Funny

Ok, so we at work think this is funny. I'll share.

It's captioned: How can you spot a city boy out in the country?

News & Notes

- Apparently everyone's favorite husband and wife reporting combo is heading for Denver. KMBC's Jeremy Hubbard will reportedly anchor weekends, and report for FOX affiliate KDVR. KSHB's Taunia Hottman, however, will apparently become a new helicopter reporter for Gannett NBC affiliate KUSA. Not a bad jump, if true.

- WIBW-TV General manager Mike Delier resigned this past week.

Pope Response

I can't imagine a news director leaving any job in the middle of sweeps even if it was for a bigger market. My sources say he was forced to resign, and I'm sticking by them. It was also indicated to me that the last book...November, not February, was bad for KSNT. That lends credibility to this hypothesis.

Bieke

Pope Reaction

So the rumors of Pope's forced retirement are bogus? Who in STL did he con into hiring hiring him? Is Thiboldt finally going to step up and be ND, or are they bringing in someone new to KSNT?

Eric Boedeker

Pope Update

Kevin Pope has left KSNT's News Director post to go to St. Louis.

From: Not tellin, hehe

KC Ratings

For those of you who may or may not be interested. The following appeared in the KC Star today with the included graphic.



The Feb. sweeps: KMBC wins again
by Aaron Barnhart

KCTV, Channel 5, had a huge early lead in the local February news sweeps thanks to its riveting investigation of online sex predators. In the end, however, KMBC, Channel 9, remained on top.

KMBC, Channel 9, once again won every newscast in every time period during the Nielsen ratings sweep that ended Wednesday. KSHB, Channel 41, continued to score impressive gains at 5, 6 and 10 p.m.

It wasn’t any one thing that put KMBC back in first place in late news. As Channel 9 officials pointed out this week, the ABC affiliate just brought home the bacon night after night, regardless of how well (or poorly, in ABC’s case) the network was doing.

Channel 9’s average ratings ranged from 11.7 on Thursdays to 13.9 on Wednesdays, while Channel 5’s 10 o’clock news fluctuated from a 14.8 rating on Mondays — when it got a reliable lift from “CSI: Miami” — to 8.2 on Fridays.

Inconsistency cost KCTV its first chance in years to win the 10 p.m. news ratings race. Moreover, KCTV’s weekly averages were all over the map: up when Steve Chamraz’s reports on Internet perverts were airing, down when they weren’t. All three of its competitors, especially WDAF, Channel 4, had much steadier audiences week to week.

So what does this prove? That a heavily hyped news series can artificially pump up viewership during a ratings period? Yes. But KCTV’s rivals ignore another lesson at their peril: People do watch investigative reports.

Station managers know all too well that many viewers will watch whatever news is on. But they sought out Channel 5 when its investigation aired. For four nights, KCTV scored a rare feat: Its audience actually grew after the network signed off at 10 p.m. (KMBC improves on its network lead-in nearly every night.)

Chamraz spends four days in a house and KCTV gets four nights of great ratings. Not bad.

Now imagine what would happen if Kansas City had investigative teams doing real, substantial investigations all the time. KCTV wants to be the area’s leading I-team, but, frankly, there’s not much competition. KMBC staked out its reputation in beat reporting; WDAF and KSHB do consumer news.

Other cities the size of ours have TV stations that devote weeks and months to large investigations. The National Headliner Awards this week honored stations in Nashville and Indianapolis for such work.

KCTV may not dependably deliver the ratings that advertisers want. but it’s shown that it can turn heads. In a 300-channel world, that counts for something.

Another New Look

I continue to play with the new look of this website. Please feel free to drop me a line and comment on such things or you can post them for all to see by clicking the Post New Message link above. I'm trying to make it as easy to read and navigate as possible. Of course, loading time is also a consideration.

Dick's newsletters are now back in the right column. There is also now an official archives section. It includes the postings from the old format. It also will begin to archive current postings by month. So in 6 months if you want to go back and read postings from March, they'll be easy to find.

That's it for me today,
Bieke

Old Postings Return

How very exciting...the old postings that were lost in the great blog failure of 2004 have been recovered. If you missed anything on this site in the last six months or so, you can read the old postings by going to the archives section at the right of the page and clicking the link. Or, you can just click this link to the old postings.

Also, congrats to Sherwood on being award winning. She also pointed out that the link to post a new message was missing from the top of the page. It's back now. Post early and often.

Have a good weekend,
Bieke

She's award winning

I've been trying to get a hold of you. I finally put my bio on the web. I thought that was exciting. Also, another yea for me...a story I wrote won first place for general news in this NPPA quarterly contest. I was excited. We beat out Kansas City and St Louis and it's for general news...sort of a tough category. Anyway, better go for now...Hope you're doing well. How was national single awarness day for you?

Michelle

Castro is not dead.

This came from CBS Newspath a few days ago as an urgent message. I laughed...a lot.


NN-MANDATORY-KILL-GRAPHICS
URGENT

The Evening News Graphics which fed on the Newspath feed at 22:13:07 ET
mistakenly included an obit graphic for Fidel Castro. Do not use this
graphic. Castro is not dead.

Newspath NY