Monday, September 10, 2012

Lost in the Bay Area Media Shuffle: Star Power

It dawned on me the other day how truly the Bay Area is lacking in star power among our media crowd.

We have had some great names in radio and TV here--Van Amburg, Dave Mcelhatton, Dennis Richmond, Pete Wilson, all come to mind.

Now, we're left with with a few remaining crumbles. For all the Dana Kings, the Dan Ashleys and Tom Sinkovitz', a Carolyn Johnson and Frank Somerville, we've been shred to pieces.

Few move the needle. This isn't another nostalgia piece. I know the business has changed. Blah, blah, blah, yeah, got it. I'm resigned to the fact that mediocrity, (at best), has become the new model. Formula TV and radio is the zeitgeist and that's too bad.

Have you noticed how just about everything, every format, (the tube and the radio), is very much the same. Nobody takes any chances anymore. "Special Reports" are the usual "be-careful" consumer babble that is nothing special nor important, just time filler, really. When's the last time we had some really ground-breaking deeply engrossing investigative reporting here? KNTV, (NBC Bay Area) has tried; God bless 'em, but their effort, however noble and well-intentioned, is lost in the shuffle. Sorry, just my opinion.

The newbie reporters on radio and TV are, for the most part, average at best. They can't cover any story in this city--hell, most of 'em don't even know this city! I gave props to KRON for their coverage of the Chevron/Richmond refinery fire last month; thank goodness Catherine Heenan was at the front anchor desk that night directing the coverage. I'm not saying Heenan is a star, but she's damn close. One of her mentors down in San Jose, a woman I've talked to in the past, was also anchoring and couldn't ad-lib a line if her life depended on it. She's no star, but she looks great. So does Heenan by the way, but that's not the issue here.

Mostly everyone, everything, every entity has been marginalized. This is hardly news, but I lament the fact that the truffles have been reduced to vanilla wafers and that's just plain sad.

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27 comments:

  1. We are fortunate here in Seattle to have anchors and reporters at the three major stations who have been at their respective stations for years. They know the city and love being here.

    The corporations that own them, however, are pushing more and more for a cookie cutter approach to news presentation and I am sure that, within five years or less, we will have a similar situation to San Francisco.

    Our radio stations are already formatted to the point of bland. Even the so-called news stations go through the motions of being relevant.

    Now, if you really want bland, try Boise, Idaho for both radio and television. Management by spreadsheet is destroying broadcasting in nearly every market.

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  2. Sadly, the TV playing field has been disrupted. The 1% have won and the 99% have to pay. It's that simple. Your rants regarding our friends in Atlanta are merely about a symptom and not a cause.

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  3. Too much turnover. Most of those around longer are subtle also. Isabel and Marty have now been around as long a say,a Pete Giddings had been. But low key..same for Steve Paulsen or Don Knapp. Don is never mentioned..but I swear-I think I wasn't much more then college age( or HS?)in the 70's when he started in the bay area. He must love what he does or gambles like crazy to keep working..

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    1. Don Knapp is sooooo under rated. He's one of the best.

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  4. It is so formatted that you can literally move channel to channel (with maybe the exception of KTVU) and see the same story being broadcast within seconds of the other station!

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  5. Anyone else notice KNTV picking up the former KGO voice over that was on there for years. I had KNTV news tuned on while occupied with something else and when the voice over said "This is Today in The Bay" I had to look up to make sure I heard right, I thought I had it on KGO for a second. Meanwhile KGO's new VO sounds a little too aggressive and exaggerated. Nice new graphics package though.

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  6. KTVU bread butter is violent crime, fires, and any kind of catastrophe, any where. KTVU in the morning will cut to an auto pileup or a fire in another city and let the live feed run because they've run out of their own violent stories to run. The crawl on other Bay Area stations cover diverse stories. All you get on Channel 2 is murder, robbery, car crashes, and fires. Mornings on 2 used to have interviews and some human interest stories. Now it's all bleeding leads. I have started watching cable news in the morning. The play Cops and Robbers takes a huge swipe at the media and you know they're talking about KTVU. I posted on their FB page about the wildly outrageous on air technical errors and they responded about a post on another topic. Idiots. And Frank Somerville is still awful.

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    1. KTVU blows! Bring back Ross in the morning. How about Diane Dwyer? Who needs to hear doom and gloom first thing in the morning? Horrible cookie cutter, listen to the police scanner reporting. Give me something lite while I'm off to earn a good days salary. That goes the same for KGO radio. Which also blows!

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  7. Catherine Heenan does not even come close being a star and does not look good on the air. She always seems to be mourning for the loss. Dana King and Carolyn Johnson are the real star power women anchors in the bay area and look a lot better (and hotter).

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  8. I watch ABC, NBC and CBS news end to end and, I swear, they have the same person picking the stories. CBS at least makes an effort to add some depth to their reporting but, for the most part, its M.O.S.

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  9. Now lets focus on radio. So many of you call for these average talents to replace people at KKSF/KGO/Elsewhere and all I can ever think to myself is "You're upset that the 2nd baseman was demoted to AA ball."

    There is little media talent here across the board, and the likelihood is because this is not a media city. It's a big market, but it's not fashionable like LA, NYC, and Miami, nor is it the ad-driven city like Chicago. It's a completely different type of place. - Roy

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  10. I not only had to chuckle at your post but also the comments. The reason is not turnover. Look at most of the anchors, they have been here forever; Pam Moore, Dan Ashley, Julie Haener, Dana King, Frank Summerville, Darya Folsom...the anchors are the only thing constant about this market. The only station that is the exception is KNTV with its bunch of young talking heads, but Jessica Aguirre has been in the market for a while.

    The reason is not corporate ownership. Heck, if they could find a star to drive ratings they would.

    The reason is not mediocrity. The names you mentioned, the main anchors, are all very talented and shine here and would everywhere. Yes, they all do the same thing and nobody really stands out personality wise (Radnich is the exception). I never really understood why KRON hasn't gone full force to sell Radnich...maybe because he is too much of a polarizing figure...you either love him or hate him...plus sports is never a good sell.

    The reason, I believe, is two-fold. First, marketing. I do not see any station put forward any of their anchors as stars or big draws. I get a laugh out of the new KNTV outdoor ads here in The City featuring big head shots of Raj, Janelle and Jessica. Really? At least they are trying to sell their talent. But can you recall another station doing the same? Maybe ABC.

    Next, and what I believe to be the most important....news anchors are not stars and viewers in the bay area could not care less about them. We don't need some pretty face or a pompous bloat telling us what is going on. We can find out for ourselves. We have that independant spirit that tells us we don't need them.

    And let's be honest, it is very rare that one individual can alter ratings. I ask...what would get you to watch? Professionalism? Respect? All the anchors mentioned have this...yet people don't watch. It is a schtick? A gag? A gimmick? We don't have any of that here.....but I doubt it. Remember Drew Soicher doing sports at CBS...his schtick didn't last long...although it plays well in Denver and elsewhere.

    What would get you to watch?

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    1. I can't remember the last time I watched local news. I can tune into cable news at any time -or- I can go online and find the news that interests me at a time that's convenient for me. And you hit the nail on the head- this DMA could care less about its news personalities. I had a nice tenure here, about 9 years, and it was a rare moment when someone "noticed" me... and if I was ever at an event meeting new people, it was never "wow, what a cool job" it was "oh, sorry, but I don't watch the news."
      I think this board only gets the traffic does because it is populated by current and former Bay Area newsies!

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  11. Up until about 2000, I thought SF news was more professional and informative than NY, LA and Chicago news. Now we're like Toledo.

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  12. The big problem is that trained professional journalists are a dying breed. They no longer matriculate from the smaller markets to the bigger ones, so there is no proper seasoning. Plus you have idiots like the guy who runs the KRON newsroom, (I heard from one of their former longtime former employees that this guy is not only a putz and a dummy, but a jerk and an egotist as well!) and that's a shame.

    I feel sorry for serious young journalists who want to get into the news business these days. So many companies have watered down, consolidated, and dumbed down the product, that the public is also getting short changed, and that sets a dangerous precedent in our rapidly growing attention deficeit society.

    It's amazing that with all of the diversity in the media that there are now fewer voices and by-lines, but so many more platforms. Unfortunately, many of the web sites rely on the wire services or bloggers, who have strong opinions like the man on the street, but lack inside knowledge of critical issues because they're merely observers and not true journalists who actually talk to the real news makers. The wire services may be okay, but they shouldn't be a primary source of information for news.

    In a free and open society such as ours, especially now while we are facing a lot of problems, we need an abundance of smart and ambitious journalists who will cover stories fully and carefully. Unfortunately many young Americans have been weaned on this 'me-first' society that values crap like reality TV and tabloid trash, and their curiosity and knowledge of how their own country works is alarmingly lacking. That's a very frightening thing, and augurs bad times ahead. A country that has a majority of voters who are out of touch with the issues because they aren't paying attention, is a country that is in decline!

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  13. When I started in broadcast news in the early 1970's the news directors had come from newspapers. They smoked cigars and swore like a sailor, but they also insisted on double and triple checking sources.

    That was also at a time when, in order to even be considered for a reporting job, you had to have a least five years of print experience.

    In other words, you had to have seasoning and highly professional credentials. Now, it seems all that is required is a "pretty face" and a willingness to work for peanuts.

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  14. That's it in a nutshell 9:11, no pun intended. I too have worked in the media for many years, mostly in radio, but some TV and newspapers, and what you say is mostly true.

    I would add however, that most of the young broadcast journalists I started with in small market TV news back i nthe mid 1970s were just a few years into the 'biz' or were just getting out of college and didn't have the requisite print experience you mentioned was necessary. Most of them did work on their college neewspapers, and they had to be reasonably good writers.

    But you're right about the curmugeonly ways of news directors.
    I got into an unfortunate auto accident where I suffered a slight concussion while I was working at this one small market TV station, and when I called the news director to let her know I couldn't work that day, her response was "Oh, shit, thanks a lot!"

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  15. Is no one going to mention that options for getting news have changed from three TV stations in the 70's to a plethora of outlets: international/national professional to blogs to news feeds to ultra-local sites to Twitter to web boards and many others?

    News from down the block and across the world available anytime, not just at 5p,6pm, and 10/11pm...

    I have a feeling this diffusion of focus and accompanying dispersal of attention has something to do with the changing faces of news.

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  16. The changing face of news is not a great argument because other cities are still popularizing their own talents. You can even look at sports, especially when it comes to females on ESPN and elsewhere, or even the FOX News Business show which features a slew of blonde women. None of these people seem to come out of the Bay Area (not that I know of). It's the other fashionable cities.

    However, you can look at this from another angle, and make the case that fashionable news people have an inherent desire to be famous, so they end up in more high profile cities. They are drawn to those places because being a news anchor is not their end game, where as maybe out here the people at these stations are not hoping to become famous.

    There are a variety of reasons, but I will agree with the premise that the overall popularity and fame quotient of local TV and Radio personalities is incredibly low.

    We can look at one person in particular who seemingly always wanted to be well known more so than truthful and honest to his beliefs, and is now famous: Michael Savage. If you look at his career, and his previous life, this was a man who hung around with liberals, started lawsuits in the name of himself, and has since became a national host. It seems he is an egomaniac, and used the Bay Area to move beyond it. In a city that seems to value the collective over the individual, Savage is somewhat of an anomaly.

    Well, that's my rant for the month! Have a great day.

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  17. Hope you and your readers don't mind this plug. There's some great talent in the making in Alaska--the Last Frontier. Anchorage, the state's largest city, is the #140 Nielsen market.

    */ Bay Area native Grace Jang, respected and trusted as a journalist with over 10 years of experience in TV and print media, anchors the nightly news on KTVA, CBS 11. /*

    */ KTUU-NBC-2's Weekend Anchor Christine Kim has moved upmarket saying goodbye and starting this week as a reporter with KSNV, the NBC affiliate in Las Vegas, NV./*

    */ CBS-11's Alexis Fernandez, a lifelong resident of Alaska, who began her TV news reporting career a few short years ago in Fairbanks, recently joined the news staff of KGUN-TV in Tucson. /*


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    1. Christine? I remember Lisa Kim. What ever happened to her?

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  18. I notice their has been some tension between Radnich and Kreuger. And Rich,I bet it has to do with the Friday gambling segment. I think I hit a nerve of truth, that Krueger wouldn't respect Garey's beliefs as a Mormon to at least side with Radnich in not wanting Adam Meyers as a segment on Fridays. As Radnich has said..Larry pals with both Bunghole..and Meyers who used his "influence" to get on Gary Radnich's show.
    Radnich was just about calling Kreuger a sell out today..for his tradeoffs for suits and cars. And Krueger knows,like all listeners to Raddy know,is that Gary hates those cute panda or other zoo animal Giants hats. Kreuger then wore one the last hour of today's show.
    And Radnich kept mentioning Krueger's negativity. Yesterday,Radnich laughed in Krueger's face when Larry claimed to be "evolving".. it was as Rod Brooks would say in his gay voice, "awwwkeward". I say it manly though..

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  19. Rich, dont forget John Weston and Wanda Ramey they both worked at CBS5 back in the late 50s till the late 60s or so. They both did some ground breaking work. Art Brown at channel 4, Roger Grimsby at KGO.

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  20. The Friday gambling segment on Radnich show..otherwise known as the Bad Mormon segment, is so strange on Comcast. Radnich hates having Meyers om his show. Meyers is Satan to Raddy. How much?..as Krueger fluffs up Meyers..Raddy is seen walking back and forth behind Kreuger..coffer and donuts stuff-lol. THAT'S ultimate "they forced this on me" body language.

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  21. In the decades I've seen of Radnich,he's NEVER walked past somebody talking on air,on camera,let alone twice. If that isn't F-U and this segment body language,I don't know what is.

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  22. Who gives a flying fig about Fatnich and Kroooker! They're both a bunch of self-serving blowhards. And please get rid of that dysfunctional idiot who is obviously bipolar, 'Pe-Con,' with his annoying takes on sports. How did this cretin ever get on the air. Give Kate Scott that spot, she's good. Then bring on Ray Woodson to take Eric
    (I'm constantly high on caffein!!!) Burns in the evening. Kate and Ray are the only two left at that place who seem to know what the f... is going on. They are the only ones show who have a shred of credibility or professionalism.

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    1. Fatnich- lol. That always makes me laugh. Probably Gary too. Thanks.

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