MetroCity

Adding a 10AM newscast is purely a business decision. Adding another hour of news will cost less than any syndication, which carries heavy fees and ad time splits in major markets. Stations will likely add only a couple of people, who will probably be freelancers. And since there’s no advertising split with syndicators, all the commercial time belongs to the station. That’s a very big deal headed into 2024. Election year campaign spending will be off the charts. Because campaigns love to buy time in news shows, that extra hour of news a day will be a bonanza in political ad sales. There’s no brain surgery or overthinking required in understanding the 10AM show. It’s dollars. Pure and simple.

Except… The thing about WABC is that viewers are loyal and fickle at the same time. They become very attached to and protective of long time anchors. But once they’re gone, viewing habits don’t change. WABC has lost big names over the years including Roz Abrams, Bill Beutel, Bill Evans, Scott Clark and Lori Stokes. They may have left, but the viewers stayed. Perhaps because the other talent are also strong long timers. Perhaps because WABC attracts anchors and reporters that people like watching. Whoever it might be, WABC’s strength will continue. That’s not to say individual anchors aren’t valuable. It’s just that viewers aren’t as committed as one might think.

That’s not really how it works. First, ABC doesn’t program sports just to “avoid having to get people to work on the holiday”. I’m hoping that was meant to be funny, but it comes off as naive. Second, the newsroom does not get the day off. It still has weekend staffing. That includes assignment editors, reporters and photographers working on stories for the late news. A skeleton staff of producers, editors, writers, directors, on-air talent and technical people will still be scheduled during the day, in case of an emergency or breaking news. They won’t have a lot to do, but they’ll still be there, just in case. Small market stations might not do that, but at WABC, and I’m sure most other major market stations, that’s the way it works. Newsrooms everywhere get a staffing break when Christmas falls on a weekend, because weekends always have skeleton staffs, compared to weekdays. So, Christmas scheduling on a Sunday is easier, even without sports to fill the day. By the way, the people who went to work at 11PM on Christmas Eve, in miserable weather, to put together the morning show on Christmas Day probably don’t feel like the newsroom got the day off. Neither will the people who have to go to bed at 3PM on Christmas Day, so they can do the Monday morning show.

They’re installing new equipment in their primary news control room. The back-up control room they’re using only serves the newsroom.

The WABC President/GM position is posted on the WABC and Disney career websites. While Mr. Aslam continues on medical leave, the news department is being run by two Assistant News Directors who are long time station veterans, along with the input and counsel, when necessary, of Mr. Matthews.

This problem was resolved long ago. A news control room was built at least five years ago when the station completely overhauled and remodeled the engineering floor. Live is not automated. It still does TV the old-fashioned director/TD, full switcher and audio board way. On the other hand, the news is fully coded and automated. So, the two control rooms are very different. There might be other reasons behind the WABC response. But the control room is not one of them.

New Question… Just wondering… Has Nexstar started replacing the homegrown proprietary equipment in former Tribune stations (Brutus, Opus, etc.) with standardized and industry compatible equipment? Or are former stations still contending with Tribune white elephants?

Personally, I think traffic reports on television are useless and a waste of time. Traffic can change dramatically from the time you see it until the time you hit the road. Other than a major accident, road closure or detour that will shut things down for hours, TV traffic is like trying to predict tomorrow’s lottery numbers. With the proliferation of truly relevant traffic apps, the availability of constant traffic updates on New York’s multiple news radio stations, and even a SiriusXM New York traffic channel, TV traffic is nothing more than window dressing. Anybody who bases their commuting decisions on TV traffic reports doesn’t really want to get where they’re going.

It is true that most TV helicopters are leased. Often, they are bundled with traffic reporting services, provided by one of the major traffic providers. The pilots and the helicopter reporters are generally officially employed by the traffic service, and not the station. They simply act as contractors. This keeps their head count off the station books, and delegates all payroll and benefit handling to the traffic company. When you tally up all the things included in the helicopter contract (helicopter, pilot, camera, reporters, insurance, maintenance, traffic service, etc.) the cost is easily well over one million dollars a year. On top of that, helicopters generally have a use variant, similar to a mileage agreement on a car lease. Stations get a set number of hours per month (use it or lose it). Anything over that comes at an additional hourly rate, that can be between $700-$1000 an hour. And no. You can’t carry over unused hours. It can take just one extended breaking news event to send the helicopter expense wildly and enormously over budget. It usually falls to the assignment desk to monitor monthly usage of the helicopter. If the assignment editor sees the monthly hour total reaching its ceiling, he or she usually will get the news director’s approval before crossing the line into extra hourly charges. In every newsroom I’ve worked in, it became common for the last few days of the month to have “no fly” orders.

Oh boohoo. During football season you have to work an hour or two overtime, one or two nights a week. If all you want is an eight hour, no overtime day, then Jiffy Lube or CitiBank are probably hiring. Here’s an idea: the next time you see a nurse or first responder on the street or in the supermarket, stop them and tell them your horrible overtime tale of woe.

A fifth isn’t necessarily out of the question. Weather is a hallmark for WABC. During severe weather, they often double team their weather people. They have found it useful to have one meteorologist work as weather producer for another during long newscast stretches like the mornings. WABC also has a history of putting weather people in the field to either do climate related stories, for community events, or during sweeps. It also isn’t out of the question that WABC and ABC could be bringing back a resource sharing agreement where WABC provides a weather person to ABC when network news needs one. And finally, the additional person gives them the opportunity to do more online weather updates, live or recorded. As far as the $$$ are concerned, ABC recently gave the owned stations additional specific money to add more diversity to their on-air talent. WABC’s weather team needs that.

WABC has never been big on shuffling current anchors around unless there is a very good reason (such as when Diana Williams retired). The main focus there now has to be on looking ahead. Bill Ritter is close to 70, or might be there already. Whatever main anchor changes WABC makes will be with an eye to having an heir apparent on deck. Joe Torres isn’t far behind Ritter, so it isn’t likely to be him. WABC names anchors who will be around for a few decades, not just a few years.

New York is too different from region to region for one statewide newscast to find traction. Upstate people hate downstate people; the (NYC) northern suburbs don’t care about anything or anyone other than Metro North; Long Islanders are too busy being stuck in traffic; and everyone hates Staten Island. I think the solution for WPIX is to move out of Midtown East, and move to Queens. Then, build a newscast and image that is New York City, other than Manhattan. Forget Manhattan news. Concentrate on the other four boroughs and their 7,000,000 residents. It’s harder to do, and requires some real outside the box work. But it would give New York something it doesn’t have: a newscast that resembles and reflects New York.

This kind of thing has happened before, in the long ago days of CONUS, Florida News Network, and other regional or adhoc consortiums. They are a giant pain, but only until the suits are tired of their big bad bully struts. This will last until there is one huge national breaking news story in a Nexstar market, and the networks are desperate for station video, and stations are desperate for network resources. Then they’ll all grit their teeth, come to some sort of “agreement”, and all get on with more mundane matters. Like logos and crawls.

I don’t know why there seems to be surprise or mystery surrounding this “ownership change”. This was the plan from the beginning of the Tribune sale, and it was no secret. Because of the number of stations involved, Nexstar needed to divest WPIX (and others) to get FCC approval; but they didn’t want to lose it forever. That’s why the WPIX sale price at the time was pretty cheap, and why it included the buy-back option. If you go back and read the articles and analysis of the Tribune sale, this was widely expected and predicted. Some thought it would be when ownership rules were relaxed. Others thought it would be when Nexstar finished rearranging its financial labyrinth. Either way, it was always part of the plan. Only a political or economic apocalypse would stop it. Doing it through an ownership sidecar might not have been the original endgame, but it is neither unique nor unprecedented This was never a question of “if” Nexstar would re-acquire WPIX, but “when”. it truly is too bad that WPIX is leaving Scripps. But this was always a “rent, don’t buy” arrangement.