Jason Sandford
Jason Sandford is a reporter, writer, blogger and photographer interested in all things Asheville.
Loyal Ashvegas reader marc says this is how it could work for “WLOS powered news” on the new WYMA (scroll down to see earlier post):
My guess is it will work the same way WSPA does the 10pm news for the soon-to-be-formerly-known-as WASV: one or more of the main WLOS anchors will stay on the set (if they don’t record it ahead of time) to read the news; they’ll hire (or hopefully have done so already, if they’re starting on Sept. 5) a producer and a videotape editor, but no new reporters. The reporters will have to record an extra outcue for their stories (“Sheraldo Barber, MY-40, Brevard”) that’ll be tagged onto the report for reuse on the new newscast. They’ll throw in some South Carolina stories off the wire and the CNN/NewsOne feeds, and they’ll call it a newscast.
Even though they’ll focus on South Carolina, they probably won’t do it the right way, like they did in the early ’90’s when they did a “mini-newscast” at 6pm on channel 40 (then known as WAXA). At that time, they had two reporting crews in the Upstate who filed stories each day, and the first segment of the 6pm news (prerecorded) was Anderson-specific, then everything from the first commercial break on was same live newscast as on 13. This time around, I’m betting it’s more of a “we can hire a producer and tape editor for cheaper than we can buy reruns of Growing Pains, and we can sell commercials in news for more than in syndicated programming” kind of thing. Not an effort to actually give the Anderson (and other SC) viewers some real news, just a cheap and hopefully profitable way to fill a half-hour of airtime.
Or, as Catnap says, “inexperienced anchors reading WLOS’ news.”
Thanks for all the comments, folks!
Dale, say hi to Lothar of the Hill People for us.
what a great blog! So informative! Keep up the good work with the infotainment Ash!
All of the "live" reports will be filmed straight from Biltmore Park.
They’ll use one of their more popular anchors and just make a producer and tape editor pull double duty.
And I can almost garuantee that it will be a near carbon copy of the 6 o’clock show story wise.
I frankly wouldn’t be surprised if they just replayed the 6:00 news at 6:30 on MY40.
Could be, but since they are (and always have) promoted 40 as a South Carolina station, I’m thinking they’ll at least try to dress up the new newscast as SC-focused. And since they don’t really focus on Western North Carolina in much of the news they’re already doing, since it’s pretty much all feed material after the first block except in the 6pm, why take a chance on turning off your SC audience with another quasi-NC show? They’re advertising for a producer and some tape editors, and my money’s on Tammy getting stuck anchoring the thing.
First off, WLOS news on MY40 dosen’t start until October. Second, wouldn’t come as a huge shock to me if the format pretty much stays the same. This gives WLOS another half hour of news programming dedicated to Western North Carolina. They (WLOS) don’t have room to put it on their channel, so they are using their sister-station.