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What was the Worst TV newscast y'all could remember watching?

notalkallstatic said:
I would have to say WNEP TV-16 in Scranton, PA. Their news reporting is average, their news writing is at a 3rd grade level, but what really drives me crazy is the production of their news. It's just down right painful at times, with technical goofs, either the director punching the wrong camera, lots of black on the air, anchor looking at the wrong camera, tapes not rolling (so you get to see the tape in standby,) mics being clipped, the list goes on and on with the technical mistakes.

Sometimes it's like watching at movie featured on Mystery Science Theater 3000.

Not to mention the controversy back in '05 when their morning "meterologist" (who should of been fired years ago) joking suggested (ON AIR) to the female anchor (who was pregnant at the time) that if he were her boss he would make her choose between her career and motherhood. She became upset and walked off the set during the commercial break. This isn't the first time that he has done something that almost got him fired.
Click to expand...


WNEP reminds me a lot of WPVI in Philadelphia--a longtime number one station that doesn't seem like it would be number one--both use the Action News theme. Back in January WNEP's tower collapsed in an ice storm and it was off the air and lost its cable signal. Viewers went to the WNEP forums the site hosts to post their outrage and despair. It seemed as if these viewers had never changed the channel from WNEP. WNEP even put up an internet stream of shows while they were off the air due people demanding their Newswatch 16! Of course, WYOU and WBRE tried to take advantage of the situation, but viewers posted how they were unhappy about having to watch those channels ::)
 
Any newscast in Birmingham, AL in the early '70s.
They all had sets that looked as if they hadn't
changed since the '50s; the news, weather, and
sports segments were divided into three separate
programs just as in the '50s, and the CBS station,
WBMG (now WIAT)/42, seemed to be an excuse
for the anchors to clown around, particularly sports
guy Tommy Charles.

Dishonorable mention to WJBF/6 Augusta, GA in
the same era. It, too, looked like something from
the '50s, especially Terry Sams' weather forecasts.
His maps and graphics reminded me of the old
"Atlantic Weatherman," which I watched in Raleigh
in the late '50s/early '60s.

Note to the poster about WFMY: I get WFMY, too,
and I notice the echo as well. I also wish that the
person who makes up the "crawl" for the "Good Morning
Show" would learn to spell; I catch an error about every
other day. There was a time when WGHP might have
earned the prize (how many of you in the Triad remember
Frank Deal's corny jokes?), but Fox has obviously put a
lot of money into the station, and if local news had a
farm system like baseball, WXII could be an AA or AAA
contender (I still pick WFAA/8 Dallas between 1976 and
the early 2000s as the closest thing to network quality
that I have personally seen). If WFMY's ratings are
slipping, it's not hard to see why: the competition is so
much more professional-looking and sounding.

I'm waiting to hear if anyone in Atlanta would nominate
WGCL's news or, if they have long-enough memories,
WXIA's "11 Alive Newsroom" from 1976-78 when Steve
Somers did the sports.
 
No doubt, the nation's worst newscasts, "Unifour Tonight" at 5:30 and 10, are presented by WHKY-TV/14 in Hickory NC. This station must try to make their news programs amateur and folksy---and they succeed. All the more embarrassing considering they are in DMA 25 (Charlotte). Hickory is about 50 miles NW of Charlotte, but due to must carry they are on cable and satelite throughout the area. WHKY's remaining programing consists of shopping programs and locally produced "religious" programs.
 
Well, living in Charleston in the late 1990s, there were many opportunities to watch bad local news. For me, the worst I've seen in this market was WCIV's from late 1999-September of 2002.

That station then was very lowly rated, and could never keep talent for more than a few months, except for their main weather and sports anchors, Tom Crawford and Dean Stephens. Leslie Lyles came from St. Louis (from another bad ABC affiliate), having several years of experience at WCBD, but she barely lasted two years at 4.

They always had misspellings in their graphics, and used an ugly living room set for many years, causing them to be one of the lowest rated ABC stations in the country.

At 12 noon for several years, before "Port Charles", they always ran Creflo Dollar's religious show, which barely cracked the ratings.

They had about five or six morning weather anchors between 2000-2005, and none of them lasted long. WCIV had a 5pm news for a long time, and it lost to "Judge Joe Brown" and the "Cosby Show" on the local Fox and UPN affiliates.

However, when they moved their 5pm news to 7, they gained a large amount of viewers, and kept continuity which remains today.

Dishonorable mention to WMDT in Salisbury, MD, as their news that I saw last year looked like it had been taped 15 years ago, and most of their reports were ABC packages.
 
Strange no one mentioned Traverse City's WGTU -- they have no regular newscast, just newsbriefs during GMA and a 10-minute newscast at 11PM. Viewers said that not only are they amateurish (the station's sales director doubles as an anchor), but they were busted last year for their overreliance on Video Press Releases, which they presented without acknowledging them as such.
 
bpatrick said:
I'm waiting to hear if anyone in Atlanta would nominate
WGCL's news or, if they have long-enough memories,
WXIA's "11 Alive Newsroom" from 1976-78 when Steve
Somers did the sports.
Click to expand...

I watch WGCL, and I like it. Sure, they are number 12 in the ratings (sarcasm,) but I actually like their news. Channel 2 seems so stuck up with themselves, and I just don't get the warm fuzzy feeling with 11Alive, that I get with WGCL. I won't even touch Fox 5.
 
"Harold Greene - who spent many years in Los Angeles mostly on Eye Can't Get A Witness News - was the inspiration for the character in anchorman based on his days on the San Diego. The film's producers - probably wishing to avoid paying money to Greene - deny that but naming their Green-based character after another color - Burgundy - and giving him Harold's trademark hair and mustache from the 70's is more than coincidence. Check out this San Diego newspaper article: http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20040704/news_mz1a4anchors.html"

In the late 70s, Harold Greene was tapped to be co-anchor for the locally popular Dave McElhatton on KPIX. He did not come off well on camera, and was pilloried by local TV critics. He didn't last long, and KPIX gave him the ax. A lot of Bay Area anchors have ended up in LA, but usually because they were good, and left voluntarily for higher paying jobs in the bigger LA market.

So I was flabbergasted when I visited LA, and saw Greene on the air there. I figured his next stop after KPIX would have been Peoria, Des Moines, or somewhere like that. No offense to Peoria or Des Moines...
 
bpatrick said:
I'm waiting to hear if anyone in Atlanta would nominate WGCL's news or, if they have long-enough memories, WXIA's "11 Alive Newsroom" from 1976-78 when Steve Somers did the sports.
Click to expand...

I nominate WGCL! Oddly enough...they just won an Emmy for Best 11 PM newscast. The judges must have been smoking something, or took one look at Dagmar Midcap (unqualified weathergirl who over the chief weather"person" position earlier this year) and saw her...chest...and the rest was...

When I was travelling through Greenville/Spartanberg last year on my way to NC, I saw WLOS, and knew it was a Sinclair outfit. Anyone who forces conservative bias on their stations is automatically the worse.

I saw WFMY (which is sister to WXIA/WATL), and it wasn't bad. I recognized the announcer as the one that did the VO's for WSB-TV in the 80's, as well as two oldies stations in Atlanta (Fox 97 in the 90's and Cool 105.7 from 2003-2005). WGHP (then sister to WAGA, WGHP had not been put up for sale yet) was also good, as well as the two Hearst-Argyle stations I saw (WYFF and WXII) and the Media General stations (WSPA and WNCN - which MG just acquired from NBC Universal).

The graphics at WSOC were 1,000,000 times better than the cheap looking graphics sister Cox station WSB-TV uses (Both are HD newscasts - WSB kept the same cheap looking font when they went HD. ABC started using the same font a few years after WSB did). On the Meredith front, WHNS was a million times better than sister WGCL.

WRAL is a newscast that really blows you away in terms of quality. They were the second in the nation with HD news (behind KOMO Seattle) in 2000. Their advantage - the company that owns them (Capital Broadcasting) only owns five TV stations and two radio stations (all in NC). Cox and Capital Broadcasting are both small and private (Capital being much smaller) and they invest their profits back into their product.
 
To be serious, any station that uses the Independent News Network set in Davenport, Iowa for their local news is just plain lazy in my opinion. They always get local points of reference wrong.
 
Not so much that it was lousy, but rather low budget...... KYUS-TV, Channel 3 in Miles City, Montana. Original airdate, 1970, this one-lung operation was TV's answer to Simon Geller (W-V ("as in victor")-C-A), the late one man FM operation in Gloucester, MA. One man, one camera, one cranky video-cassette recorder and one temperamental Channel 3 transmitter all made this operation so endearing to the viewer. It was so bad it was good. I saw a DX video (via skip) of KYUS with Mr. Rivenes doing the news with him as anchor, tech director and engineer. The station obviously did not use a TBC as the other stations were stabilized on the skip but KYUS's raster bars could not stay stable. It was in color! The station was featured in a 1979 episode of "Real People" with Fred Willard (of "Fernwood 2Night" fame) visited the station and actually did a newscast on "Kayuse". It was a hoot!
 
A few of my favorites:

WOAY - recently - lots of network feeds rehashed, bad graphics, audio quality and set (what set?)

KXGN (early 2000s) - Same as previously mentioned but when I was there, the set was decorated with a couple of US flags (the week before July 4...). Video was VHS-quality in with the old 80's style camcorder (you could see the movements - may be worth investing in a DVC camcorder and a tripod...). The newscast (which aired 10:35pm - 11pm) was taped, since I heard the exact same newscast on KXGN radio at 6pm, with the same "errors" in the script - just different commercials and without the video package describing the recent upgrades at the local golf course...

WMTW's morning 15 minute newsbreak at 6:45am early 1990s - the anchor was "posed" with his coffee cup in hand (like he was taking a sip right before starting) - the video faded in a little early, so he was sitting in that posed position for about 3 seconds (an eternity when watching it...)
 
I think quite a few CTV stations do pre-taped 11:30 news. I'm pretty sure CKCO in Kitchener has a pre-taped report. And speaking of that station, their newscasts are unbearably dull. When you watch them you get the sense that everyone has just climbed out of bed and is really sleepy, and still needs to get some coffee. Sadly, this has been a recent phenomenon with that station.

CFPL in London has had some interesting newscasts over the years. There was one time George Clark started coughing mid-sentence, turned to Kate Young and said something like "Sorry, you finish this", then left for awhile. And another time, an anchor left partway through the newscast (during commercial break) and was replaced by someone else, who explained to viewers that the first anchor "was sick and had to go home". I have never seen a newscast where the anchor who started the newscast was not the one who finished the newscast.

CFPL's first newscast with two anchors in January 1985 was so bad that even the local newspaper which then owned them criticized them pretty harshly. According to the paper it was an hour full of problems including wrong tapes playing, unwatchable video feeds, and wrong anchors being shown. For many years that station had a lot of graphics errors, wrong tapes playing, and audio dropouts. As the only station in the region though, and also likely because they have long emphasized substance over style, it has long had very high ratings beating out most top network prime-time shows.

Fortunately this station has improved immensely in the past 5-6 years, and it arguably puts out the best local news product in the region, far better than the local rag or local radio. While other stations have seen their ratings go down in the new media age, this station still has climbing numbers.
 
How about seven minutes of black on the CBS Evening News
because Gunga Dan walked off the set?

Tennis anyone? ;D
 
I nominate the KIRO Morning News with Karen O'Leary. She was a horrible anchor and must have had pictures of the ND in a compromising position.
 
I'll nominate KGO-TV's NewsScene in San Francisco in the 1970s with Van Amburg. In terms of production values and budget, it was OK, but it was a simultaneously insipid and sensationalistic news cast. They were credited with starting the irritating trend toward "happy talk" news. Worse, they were the most flagrant example I'd ever seen of the "if it bleeds, it leads" philosophy, and specialized in gruesome stories. Their prime-time teasers were legendary. The most famous was:

"Severed penis found on railroad tracks. Details at 11:00!"

Unfortunately, their tactics worked - they were the highest rated news in the Bay Area, by far.
 
WTVA-Tupelo, MS is a terribly crap-tacular station. They attempt to look "up market" which ends up making them look even worse. They have a great graphics package, but rarely if ever, have their bug on the screen. It's very obvious that the entire operation is human operated, because of all the miscues. Aside from news, they rarely meet the syndicated tape or network feed coming back from break - and end up cutting off the first 3 - 5 seconds.

Right after I moved there in 2005, the female anchor (who has since left) was using a laptop at the anchor desk just before the newscast started and apparently forgot to move it out of the camera shot. The resulting shot was her head in the upper left, the OTS graphic on the right side and the laptop screen taking up the rest.

A few days later, at the end of the show, the anchors were signing off and the studio camera op started trucking the sports camera back across the studio (behind the anchors) before they had finished the newscast.

Weekends are worse, they literally use one shot: the anchor at the desk with a graphic on their 3x3 video wall behind him.

Their chief meteorologist has to be nearing 80 (or looks like it), the morning met looks like a child molester when he smiles and the weekend guy couldn't stand still if a gun was pointed to his head. And none of them know how to work the advanced weather system they purchased 18-months ago, especially when severe weather is around. During the February 5th outbreak, their coverage was absolutely the worst I've ever seen. The north part of the market overlaps with Memphis - trust me, no one there was watching WTVA that day.
 
Lkeller said:
I'll nominate KGO-TV's NewsScene in San Francisco in the 1970s with Van Amburg. In terms of production values and budget, it was OK, but it was a simultaneously insipid and sensationalistic news cast. They were credited with starting the irritating trend toward "happy talk" news. Worse, they were the most flagrant example I'd ever seen of the "if it bleeds, it leads" philosophy, and specialized in gruesome stories. Their prime-time teasers were legendary. The most famous was:

"Severed penis found on railroad tracks. Details at 11:00!"

Unfortunately, their tactics worked - they were the highest rated news in the Bay Area, by far.
Click to expand...

Around Christmas 1997, Robert Reeves did a teaser for the WHNT 19 Noon news in Huntsville. It was for the Mr. Food Segment. He said "Mr. Food cuts the cheese, today at noon."
 
Any list of the worst newscast would have to include WMBC in Newton, NJ. Languishing in the shadow of the six major New York newscasts, and a dozen newspapers, WMBC still has a one hour newscast at 5pm every weekday.

Their newscast, except for two or three local stories, is almost all CNN repackaged stories. Their graphics for many years included a hard to read computer font, and their open today is nothing to crow about.

2008 open
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zN8d0bWWviIn
 
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