The Early Optics are Bad for KTVU 10 PM Anchor, Mike Mibach

TALK ABOUT BAD VIBES...

The KTVU newsroom, hell, the entire building in Jack London Square, is already fed up with new, permanent 10 PM (and elsewhere) anchor, Mike Mibach.

Not that they were in love with the guy; Mibach's short honeymoon is gone and he's feeling the heat from newbies to the rank and file. There's a growing unease that Mibach and the new regime at 10 has lost the KTVU mystique.

The ratings continue to PLUMMET and have cratered continually since the Feb. Sweeps. So fast is the drop, KTVU's suddenly vulnerable at their once-dominated 10 PM hour.

Mibach hasn't exactly set the place on fire. In fact, he's getting quite a bit of internal ribbing with many staffers feeling he will never gain acceptance, from the staff and most certainly, from viewers, at least for now.

"Nobody here has any confidence in him, nobody," said a veteran news staffer to me. To Mibach's defense, he's been on the desk (fulltime) less than a month. But he's also been at Fox2 for almost two decades.

I've never been a Mike Mibach fan. He looks like he's about 18 year old, for starters. And he has an eternal smirk that is both annoying and irritating, as if he was entitled to the 10 lead anchorship. In fact, KTVU brass didn't make the formal decision to replace (Frank Somerville) with Mibach until the very end. They told him he had the gig but he didn't get on the desk, (at 10) until the last minute when KTVU began its plunge and both suits and Fox decided to make the move (with Mibach) official because the numbers were cratering and they finally did the deed.

Mibach's robotic shtick needs a severe shaking.

He has a problem with optics--namely, his appearence of a "jock, pretty boy", although that's not his fault, entirely.

But he can also try to humanize himself and engage more freely. He needs to open up. His ad-lib skills are atrocious and his bantering ( with co-anchor, Julie Haener) is forced and contrived. Mibach looks like a second-string college quarterback who is more immersed about a date with Miss America than he is with the game plan.

Harsh, sure, but honest.