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Report: Charter launching new Spectrum News channels


NewsMaster

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I've been continuing to watch News 1 Wisconsin. My thoughts as of right now, in no particular order:

  • The channel leans very heavily on anchors reading newswire content over B-Roll. It fills the time, but you could get the same content pretty much anywhere else.
  • If they have different feeds for the different sections of the state, I can't really tell... it's all very generic statewide or national news. While this avoids the "are people in Madison going to care about news from Milwaukee" issue, it replaces it with an "are people going to care about this at all" issue.
  • The "Weather on the 1s" is an interesting hook, but with all the repeated weather segments, it feels like they have precious little time for the other news segments.
  • Sports reporting feels almost nonexistent. Surprising, since they have veteran sports anchor Dennis Krause on staff, as well as anyone else who worked over on Spectrum Sports that is remaining with the organization after that channel goes away. 
  • The 2 or 3 reporters they have are all pretty much doing human interest pieces. No actual reporting that I've seen.
  • Most importantly: far too much repetition. I get it, this is a headline news format station, so some repetition is to be expected, but it still feels like they could alternate between packages each hour so that it doesn't feel like the exact same thing over and over again. 

Right now, I feel like this is at best something to have on in a lobby or waiting room, as I mentioned before. Definitely not anything at this time that anyone would deliberately want to watch to be better informed.

Things may improve if they expand their reporting roster, but right now, the 3 or so reporters they have just aren't enough. I see they have job openings, so I'm hoping they do plan to expand.

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  • 2 weeks later...
On 11/30/2018 at 9:11 AM, LoadStar said:

I've been continuing to watch News 1 Wisconsin. My thoughts as of right now, in no particular order:

  • The channel leans very heavily on anchors reading newswire content over B-Roll. It fills the time, but you could get the same content pretty much anywhere else.
  • If they have different feeds for the different sections of the state, I can't really tell... it's all very generic statewide or national news. While this avoids the "are people in Madison going to care about news from Milwaukee" issue, it replaces it with an "are people going to care about this at all" issue.
  • The "Weather on the 1s" is an interesting hook, but with all the repeated weather segments, it feels like they have precious little time for the other news segments.
  • Sports reporting feels almost nonexistent. Surprising, since they have veteran sports anchor Dennis Krause on staff, as well as anyone else who worked over on Spectrum Sports that is remaining with the organization after that channel goes away. 
  • The 2 or 3 reporters they have are all pretty much doing human interest pieces. No actual reporting that I've seen.
  • Most importantly: far too much repetition. I get it, this is a headline news format station, so some repetition is to be expected, but it still feels like they could alternate between packages each hour so that it doesn't feel like the exact same thing over and over again. 

Right now, I feel like this is at best something to have on in a lobby or waiting room, as I mentioned before. Definitely not anything at this time that anyone would deliberately want to watch to be better informed.

Things may improve if they expand their reporting roster, but right now, the 3 or so reporters they have just aren't enough. I see they have job openings, so I'm hoping they do plan to expand.

Does anyone have Any Pics or Vids? I have DISH.

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Finally able to watch Spectrum News 1 WI Milwaukee at a friend's house today! It's nice! The weather graphics are good. Watched it at 4PM, the news didn't look live, It didn't have any info on the bomb threats of SE WI Businesses.  IDK what shifts the anchors there work. I think Spectrum News 13 Orlando is live all day? 

It's a nice add to Milwaukee! Too Spectrum can't put it out OTA too.

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2 hours ago, jrh1985 said:

Watched it at 4PM, the news didn't look live, It didn't have any info on the bomb threats of SE WI Businesses.  IDK what shifts the anchors there work. I think Spectrum News 13 Orlando is live all day? 

The article in the Business Journal about the station had a section that seemed to touch on this:

Quote

The station runs local news weekdays starting at 6 a.m. anchored by Sachelle Saunders. An evening newscast starts at 5 p.m. anchored by Jason Fechner with weather reports from meteorologists JD Rudd and Craig Koplein, who formerly was an on-air meteorologist at WTMJ-TV (Channel 4) and at WITI-TV (Channel 6) in Milwaukee.

On weekends, the local news starts at 7 a.m. with an evening newscast at 6 p.m.

This to me sounds like there's only two newscasts a day, a morning and an evening one, and they're just repeated all day and all night. I can't say if this is true or not.

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  • 3 weeks later...

And here it is!  An open from Spectrum News 1 SoCal is FINALLY on YouTube!   And I must say, I was very impressed.  I know this is DMA #2, but it was a very well put together product with nice aesthetics and was 'easy' to watch.  I'd say the quality puts it up near the top in the LA market.  I'd probably watch this show.

 

 

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52 minutes ago, jbnews said:

And here it is!  An open from Spectrum News 1 SoCal is FINALLY on YouTube!   And I must say, I was very impressed.  I know this is DMA #2, but it was a very well put together product with nice aesthetics and was 'easy' to watch.  I'd say the quality puts it up near the top in the LA market.  I'd probably watch this show.

 

 

It’s a really beautiful product. It’s a slick, clean product that many stations would love to have. 

 

My only complaint concerns the ticker.  First they need to differentiate the different categories maybe as they appear the same as the regular text.  Second I would insert a graphic such as the 1 in ticker or  atleast a | or a ⚫️ seperating the headlines.  The only one I’ve seen was between each traffic report with the annoying INRIX logo between each traffic update. They should figure out a way so the logo doesn’t appear so frequently - maybe at the end they could say “Traffic data provided by INRIX (the actual logo). 

 

 

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There has been a police car chase going on for 90 minutes in Los Angeles with 3 PIT's and a man on a scooter was hit during the chase. It's still going. KCBS, KNBC, KTLA, KABC, KCAL and KTTV are carrying it live. Spectrum 1 Southern California News hasn't mentioned ONE WORD about it. This has to be the most out of touch and boring news channel in history. 

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2 minutes ago, CalItalian2 said:

There has been a car chase going on for 90 minutes in Los Angeles with 3 PIT's and a man on a scooter was hit at it's still going. KCBS, KNBC, KTLA, KABC, KCAL and KTTV are carrying it live. Spectrum 1 Southern California News hasn't mentioned ONE WORD about it. This has to be the most out of touch and boring news channel in history. 

It doesn't really surprise me since Spectrum News 1 was never meant to compete with OTA newscasts. It's mostly meant as muzak for doctor's offices and bus stations. Going in with that low expectation, it's does its job damn well.

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I think Spectrum News 1 Southern California could be used in place of Novocaine. It would put any patient to sleep.

1-5 is closed in both directions through the Camp Pendleton area because the car chase has become a police standoff. You can't get to San Diego or Orange County. They're not even reporting that on the traffic break on Spectrum News 1. 

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On 1/3/2019 at 2:58 PM, CalItalian2 said:

There has been a police car chase going on for 90 minutes in Los Angeles with 3 PIT's and a man on a scooter was hit during the chase. It's still going. KCBS, KNBC, KTLA, KABC, KCAL and KTTV are carrying it live. Spectrum 1 Southern California News hasn't mentioned ONE WORD about it. This has to be the most out of touch and boring news channel in history. 

Their marketing made clear from day one they they aren't doing police chases live or much blood and guts (NY1 and the NYS channels only do that for a few of those stories). If six stations are covering it, it's nigh pointless to have them do it too with one of the same three angles those stations choose from, and if you're there with the current news rather than the chase, you'll get some viewers that way for sure.

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On 1/3/2019 at 3:58 PM, CalItalian2 said:

There has been a police car chase going on for 90 minutes in Los Angeles [...) KCBS, KNBC, KTLA, KABC, KCAL and KTTV are carrying it live. Spectrum 1 Southern California News hasn't mentioned ONE WORD about it. This has to be the most out of touch and boring news channel in history. 

Really now?

I'm obviously not from Cali, so this would factor to my opinion, but even if I was, I would find car chase coverage dumb, boring, pointless and a waste of the actual important news stories in the area to show -- and the hard work by reporters by extention (except for KTLA which has half a day to do them both). The fact that SN1-SoCal wouldn't cover them alone would give me enough reason to watch that instead, no matter how "out of touch" they are.

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  • 1 year later...

So, a year plus since the launch of Spectrum News 1 Wisconsin. I dropped back in on it a couple of times over the last couple of days, and I'm still struggling to figure out why Spectrum is, to be honest, wasting their money on this.

 

In terms of news - little if any actual hard news. Of the actual packages I saw, a were all very light news:

- a story on the testing the voting machines in Madison (which happens literally every time there's an election)

- a story on the PBA's commissioner and how he originates from the area

- a story on an organization assisting minority entrepreneurs

- what to buy in February

- a winter trip to Door County

- a person whose collection of pinball machines turned into a business

The hardest news package was something on vaping, which isn't exactly news anymore, or local.

 

They also repeat stuff way too much. Part of that is the "headline news" format, but even still, I noticed the voting machine package repeated as the top story every half hour. The list of stories above is misleading - that was over two separate viewings on two separate days. If you watch continuously, you might only see about 4 packages total, repeated over and over. In fact, the station repeats itself so much, I couldn't quite tell if the entire station was pre-taped or not.

 

Also, their weather segments are clearly and obviously taped; the :01, :11, and :21 segments replay at :31, :41, and :51, and then recycle themselves continuously.

 

Still no sports segment at all; not even a brief score rundown. Don't get how you can have news without even a brief mention of sports headlines or a sports scoreboard, particularly in a heavily sports focused state like Wisconsin.

 

The station is, frankly, a waste. Are all Spectrum News 1 stations like this?

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Spectrum News Austin is live weekdays from 5-8a and 4-7p. There’s also a nightly politics show at 7p. Most of the rest of the day is taped, including weather. Same for Spectrum News San Antonio, which originates from Austin. Not much crime content. Focus a lot of resources on politics, health and transportation. Lots of fluffy feature stories, too. They had a pretty large sports department and a nightly sports show that aired at 10p up until a couple years ago, when the department was disbanded. Now, sports stories are rolled into the news block, as needed. 

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I wasn't planning on bumping this thread for this news, but since someone else did I guess I'll do it after all: There's another new Spectrum News 1 channel, and it's based in Worcester, Massachusetts. In addition to Worcester and central Mass, the channel also covers the Berkshires (finally giving that region Mass-based news) as well as towns of the Pioneer Valley where Spectrum is the cable provider (such as Chicopee). For the Worcester area, this replaces Charter TV3, which formerly carried Worcester News Tonight. WNT's anchors and reporters carried over to the new Spectrum News 1.

 

I for one am really excited about this. Since the TWC merger, Charter has invested a lot of money to expand their presence in Massachusetts, including expanding broadband service to several rural towns throughout the Commonwealth

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51 minutes ago, NewsMaster said:

I wasn't planning on bumping this thread for this news, but since someone else did I guess I'll do it after all: There's another new Spectrum News 1 channel, and it's based in Worcester, Massachusetts. In addition to Worcester and central Mass, the channel also covers the Berkshires (finally giving that region Mass-based news) as well as towns of the Pioneer Valley where Spectrum is the cable provider (such as Chicopee). For the Worcester area, this replaces Charter TV3, which formerly carried Worcester News Tonight. WNT's anchors and reporters carried over to the new Spectrum News 1.

 

I for one am really excited about this. Since the TWC merger, Charter has invested a lot of money to expand their presence in Massachusetts, including expanding broadband service to several rural towns throughout the Commonwealth

So it covers Worcester, the Berkshires (from the Capital Region market?) and Springfield, Mass. ?

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5 hours ago, NewsMaster said:

I wasn't planning on bumping this thread for this news, but since someone else did I guess I'll do it after all: There's another new Spectrum News 1 channel, and it's based in Worcester, Massachusetts. In addition to Worcester and central Mass, the channel also covers the Berkshires (finally giving that region Mass-based news) as well as towns of the Pioneer Valley where Spectrum is the cable provider (such as Chicopee). For the Worcester area, this replaces Charter TV3, which formerly carried Worcester News Tonight. WNT's anchors and reporters carried over to the new Spectrum News 1.

 

I for one am really excited about this. Since the TWC merger, Charter has invested a lot of money to expand their presence in Massachusetts, including expanding broadband service to several rural towns throughout the Commonwealth

Ok this would explain why more “Spectrum News 1” reporters have been appearing on Spectrum News Capital Region/channel 9, I had thought they were from NY1 but the content wasn’t city related, good to know. 

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16 hours ago, NewsMaster said:

I wasn't planning on bumping this thread for this news, but since someone else did I guess I'll do it after all: There's another new Spectrum News 1 channel, and it's based in Worcester, Massachusetts. In addition to Worcester and central Mass, the channel also covers the Berkshires (finally giving that region Mass-based news) as well as towns of the Pioneer Valley where Spectrum is the cable provider (such as Chicopee). For the Worcester area, this replaces Charter TV3, which formerly carried Worcester News Tonight. WNT's anchors and reporters carried over to the new Spectrum News 1.

Let it be known that since Spectrum took over the ex-TWC systems in the Berkshires, they have lost WWLP (partially at the behest of WNYT) and WCVB (no reason given) and that the only reason, depending on town, WBZ or WSHM survive is literally the Patriots. The actions of Spectrum have gotten to the point that Senators Markey and Warren have tried to introduce legislation to force providers in the Berkshires and similar areas to provide protection to "home state" stations. And truth be told, those in the Berkshires would gladly swap this to get WWLP and WCVB back. Don't let Spectrum's altruism fool you.

 

15 hours ago, TheRolyPoly said:

So it covers Worcester, the Berkshires (from the Capital Region market?) and Springfield, Mass. ?

Well, yes and no. Here's a map from the Commonwealth that illustrates who provides cable by town. 

Cable2015.png

The areas in blue are Spectrum, dark ex-Time Warner (mostly the Berkshires and the Athol/Orange system straddling Worcester and Franklin Counties), light ex-Charter (chunks of Hampden County and southern/central Worcester County, plus two islands (Dunstable/Groton/Pepperell in Middlesex County - also serving Harvard in Worcester County - and Westport in Bristol County).

 

From what I can tell, Athol/Orange and Westport currently aren't getting this channel. I'm surprised that they've held onto Westport this long with the MA side of that market an Xfinity stronghold and RI on lockdown for Cox.

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