|
 What in the name of Rube Hornstein is going on with the weather guys, er, make that weather people in our city.
We have Pete Coade who retired from ATV only to un-retire and show up at mother corp. Then one of the few good assets on the Global News, Cindy Day, takes her weather map and plucks into the old chair belonging to, Peter Coade.
So what does Global do? They went and brought back to television the old ATV weather guy and one of, if not the first meteorologist in the history of ATV and that is Richard Zurawski.
It seems Coade once he turned 65 earlier this month became a contract employee at ATV. Same salary, benefits, etc but under contract. That’s company policy and he wasn’t overly enthused about that.
Mind you not too many people are on the air at 65 so his case would be one of the few exceptions. The other is CTV (main company) news icon, Lloyd Robertson who has to be over 70!
Enter one new CBC boss, Andrew Cochrane. I remember the guy from the early 70’s. He worked with Bill Ozard in the CJCH newsroom. I heard him read the 8am cast major radio newscast back then and he wasn’t bad.
Cochrane is one of the many (and the latest) who will get a chance to bring CBC Television news back to its glory days and those days were when the TV set was black and white. ATV had a show called I.D. and CBC had “Gazette’.
That is one whale of a time ago. Starting in the mid to late 70’s ATV started making in roads and when Dick Prat, the news director brought Dave Wright from CJCH Radio where he was the open-line host to CJCH TV the pendulum started to change.
Some 25 years ago Prat went into a 90-minute (Live at 5 & the 6pm) package it was good bye CBC and hello ATV. When you think that ATV produces two-hours of live TV each night from 5-7pm, it’s going to be hard for anyone else to make in roads.
As it stands now, and it has been for nearly 20-years, ATV doesn’t only lead in the suppertime news wars…it dominates. They are the Heinz ketchup of the local news business. I don’t even know if there is a generic (President’s Choice) brand at 6pm.
That point was raised by CBC newsman Jim Nunn when he told media students in the early 90’s that after one storm CBC had reports from their reporters but those were ‘phone’ reports and while the reporter was on the screen, the viewer saw a map of the province.
Meanwhile, ATV was ‘live from all over” with their reporters stuck in the snow. It was good TV and live TV. Live from New Glasgow, Live from Sydney, Live from Moncton.
They may have only been outside their studio but the point was made.
Speaking of Nunn he returns to where he belongs and that is in the anchor’s chair. I think Norma Lee McLeod is a very good anchor but in this market, Nunn is Nunn.
Very few have the voice, the presence and the skill at this position. But, and this is Cochrane’s problem, he needs more than Nunn. Having Nunn is like drafting a QB in the first round but the fact is if a team doesn’t have a good line to protect the QB and a defense to stop the other team, it won’t make a difference.
I like the ‘Supper time news for Nova Scotia’ but it didn’t draw numbers away from ATV when Nunn was in the anchor’s chair a decade or so ago so why should it now? If anything ATV got stronger as CBC diminished their commitment to news. From Nunn, to Linda Kelly, to Linda and Bruce (Rainnie) to Norma Lee. That’s a lot of changes. For CBC it has been the law of diminishing returns.
In the last 25 years ATV has had Bruce Graham (who left to start up MITV {Sept. 1988} after a long run at ATV, Dave Wright and Steve Murphy for the last decade plus. That’s not a lot of turnover.
I’ve heard people in their 30’s call Murphy, ‘Uncle Murph’. That’s familiarity.
In Nunn’s first crack as the main anchor he did have the most entertaining news segment in the Maritimes with the Harry (Fleming) and Parker (Dunham) political panel which Nunn was a brilliant provocateur.
They will need something on those lines and more (maybe some one that can do editorials) and a sports voice for local and regional comment wouldn’t hurt. But Nunn alone won’t be enough.
I think the money spent on a weather person could have been used elsewhere, like on a Rick Grant or developing a segment that will draw viewers. What CBC News needs is eyeballs at 6pm, the weather doesn’t come to play until 10 or 15 minutes later.
CHANGES AT NEWS 95.7
Well, well, well. We have some interesting changes at the all news/sports/talk radio station in town and most of them are for the better.
Gone is Bill Carr on Saturday mornings. While I like Carr his show was more of a CBC type thing. I recall several mornings he had so few calls. It’s one thing to be able to do a good interview which he does but it’s another to provoke callers and listeners, which he didn’t. And it was to artsy-fartsy for my liking. Leave that stuff for the public broadcaster. And in that role, Carr, would do a very good job.
So now on Saturday morning’s we get a news package. Good and it’s about time. Hey, while I commend the station for doing it, let’s not forget that is what they promised when they pleaded their case to the CRTC at the WTCC a few springs ago.
The first weekend I heard it, around three weeks ago, I liked the news part of it, but not the sports.
Some guy, Jeffery Lansing, came on and told us about the U.S. Tennis Open, how the Jays blew it again and some CFL scores.
Excuse me, but that’s not only old news, it’s available on Headline Sports, TSN, Sportsnet, etc. Tell the sports person something we don’t know.
There wasn’t a single mention of the AUS starting its football season across the Maritimes and anything local.
But weeks two and three were a vast improvement. In addition to a few big national stories we heard about the AUS schedule, about the Q, and more. A big improvement.
Now, if we could get this sports department on Saturday mornings to talk about high school sports, I would have no more complaints. (That may be stretching it.)
You see, I’m a great believer in consistency and from Monday-Friday, sports guy Scott MacIntosh does deliver high school results. So if you are going to do it on a Mon-Fri basis then do it on Saturday and Sunday when most NSSAF football games are scheduled.
And something has to be done about the wretched Saturday afternoon USA College stuff that goes on for hours, and hours, and hours on end. Maybe in Toronto and their potential four-million people a few may give a darn about the ‘Oregon Ducks” or the ‘Horned Frogs from wherever.” I doubt if ten people in the Maritimes care.
Also, it’s less news at noon and more consecutive talk. The ‘Afternoon talk show’ as hosted by Tom Young used to be from 1-3:30. But now we have the Maritime Morning show (which has turned into the Halifax Morning show and that’s not a bad idea) with Andrew Krystal from 9-noon go directly after one of those ’95 second’ news updates right into the Young program which runs Noon – 3pm.
News 95.7 boss Jim Hamm tells me that ‘survey says’ (sounds like Richard Dawson doing the TV show) “there is a much stronger appetite and desire for talk show programming throughout the mid-day period than there is for “all news” programming. We have therefore opted to eliminate our ‘News Wheel’ from Noon – 1pm. This allows for a fairly seamless block o talk programming from 9am- 3pm.”
Hamm went on to say that his research shows listeners want ‘news updates’ rather than a full newscast at the bottom of the hour (9:30- 10:30, etc).
Whatever radio station you listen to these days you will hear the constant barrage of promos, contests and more contests. Yes, the ratings are on. You’ll notice more TV ads promoting the stations and more big time giveaways.
BTW, if your radio or TV station is doing something new or interesting, drop me an email and I’ll try to get the word out.
In conclusion, my belated sympathies and condolences to those who knew Heather Proudfoot of ATV who passed away recently at 48 years of age.
John Soosaar had a great column on her in Sunday’s (September 23) Daily News.
This email address is being protected from spam bots, you need Javascript enabled to view it
|
