Can anyone see WLNE going anchorless?

[Kenny Atkinson]

Just asking.I know they can get a weather service for the weather.

 

[Skynet74]

I've been thinking of what I would do if I owned the station. If I absolutely could not afford anchors I think I would just dump Newscasts altogether and put up some cool scrolls inbetween programming. Something similar to the crawls at the bottom of the screen during severe weather. Then at the top of each hour I think I would broadcast one minute of text. 45 seconds of news and 15 seconds of weather against a modern looking backdrop. The text could scroll up like the credits to a TV show or perhaps slide in from the side in a cool way. Of course there would be music to accompany it. Picture something like the Weather Channel's style of broadcasting local forecasts. That is what I would do. Then every half hour I would just put a text crawl at the bottom of the screen over the TV show so nothing would be interupted. That's news twice an hour all day long. I would start this at 6 AM and do it until Midnight.

 

[Kenny Atkinson]

I've been thinking of what I would do if I owned the station. If I absolutely could not afford anchors I think I would just dump Newscasts altogether and put up some cool scrolls inbetween programming. Something similar to the crawls at the bottom of the screen during severe weather. Then at the top of each hour I think I would broadcast one minute of text. 45 seconds of news and 15 seconds of weather against a modern looking backdrop. The text could scroll up like the credits to a TV show or perhaps slide in from the side in a cool way. Of course there would be music to accompany it. Picture something like the Weather Channel's style of broadcasting local forecasts. That is what I would do. Then every half hour I would just put a text crawl at the bottom of the screen over the TV show so nothing would be interupted. That's news twice an hour all day long. I would start this at 6 AM and do it until Midnight.

WOW! That is an awsome idea! At the begining of each show. A scroll at the bottom of the screen of HEADLINES I guess a brief WX and sports update. I can actually see this on a WLWC or WPXQ or something. People get there news and get to watch Everybody loves Raymond. I truly think your on to something......I am not joking!. You better copyright this idea before it becomes a reality.

 

[Skynet74]

Thanks Ken. I really think it's the best approach. This also willl educate the people who don't typically tune into the news. Now they will be more likely to hear about what's going on. The station could make money at the same time by sponsoring these text crawls at the bottom of the screen. Every headline segment could start off by saying something like this for example:

***** ABC6 Headlines are brought to you by New England Pest control. They won't bug you. (401) 555-1212 ****

Then you go into the News. It's quick and painless. I think it could work. I Don't think I could copyright this idea though. Cable News stations are already doing this type of thing. Now it's time for local stations who can't afford a full newscast to try it. This would definitely cut back newsroom costs. They wouldn't need a very big staff to pull this off. They just need a few people to type up headlines.

 

[Kenny Atkinson]

Thanks Ken. I really think it's the best approach. This also willl educate the people who don't typically tune into the news. Now they will be more likely to hear about what's going on. The station could make money at the same time by sponsoring these text crawls at the bottom of the screen. Every headline segment could start off by saying something like this for example:

***** ABC6 Headlines are brought to you by New England Pest control. They won't bug you. (401) 555-1212 ****

Then you go into the News. It's quick and painless. I think it could work. I Don't think I could copyright this idea though. Cable News stations are already doing this type of thing. Now it's time for local stations who can't afford a full newscast to try it. This would definitely cut back newsroom costs. They wouldn't need a very big staff to pull this off. They just need a few people to type up headlines.

I am not sure though if I would do it on every half hour all day.Maybe shrink closing credits and do something like this.

example...Some stupid court shows credits are rolling. I would shrink down to some sort of half screen and air a weather service forecast that runs :30 to 60 seconds.Spot or two Now The View starts or another syndicated show and a crawl starts.PROVIDENCE JOURNEL HEADLINES BROUGHT TO YOU BY: Joe Idiots car lot. Blah blah blah into just headlines then back to full screen.

Maybe try keeping a night newscast staff if I could.

 

[Skynet74]

The problem with running news during credits is that most shows already have credits shrunk down, The Network does this by running promos now. You hardly ever see a credit roll untouched anymore. So there really isn't much opportunity to do this for local stations. Plus most credits are not a minute long. Some are really short. You don't want to jip people out of their minute of news. Lots of times credits are different lengths depending on if an episode runs long or short. As I see it there are to many variables and complications to crunching up credits to run the news. There really needs to be a dedicated minute to do this. Back in the 80's WBZ Boston used to run a segmment called "4 Today" AT 59 minutes past the hour every single hour between 9 Am to 4 PM there would be a LIVE human interest segment with Ron Cantera and in later years Tom Begeron. They would be sitting in the studio and talk about various things in the community and in entertainment. Sometimes they would play contests with people at home. It was a neat segment for the station to do. They did these twice an hour. The one on the half hour was a little shorter.

Stations are going to have to clip a minute of commercials every hour. So it will actually end up being News every hour at 59 minutes past the hour leading right into the show start. Then every half hour run the text crawl at the bottom of the screen right over the program.