Dave on KAKE was going with his supposed more newsier schtick.
As for Tonight, KSN and KAKE were at a disadvantage since the game was going on during the newscast. I did like the fact KAKE had a reporter in Lawrence live, although after 5 seconds I was sick of Abby Barnett talking about how incredible things were. I would have liked to see KWCH live from Lawrence. Although Kim Setty filed a story, a live report would have been nice with the many fans in Lawrence. I was impressed that although taped, Kim's story did have video of Lawrence after the game and the jubilation. During KWCH's coverage, the split live pictures between Memphis and Lawrence were good, although Roger referred to the Memphis picture being from an empty bar, but it looked like an empty arena of some sort. KWCH's newscast had a few angles which were good, but I thought the sports segment lacked a little. It seemed as if the press conferences were going on as the newscast was happening. I would have liked to have seen clips from those during the sportscast. You would have thought the press conference would have been on the Satellite and someone from KWCH in Wichita could have gotten that on air, because I am sure the crew in San Antonio was busy. Besides the highlights from the game and hearing from Bruce, the sports coverage wasn't as good of the event. I know KWCHers you'll argue fans saw the game on the station and got plenty of coverage. I would say however since your station aired the game you needed to provide fans with more post game player and coach react. I would argue fans would have loved to see even the press conferences happen raw and live. I went to ESPN for that. KWCH had the unique opportunity being the only station on LIVE after the game and the station had a huge audience watching, but they blew it. Your thoughts on KU coverage? -Hal

Media General article link

A recap for those who didn't sift through the comments of the last post: a commenter wrote that things at KWCH and their owners must be well since they took over the CW, launched a high school sports internet site, and are even adding employees. That was followed by a comment from someone saying that KWCH staffers should be happy their former owners, Media General, sold them a few years ago. A link to an article was then posted, but the whole address didn't come across in the comments section. Thanks to the commenter for e-mailing me it. I now have it and here is the link to the article. The article explains how a "hedge fund," that holds a stake in Media General is attempting to kick off 3 members of the Board of Directors and replace them with its own people. The commenter went on to write that employees of KSN should know what happens when an investment company takes over a TV station and isn't interested in television but merely interested in increasing profit margins by laying off staff and reducing other expenses only to then sell off the station a short time later with a nice profit to show for their maneuvers. Obviously Media General has problems due to much debt accumulated by its newspaper holdings, but another sad example of the state of the industry. -Hal

The Ratings

We often talk about the Sweeps period on this blog, but never really discuss the ratings. The Nielsen ratings have been out, as reported by many comments to this post. My only glimpse at these are from of all things the KWCH web site (Once at the link, scroll to the bottom of page for a ratings table). Obviously KWCH is happy they are, as they say in the press release/propaganda/web page, #1 at Noon, 5, 6, and 10PM. They didn't list the morning numbers, so they must not be #1 then. There is no comparison to other ratings periods, so I don't know who is up or down. Also I must say I haven't looked at rating tables like this before and some comments talk about numbers being solely from the Wichita area and not for the whole state and the satellite stations. I'd be curious to know what these ratings include. Looking at the numbers, KWCH equals the rest of the stations combined in HH (households?) at 5PM and has more than the other two combined at 10PM. Also, I don't know what the trends from other rating months are, but is it unusual for KSN's 10PM newscast to only have 7,000 more HH than their Noon show? I thought the 10PM show is supposed to be the day's highest rated newscast for a station. It is for KAKE and KWCH, but for KSN the 6PM beats the 10PM by 8000 viewers. Interested in your thoughts/spin on the February Sweeps results. -Hal