I’ve had trouble watching the television lately. Can’t find the programs in all the commercials. Suppose it doesn’t matter since the TV fare was never meant to entertain, inform or educate, just to employ the many relatives of the network show business people.
The network evening news is in a whale of trouble now. Katie Couric has settled back into last place for CBS. It’s hard to take her too serious after all those years of sucking up to the people she interviewed on the Today Show.
The number crunchers for the networks have discovered an interesting fact. It seems that the quality of the local news just before the network news has a great impact on the network news viewers. Dah…
So old, ugly people put out to pasture on the evening news broadcasts are now costing Charles Gibson at ABC, Brian Williams at NBC and Katie Couric at CBS millions of viewers and more millions of ad revenues.
Look for a major overhaul of the local news programs leading into the network news. Every station has used the news for a pre-retirement assignment. They are experimenting with everyone for the time slot.
My personal favorite news announcer is Alison Starling who does the morning news. Her numbers and performance are great so the ABC owned station in DC has tried her at the 5 pm and 6 pm news shows.
Of course the station was too cheap to assign someone to her morning and noon shows so poor Alison was doing the 5 am, noon, and 5 pm news, sometimes the 6 pm news, and doing real reporter stories in between. Whoever thought up that schedule wanted to kill her or must have been a relative of one of the old anchors who might be replaced.
When she did the 6 pm news with three old guys she looked like a cheerleader at a geriatric ward. Before the DC station and network overseers give her the 6 pm news like they should some other network will steal her. Maybe this drag on the ratings by the local evening news anchors is why they call them anchors in the first place.
