dustintv said:
Bob, just of out curiousity any thoughts of how the Syracuse stations handled the story compared to Rochester?
As cnymike already said, WSYR-TV did very good by sending Dan Cummings down there. He usually shows up on any big political story, and it's very clear why. The first night did seem strange. I don't think Cummings was on the air at all that day. I was surprised to see Jeff Kulikowsky on from Albany, and on the 11pm news Monday, he didn't even show up until after the weather. Seems like some sort of technical problems, or maybe they just couldn't get a satellite window as early as they would have liked. WSYR pulled a good coup on the competition Thursday by doing a live interview with 3 state assemblypersons and 2 state senators, together on the set. I wondered how they pulled that off, considering all of these people were in Albany the day before, and Paterson spent much of his speech pushing everyone to keep working on the budget.
WSTM had Lisa Spitz out in Albany on either Tuesday and/or Wednesday (it all seems like a blur). I don't know why she bothered with the nose job -- she looked worse than ever, almost ghost-like the night she did a live hit outside of the state capitol. For a few other newscasts, she was live from the newsroom flashcam at Albany's WNYT. That looked rather cheap. If you can't be live at the actual location, you might as well be fronting it from your own home newsroom. I'm surprised they didn't send someone more "senior" from the station, like Matt Mulcahy, Kevin Schenk or Jim Kenyon. Not horrible, but could have been better.
WTVH, as usual, isn't even a factor.
I'm watching the WKTV 11pm Thursday replay right now (at 4am) and they're JUST getting to the story 6 minutes in. Worden's treating the real name of "Spitzer's high-priced hooker" as if it's brand new information -- even though it was already out in the public more than 24 hours earlier. They then followed that old information with the newer information -- Paterson's speech.
prompter said:
WKTV hasn't been the same since JW departed. He had that place in lockstep much like a General Schwartzkopf platoon.
As good as Walsh may have been, I think the change in ownership and the closure of WUTR's news operation were also considerable factors. When WUTR was still active, WKTV was more competitive. WKTV also had more money floating around -- allowing them to pay above-average salaries for above-average talent. More and more often, the newbies at WKTV are pretty rough around the edges. These days, graphics are terrible (except weather). Opens are terrible. Music is terrible. (My favorite graphics and opens were the ones from '94-'98 with the WFSB music package). And I love it when Parkervision screws up... many more chances to see camera move on-air, wrong supers/video showing up...
If WUTR was still active today, you can bet your bottom dollar WKTV would have been live in Albany every single day this week.
