Its been about a month since KAKE sports director Alan Shope left the station. It will certainly take some time for KAKE to find a replacement, but the last month really shows they have a weak bench of back-up sports people. It appears Chris Frye would be their main fill-in anchor. Then you have Terrell Benton and hockey player Jason Duda. I could use an overused cliche and call this a Motley Crew of sports types, but this would certainly be slamming the band and I'm not even a fan of the group.
This week I started seeing OT Live Producer Abby Lippold fill-in on the main sports desk on KAKE as well. She has appeared on the OT Live show and I might have even seen her fill-in on the weekend, once or twice. You can definitely tell she tries hard, but she is rough to watch doing sports. Not that Wichita is a huge Top 25 market, but she certainly shouldn't be on air in this market.... yet. That's what the small markets are for to develop her talent. However, I know there will be some reading this that are saying Wichita has dropped to a small market from a psychological standpoint. I disagree. I think overall there is a good product shown on the stations, especially for the economic and industry conditions occurring. Stealing a term from a comment of a previous post, she should appear on Wichita State's Studio B and get some experience. -Hal
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KWCH's B-team did their tryouts with all of us watching and it's still going on. Jen and Brian are NOT watchable, and Brian has had ... um what.... four years to try and improve? Jen's cute, but that voice!
And really, isn't it time to admit that sports isn't the be all and end all? If you have a marquee anchor maybe it doesn't matter that the philosophy of managers is get 'em young and cheap and work 'em hard.
A lot of people like to give you crap Hal but I have to say that you are a pretty brave guy. Doesn't your kid work with Abby in the production department over at KAKE? Talk about an akward working environment!
Abby, don't let em get you down. When I worked with you at KAKE I always thought you were fun and cute. Keep smilin, you're doing great.
The first poster obviously works and KAKE and has launched a lame-ass defense.
There are ZERO sports people in this town that are watchable. Bruce is condescending, Jim is boring and I've never seen someone mess up so many times hosting a live show as that new guy at KAKE who took over for Arnet. Whenever I happen to flip the channel to OT Live I always think about that scene from Anchorman where the guy says "Read Ron, Read!" Face it Hal, this town isn't a television sports town. Nobody wants to come here and cover college baseball and college bowling.
KAKE sports isn't as bad as you say anyway. They put shows on the air and they do a respectable job at it. I've seen worse sports reporting on Fox Sports Net than I've seen at KAKE in the past month.
1. Getting Studio B time does not equate to good on-air performance. How many of our on-air talent in town jumped from Studio B to the local airwaves? The bad ones. Everyone who makes it to this market should do time in a smaller market first.
2. You cut your top sports guy a month after you lose your back-up sports guy, and management should expect some growing pains. Give them time. KWCH kept Ayna for a whole 2 years. Gannon is still on air. So is Holmgren. This town is used to mediocre.
3. Yes, Wichita is dropping in quality. That's because it's isolated, and saving money > top quality. Topeka stations can see KC stations, so it has a way to measure quality. Wichita broadcasters don't have anything to compare themselves to - other than an equally poor station across town.
It's not condescending when you know what you're talking about and Bruce does.
Bruce comes off as a know-it-all smart arse and even the people he works with know it. Bob Costas, Scott Van Pelt and any "Good" sports anchor all know what they're talking about and they don't come across as condescending, what gives Bruce the right to do it? What a terrible excuse anon 5:15. You basically made my point.
Reality is that After March Madness Sports- is a complete non entity in Wichita for the next SIX MONTHS. Thats half of the year.
And even THEN the interest in sports is highly fragmented.
Anon 8:49,
Try telling that to KSN. When they dropped sports over 5 years ago it hurt and it took them awhile to rebuild an audience. I do agree that sports interest may be fragmented to a degree, however you must still cover local sports to be viewed by the public as caring for your community. -Hal
Sports is definitely fragmented...I mean, it's not like there are thousands of parents out every single Friday night or anything watching their sons play football and their daughters/sons cheering for those teams. I mean, it's obviously a bad sign for sports that websites like catchitkansas.com and varsitykansas get tens of thousands of page views every month. And it's a terrible sign for sports when the catch it kansas show pulls similar ratings to newscasts in this area, on a friday night, on the cw. And man oh man, I can't believe people still call in every night to KAKE's overtime Live, don't they have anything better to do than watch sports? Yeah man, sports really isn't important to this area at all. (there should really be a font for sarcasm)
Hey 158...
Sounds like sour grapes. Maybe you should focus on getting your house in order? Just a thought.
BTW: Caroline Brady's bio is gone from their website. That's two losses in 2 weeks. What's up?
Don't disagree with your thoughts at all,Hal. Thdey don't conflict with mine.
You can NOT give up on sports. KU, KState,WSU and local High School sports,especially HS Football, are huge.
Doesn't counter the point that from April Fools Day through Labor Day sports is a waste of air time.
Thats a LOOOONG time.
11:41 - Caroline left KAKE because she is moving to Japan and getting married in a couple of weeks. She was awesome to work with and I'm sure she'll be horribly missed. The word I'm hearing is that KAKE is not going to replace her position. I wish I could say I was surprised.
"April Fools Day to Labor Day"? You must not care about WSU Baseball... their season stretches into June... Then the Chiefs/KU/K-State start up training camp in late July... so you've got more like 6 weeks(3 weeks if WSU ever makes it to Omaha again) where local/regional teams aren't in full swing.
Actually 5:25, I kind of disagree with your last point. That summer break can be a very long time, if station's are doing it wrong. That's the perfect time to really delve into "non-sports" sports stories, you know, the whole journalistic side of local sports that always gets lost in the mix? Also you can give love to sports like gymnastics that don't get any air time during the football and basketball seasons.
The reason why many people believe local sports is a dying piece of the news is because so many local sports anchors/reporters are doing it all wrong. Like you said 5:25, people love sports. The amount of money people spend each year on sports is ridiculous. But too many local guys are lazy and use national stories in their local casts. Unless there is a huge national sports story, there's no reason to inclue national things in a sportscast. It's called local sports for a reason, and that's something a lot of people seem to have forgotten.
11:41
Caroline is getting married and moving to another country to be with her Air Force pilot husband. I believe she is leaving news entirely for awhile, but you'd have to ask someone that used to actually work with her to find out more.
You dont realize what you have until its missing. Thats what happened on Wednesday to the Noon shows on KWCH and KSN. They have good anchor teams, but at KWCH Kim Setty was gone and at KSN 1/2 of the duo was gone. At KWCH, Brian Heap filled in for Kim Setty. He certainly showed how valuable Kim is and how much less watchable the show is with him. I don't watch the morning shows, but I can only imagine how bad that is if its only a 1/10 as bad as that.
Similar situation over at KSN at Noon. Anne Meyer was off and reporter Aileen Simborio filled in. Anne and Mark really have a way with each other on the air. That is sucked dry with Aileen replacing Anne. Mark tries is best, but Aileen just sucks any life there is out of the show. Hope Kim and Anne get back soon for all viewers.
National sports stories belong in a sportscast just as much as national news stories belong in the A-Block. The philosophy should be the same for both: lead local and talk about things that people care about. You don't tell the weather folks that they're not doing the job right if they show a national map to give people that perspective. Sports anchors who include national stories are not lazy. They're just trying to do in their 3-4 minutes what news producers do every day: give people a complete representation of the day's news from their genre with the Local-to-Regional-to-National philosophy. Sports isn't dying because local sports anchors/reporters/photogs are lazy. It is dying because consultants ask poorly-phrased questions on surveys when they poll viewers, often asking them to EQUATE sports stories to severe weather or crime. Most viewers do who find sports news important will still NEVER tell a survey that they find it more important than weather or hard news. ND's and GM's use that info. to create a myth that sports coverage is not important so they can save money on things like travel. People do love sports more than ever in this country but it's not because of stories on little Johnny. If they did, there would be office pools on the Little League World Series. Feature stories on local kids during slow times are great but you should never let them become the focal point of a sports department in a market that covers 3 major D-1 programs and includes a rabid Chiefs fanbase.
Even TV markets that host 4 major league level teams and multiple
major college sports programs have cut back on allotted sports time (to just a couple minutes max)within the newscast ANDS personnel big time.
Part of this is budget, for sure, but the other part is the realization that a.) everyone wants to know the weather b.) almost everyone wants to know the news and c.) only about 1 in 3 care about sports.
This is true in Cubs/Bears crazed Chicago, Yanks/Giants crazed New York, Sox/Pats crazed Boston.
These are all places where MAJOR LEAGUE teams are in their neighborhood along with top college sports.
YES, people fill up the stadiums and watch the games on TV, YET stations have concluded that even THERE- viewers prefer ESPN's around the clock coverage and have very little use for appointment viewing for a few minutes at 6:19 PM or 5:20PM or whenever.
So YES you need to do sports. But it is LESS relevant in the context of a newscast. Thats just a reality. Even MORE so in a market like Wichita which only hosts WSU and covers Manhattan and Lawrence pretty much seasonally.
Just heard Alan Shope was in Kansas City yesterday and is a finalist for two jobs at two different stations up there. Anyone talk to him lately? How's he doing?
Folks, remember the only reason Wichita has the market rank it has is because of it's western Kansas booster network. Without them, Wichita would barely be a top 100 market.
KSN didn't post anything about the Augusta teen shooting online until late Saturday night.
Their first story was also wire copy? Everyone else had it up early afternoon with original content.
Why the delay?
That's not true. Wichita metro has 600k people in the 5 county area.
If you were to take away all the non-metro areas from every market Wichita would fall roughly where it is now... it could even move up a few spots.
Alan Shope has accepted a job at KCTV 5 in KC. Probably a better spot for him than KAKE. They seem to be losing great people at a rapid pace.
KCTV is No. 4 in the market. Still it is KC.
WDAF or KSHB is #4 in the market... It varies its a tight market but even though I do not like KCTV one bit, I will tell you that overall they are the #2 station in that market.
Shope is cool, but let's all be grateful we have jobs in this economy! Sheesh.
Someone tell me how a new GM at KSN should be the top story on their website? It's barely news. No one outside the building cares. Talk about being full of themselves.
How are those Leno non-ratings doing BTW?
http://www.ksn.com/news/local/story/KSNs-GM-announces-retirement/AOQwun_49EOnjBs1M_rMVg.cspx
Hal, did you see 12 and 3's report Saturday about Rob Snyder? IE: Susan Peters' husband. Was curious of your thoughts on this.
Wonder why KAKE didn't cover it? No not really. We all know why it wasn't covered.
Maybe if those residents spent some time cleaning their own apartments they wouldn't have the mice & roaches.
Has anyone noticed KAKE's maps lately. They put little cop cars or fire engines on them. It just looks incredibly tacky.
Also, 3 and 10 seemed to have dropped the ball big time on the Lyons murder.
12 was the only one with video, and information early Sunday. At ten they were the only ones with news of an arrest. They also talked to the family and had photos of the woman, including one taken last night at a Halloween party.
3 and 10 had some police sound and evening video. Looks like they got there way late.
For gawdsakes, Hal, either kill the blog (not an entirely unwarranted action given the snarkiness and backbiting one regularly finds here, I mean I don't know how you can stand it), or elevate the topics of discussion and post more often. The November sweeps period is almost done and Wichita viewers have had to suffer through yet again another totally uninformative string of dismal sweeps pieces. If this blog can't shame the TV stations into producing better content, perhaps it should just ignore them?! Ah. Ah. AH! Oh, I get it. THAT'S what you're doing.
Anyone home? Hal. Hal?
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