We got this the other day from a friend and it sounds interesting. What does this mean for our local Sinclair station, WLOS? No more Mark Hyman? Check it out:
Now, News Blues confirms that the national news operation, which feeds dozens of Sinclair-owned and operated TV stations, will close at the end of March.
The employment status of news anchors like former Fox 5er Morris Jones, Jennifer Gladstone, and Alison Kosik, and weather forecasters Kristin Emery, Scott Padgett, Tony Pagnotti, Vytas Reid, Susan Schrack, Lisa Teachman, and James Wieland remains unclear. Sinclair launched its $50 million News Central in 2002.
Says NB: “Designed to cut costs by eliminating or greatly reducing the size of existing news departments at Sinclair stations, News Central became the focus of much criticism because it shifted control of news content away from the individual stations and into the hands of Baltimore news managers.”
However, News Central newscasts produced low ratings and have been dropped by many Sinclair stations. NB adds that Sinclair is “scrambling” to maintain local news broadcasts on its major network-affiliated stations like Baltimore’s Fox 45, WBFF, which produces a morning and a 10 PM newscast…..
5 Comments
Great point Marc! The real problem for the local media is trying to tell stories about Asheville’s progressive nature then somehow getting the "folks" out in Leicester or wherever to understand what the hell their talking about!
Minor point to MM: WLOS is actually about market #35, not a top 30. Still, Jay’s probably not really ready yet to be a primary weather reader in this size market.
As for NJ’s thoughts on local control and resulting quality: much as I despise Sinclair, they’re only the latest in a series of non-local owners for 13. Wometco, Multimedia, River City, Anchor, etc. — none was local. And News 13 has never really gotten the full Sinclair treatment. Sure, they have to run Hyman and some of the other NewsCentral pieces, like those awful Birmingham girls on Double Trouble or Double Takes or whatever, but they managed to retain mostly local control over their news product.
The quality complaints about WLOS’s news have been ongoing for at least the last 20 years, as have those about the Citizen-Times. It’s just part of covering the news in a small town. Everybody thinks they can do it better or thinks the newspaper/TV station was better in whatever place they used to live thatotherwise was so awful that they chose to move to WNC.
"They led with a murder; same old ‘if it bleeds it leads’ story; that gives the wrong impression about how much crime is in our town."
"Can you believe they made a PKG out of a couple of kids building a model rocket? Isn’t there any ‘real’ news happening?" (see above for typical reaction to covering "real" news)
"They did a story about a shooting and never interviewed a cop. Don’t they care about getting the facts?"
"They did a story about a shooting and only interviewed a cop. Don’t they care what people in the neighborhood think led to it?"
hmm. i was under the impression that wlos and other sinclair-owned stations were required by corporate mandate to run "the point"…
While I hate to see these folks lose their jobs, eliminating the idiotic spew of Hyman would be real cause for celebration. I would have less of an issue with his ignorant rantings if Sinclair would allow equal time for opposing viewpoints, but they can’t have anyone opposing the party line now, can they?
Just maybe a return to local control will mean that WLOS will be able to run a real news operation. We can hope, can’t we?
Not that it will ever happen, but I think WLOS outta hire one of those Meteorologists that will be affected by the closing of News Central. I would like to see Bob Caldwell gracefully call it a career (weather-wise) promote Julie to morning/noon and bring in somebody for weekends. Jay Siltzer should never be given a primary weather role in a top 30 market.