Lkeller said:
searadiofreak said:
Hey, I'm the biggest fan of local news stars as you will find, but this is the new reality. The days of multi-million dollar contracts for local news celebs is rapidly coming to an end. I guess I don't blame the affilitates, you can score decent ratings today with young, attractive newbies as much as you can with the longtime stars. It is just the new reality. Sad, but true.
I'm not sure anything has really changed, It's also the
old reality. I'm old enough to remember when KNBC's young handsome, but inexperienced anchorman was Tom Brokaw. That was about 1968. When Jerry Dunphy started anchoring on KNXT in the late 50s or early 60s, he was young, handsome, and inexperienced.
Supposedly the 1970s was the era of the blow-dried empty headed anchorman. Think of the film
Broadcast News. If anything, the trend somewhat reversed in the 80s and 90s when most stations started pairing young female anchors with older and experienced male anchors, who were not necessarily attractive. These things seem to go in cycles.
Let's face it - TV is a visual medium, and inexperienced people can often get ahead if they're attractive.
Dunphy was 39 years old with 15 years experience as a journalist, including gigs as news director at the CBS affiliate in Milwaukee and sports anchor at WBBM, the CBS O&O in Chicago, when he landed at Channel 2.
Brokaw...yeah, he climbed fast...he was 24 when he got the KNBC anchor gig. But he was very, very good and had been at it since high school...probably had six years less experience than Dunphy coming in (just not in large markets).
Tom Snyder was 34 when he got to KNBC...but he'd already been to NY and it ws his second go-round in LA (he was at KTLA five years earlier).
Paul Moyer was 30...but he'd already been to New York, too.
The difference? These guys were additions to growing news teams, not replacements for respected vets (in fact, Snyder got Brokaw's gig...and he was six years older.
But today, it's not about a pretty face...it's about economic realities. TV news is not the cash cow it used to be. If a two-million dollar anchor doesn't bring in more than two million dollars more ad revenue based on rating in the right demographics than a quarter-million dollar anchor does, then you have to think about what else you could do with that $1.75 million in savings.
The problem in L.A. is that, with few exceptions, bench strength never got built. Younger, experienced journalists who wanted to anchor found that in L.A. , it wasn't as simple as waiting for Jerry Dunphy to retire at 65 (he died at 81, on his way to work). You could get very old (and by today's standards, very overpaid, waiting for your turn...and a $250,000 strret reporter has just as big a target on his or her back now as a 2 million dollar anchor).
Moyer turns 68 this year. I still think if KCBS hired him as their lead anchor, it would be the best thing they could do. He could probably draw an audience into his 80s (assuming there's a TV news to draw them to). But really, LA missed a couple of generations worth of talent cultivation...and the easy fix is cute 20-somethings with five years' experience instead of 30-somethings with ten or more...because they're cheaper and just as unknown to the audience.
