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Anchorless TV News

WSB will probably be happy not to have to hire replacements
for John Pruitt and Monica Pearson; likewise, WFMY won't have
to replace Sandra Hughes. ::)
 
Bongwater said:
It's coming.....

http://www.nydailynews.com/entertai...08-06_plan_to_drop_anchor_jolts_news_biz.html

This is devastating news for toupee makers, clip-on tie manufacturers and mustache trimmers.....
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Funny. But I doubt this will become a trend. People have been used to having their news stories introduced to them by an "anchor" since the early days of radio. I can see stations cutting back to single anchors, and paying them less money. The days of the big-bucks anchor have been over for awhile, and many stations have already cut back to single anchors on weekends. I've noticed that when one of the anchors is sick or on vacation, stations will typically air with the other anchor - they rarely bother to bring in a fill-in anymore. So the money saving measures are already happening.

But cutting out anchors all together wouldn't save a lot of money, and I doubt it will catch on.
 
...hmmm...looks like some executive saw Starship Troopers a few too many times and wasn't as interested in what Dina Meyer looked like in the showers as the rest of us ;-) ...
 
WLNE in Providence, Rhode Island has announced Bankructcy and is now in Recievership.In the past year or two have lost contracts with King World and maybe something else and I could see this station trying something like this.
 
This isn't a new idea, by the way. In fact, there is at least one 24-hour news network that has been anchorless since its inception: France-based EuroNews. Its format enables enables viewers and cable companies to select one of several languages in which the pan-European channel broadcasts.

Several smaller TV stations that form the France 3 network also broadcast anchorless local news -- and have done so for quite a while.

I don't like the anchorless format at all; I find it sterile and impersonal. It also makes breaking news coverage difficult.
 
However, it's a great antidote for the mindless "happy talk" that's taken over lately.

Quite often I wonder if these anchors pre-read their copy, or if they see the reports they introduce. I wouldn't mind eliminating the happy talk and hackneyed writing that one normally gets. And the anchor desk itself has become such a cliche. the whole thing needs to be reinvented.
 
Funny, these new local news concepts pop up every few years, and guess what? Few of them last. Most go back to the regular formula.

I fully expect local TV news to look very similar in 2020 and beyond. Perhaps with snazzier graphics...:)
 
kenwood101 said:
WLNE in Providence, Rhode Island has announced Bankructcy and is now in Recievership.In the past year or two have lost contracts with King World and maybe something else and I could see this station trying something like this.
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Again, not likely, because the savings the bankrupt station would realize - 2 or 3 anchor's salaries - is not that substantial. Young Broadcasting's KRON-TV in San Francisco has been bleeding money for 7 or 8 years now, and Young is in bankruptcy. But here's what they've done:

They've laid-off all the big-bucks field-reporters, and replaced them with "VJ's" - "video-journalists" who go out alone and run their own cameras on top of reporting. Instead of paying high-salary field-reporters plus camera operators to accompany each reporter in the field, KRON is only paying salaries for single reporters, and they're usually young hungry novice reporters - practically Interns - who no doubt work for a lot less money.

KRON has been criticized for this, and some of their VJs' reports do look and sound amateurish, but the bottom line is - KRON is saving a lot more money than they would be if they fired 2 or 3 anchor people.
 
TheBigA said:
However, it's a great antidote for the mindless "happy talk" that's taken over lately.

Quite often I wonder if these anchors pre-read their copy, or if they see the reports they introduce. I wouldn't mind eliminating the happy talk and hackneyed writing that one normally gets. And the anchor desk itself has become such a cliche. the whole thing needs to be reinvented.
Click to expand...
Happy talk on whose part? Normally I only see "happy talk" as a segue to another segment (weather to sports for instance). Almost never between scheduled stories.

The idea of a desk is a good one. If the anchor has a paper copy of the script, he/she needs something to do with it, and a desk is convenient. Does the desk have to accommodate four anchors seated at it? No. Does it need a video monitor in front and behind? Probably not. Does it need a photograph of the city skyline? Again, doubt it.

Or is the bigger farce the continual growth of sets? When WISH-TV put in its current set, they proclaimed that it had dozens of usable camera angles. It does, and they use a lot of them. They usually open the news with a :30 tease with the anchors seated at the desk. After a commercial, the anchors reappear doing a standup in front of a giant video wall. Then they go to the desk. Then one of them will do a standup with a monitor over shoulder. Then more from the desk. Then they'll toss to a reporter in the newsroom. Do viewers find this more entertaining than if Debby Knox were seated in one place the whole time?

Maybe the real question is: do viewers really care about the exact presentation of the news?
 
no, they really don't. They do like familiarity, and that is why I don't exect major changes in local news presentations anytime soon.
 
Anchorless news?

People who don't know history are condemned to repeat it, I guess.

Back in 1948 at the dawn of TV news, NBC tried an anchorless newsreel format for its evening news, with anonymous voiceover announcers. CBS went instead with an anchored newscast fronted on camera by Douglas Edwards. Ratings were primitive then, but C.E. Hooper (the radio ratings company) was doing them, and Edwards on CBS clobbered NBC's anchorless newsreel. So late in the year NBC got the hint, figured that viewers wanted an anchor, and put John Cameron Swayze (one of the newsreel voices) out in front of the camera. NBC caught up in the audience race then and there, the anchor's value was proven, and the format of TV news was set.

A credible anchor who inspires confidence in what he or she is saying, is key to a successful newscast. There's more than 60 years of TV history that proves this.
 
Bob1370 said:
Anchorless news?

People who don't know history are condemned to repeat it, I guess.

Back in 1948 at the dawn of TV news, NBC tried an anchorless newsreel format for its evening news, with anonymous voiceover announcers. CBS went instead with an anchored newscast fronted on camera by Douglas Edwards. Ratings were primitive then, but C.E. Hooper (the radio ratings company) was doing them, and Edwards on CBS clobbered NBC's anchorless newsreel. So late in the year NBC got the hint, figured that viewers wanted an anchor, and put John Cameron Swayze (one of the newsreel voices) out in front of the camera. NBC caught up in the audience race then and there, the anchor's value was proven, and the format of TV news was set.

A credible anchor who inspires confidence in what he or she is saying, is key to a successful newscast. There's more than 60 years of TV history that proves this.
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Absolutely. I assume NBC took their inspiration from MovieTone and other theatrical news reels that played in movie theaters in throughout the 30s and 40s. They were very important - especially during World War II, because they generally provided the only filmed war news readily available. But even those theatrical newsreels almost always had one announcer, generally a name known to movie-goers. So even if you never saw the anchor, he was still a credible presence.
 
This whole discussion is built around the concept of TV stations picking stories and presenting them to a waiting audience that has no other source for the news. We all know that's not the case. Certainly we know there is a segment of the population that likes to have its news presented. But there's a growing part of the population that (1) is only interested in a certain type of news, and (2) gets its news delivered to their emailbox every day, with regular bulletins when they occur.

The news business is changing, and it's following the broadening of the news platform. Traditional means of distribution will change, regardless of what 60 years of TV history says. The information revolution we've undergone in the last ten years is such that what happened before is irrelevant.

I get anchorless news right now at MSNBC.com. I can see the stories I want to watch without the anchor set-up. If I want, there is a paragraph of text on the page before I watch the video. All the other news channels do the same thing. So this isn't too far out, and I expect it will become popular to people who simply don't want their news dictated to them.
 
I think the concept of "anchorless news" is just an attempt by broadcasting companies not having to pay salaries to anchors. It's another way to make the bottom line look better for stockholders.

Would I watch an anchorless newscast? No! Would you?

Besides why go to all the effort of HD news if you are not going to have someone on camera?
 
Mark_Giardina said:
I think the concept of "anchorless news" is just an attempt by broadcasting companies not having to pay salaries to anchors. It's another way to make the bottom line look better for stockholders.
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Oh the endless "blame the stockholders" excuse. Bla bla bla.

Talk to the anchors about that. In his book, Dan Rather talked about the role of the anchor, and why he felt it was important for the anchor to get away from the desk and stay in the field, keep the connection as a reporter. He's not the only one who feels that way. Anderson Cooper, Katie Couric, and Brian Williams all prefer working in the field to being behind a desk.
 
TheBigA said:
Mark_Giardina said:
I think the concept of "anchorless news" is just an attempt by broadcasting companies not having to pay salaries to anchors. It's another way to make the bottom line look better for stockholders.
Click to expand...

Talk to the anchors about that. In his book, Dan Rather talked about the role of the anchor, and why he felt it was important for the anchor to get away from the desk and stay in the field, keep the connection as a reporter. He's not the only one who feels that way. Anderson Cooper, Katie Couric, and Brian Williams all prefer working in the field to being behind a desk.
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And that's why a good anchor provides a "credible presence" . We can all think of a few bad anchors who worked in our local markets over the years...you know, the 'Ted Baxter' or 'Ron Burgundy' types we all liked to ridicule. But those types seem to be long gone - I can think of only two bad anchors in the last 20 years in my local market (SF Bay Area). Both of them were on our new (somewhat struggling) NBC affiliate early in the last decade, and neither of them lasted very long.

In bringing up other media, like internet - sure, we all get "anchorless" news from those sources. We always did - needless to say, newspapers never had "anchors." But I think a credible anchor brings value, and I don't see them going away anytime soon.

The Bay Area hasn't had high-salary anchors for years now, so going "anchorless" would simply not save enough money to make the experiment worth trying.
 
Lkeller said:
And that's why a good anchor provides a "credible presence" .
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You miss my point. Because Anderson Cooper is another reporter in the field, what he does is the model of anchorless news.

The concept isn't to eliminate humans, but to eliminate an unnecessary anachronism. To focus on reporting, not presentation. Substance over form.
 
TheBigA said:
Lkeller said:
And that's why a good anchor provides a "credible presence" .
Click to expand...

You miss my point. Because Anderson Cooper is another reporter in the field, what he does is the model of anchorless news.

The concept isn't to eliminate humans, but to eliminate an unnecessary anachronism. To focus on reporting, not presentation. Substance over form.
Click to expand...

Except that Cooper and Williams are still anchoring the news - even if they're doing it from the field - usually from the site of theone biggest current stories. I agree with the goal however - sounds good to me.
 
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