Big Anchor Shuffle in Wichita

As FTVLive told you, KAKE (Wichita) Anchor Jeff Herndon left the station for WFLD in Chicago.

He's leaving has triggered a series of personnel shifts at the ABC affiliate.

The station is filling the void left by Herndon by moving existing personnel to different newscasts, but it’s backfilling with some new faces, too.

Veteran anchor Larry Hatteberg is now co-anchoring all of KAKE’s weeknight newscasts, at 4, 5, 6 and 10 p.m., essentially adding Herndon’s shifts to most of his own. 

Hatteberg in recent years has anchored KAKE’s earlier-evening newscasts and its weekend evening newscasts.

With more hours during the week, Hatteberg will no longer be anchoring weekend newscasts. Mike Iuen is moving from “Good Morning Kansas” to cover those. Meteorologist Ben Pringle is moving with him.

Jemelle Holopirek remains as “Good Morning Kansas” anchor and KAKE has added El Dorado native Frank Waugh as a morning meteorologist.

Annette Lawless was hired to anchor a new Sunday-morning version of “Good Morning Kansas” and will also serve as a reporter throughout the week. She fills the position that opened when Jared Cerullo left KAKE in June. (Cerullo has since filed a wrongful termination lawsuit against KAKE and its parent company, Gray Television Group Inc.)

On the sports desk, KAKE recently hired Kansas native Jake Schlegel to replace Chris Frye, who left in July to take a job in Arkansas with Fox affiliate KNWA.

H/T Wichita Business Journal  

Where's the WKMG Reporter?

Reporters from the local Orlando stations gathered for a picture.

Why?

Who the hell knows?!

The only station not represented in the pic was WKMG.

We're guessing either the Reporter was a dude or too busy actually covering the story they were sent out on. 

DC Station Names New News Director

Fox O&O boss Dennis Swanson was in the WTTG (DC) newsroom Today as it was announced that Dana Hahn is the new News Director.

GM Patrick Paolini announced to the staff the hiring Hahn. 

Previously, Hahn served as Vice President and News Director for WJBK FOX 2 for the last 12 years. Before her appointment to Vice President of News in 2001, Hahn was FOX 2’s Assistant News Director, a position she held for four years.  

“Dana led WJBK (Detroit) to the #1 position and under her leadership, maintained its role as the market leader for many years. Her creativity, signature style and news acumen is unmatched and I look forward to seeing her influence on our newscasts,” Said Paolini.

Added Hahn, “I am extremely proud to have worked alongside a tremendous staff at WJBK and I am confident they will continue to make great strides in the Detroit community. To be given the opportunity to work alongside a leader like Patrick in one of the best news towns in the country is a dream come true; I can’t wait to get started.”

Hahn joins the station just while WTTG is still wiping some egg of their face after making a number of mistakes while reporting the shootings at the Navy Yard.    

Talk About a Backhanded Compliment

Some guy Tweeted that he thought Katie Couric is "super sexy even though she's like 100 years old."

Couric showing what a good sport she is, Re-Tweeted the the Tweet and added "Ouch and Thanks."

So not only is Katie Sexy...she also still has a good sense of humor. Not bad for someone of her advanced years.  

Ummmm You Know that's Not Your iPad...Right?

This morning  veteran BBC anchor Simon McCoy was introducing a story about privately run drunk tanks while holding what appeared to be a heavy ream of photocopier paper. 

Huh?! 

The BBC later tried to say why their anchor was holding a package of paper while reading the news on the air?

This morning as Simon McCoy was preparing to introduce this story, instead of picking up his tablet to hold as he went to air, he mistakenly picked up a ream of paper that was sitting next to it. In the rush of live news, he didn’t have an opportunity to swap the items, so simply went with it. 

Damn...maybe he needs to be in the drunk tank.  

Here's the video: 

Hmmmm So Starbucks wasn't their Choice

It looks like Morning Joe (MSNBC) anchors Mika Brzezinski and Joe Scarborough, were really not that found of Starbucks coffee after all.

For years you would see the Starbucks cups and logos all over the morning show.  

But, Starbucks ended their sponsorship with the MSNBC program and now you see when no one is paying them, Mika and Joe like Dunkin Donuts coffee. 

The sharp eyed peeps at BuzzFeed noticed the Dunkin Dounuts coffee cups on the set and asked MSNBC what happened to Starbucks? 

The network says that the formal partnership between Starbucks and Morning Joe  ended several weeks ago.

“MSNBC and Starbucks had a successful partnership for more than four years and we’re looking forward to working on new projects together in the future,” said an MSNBC mouthpiece.

Of course one Starbucks catches wind of Mika and Joe really like, we doubt they'll be back. 

Twitter Rape Threat Gets Idiot 5 Years

An idiot in Philadelphia who threatened over Twitter to rape a KYW meteorologist and kill her and her child was sentenced Tuesday to five years in federal prison.

Justin Vernot, 30, made the threats against KYW Kate Bilo through the Twitter account @ColdDeadEyes in February 2012, telling her that he knew her routine, was coming for her, and planned to kill her in front of her son.

The chilling messages were noted by U.S. District Judge Paul Diamond when he handed down a sentence that topped both federal guidelines and the term requested by the prosecutor. The sentence also focused heavily on conduct Vernot was not charged with, including messages he sent on the CaringBridge networking site to two children with potentially terminal illnesses.

Diamond said Vernot "intended to inflict severe distress" on those families and Bilo, rejecting the defense's argument that Vernot's actions were partially the product of a brain injury sustained during a drug-induced blackout. "You weren't in a fog. You weren't asleep. You weren't brain-injured, as far as you know," Diamond told Vernot before imposing sentence.  

Personally, this jerk should have gotten a hell of a lot more than 5 years. Let's hope he rots in prison. 

H/T Philly Inquirer  

Everyone is a Winner at Fox News

Fox News has unveiled their top secret plans for a new prime time line-up and everyone at FNC could not be more happy.  

Greta Van Susteren's show moves to 7PM which replaces Shepard Smith who heads to the "News Deck."  

Papa Bear Bill O'Reilly stays at 8PM. Megyn Kelly takes over Sean Hannity's spot at 9PM. Hannity goes to Greta's old spot at 10. 

So who was demoted in all of this? 

No one if you ask Fox News.... just like your kids little baseball games, everyone is a winner. 

Shep lost his 7PM show entirely, but he's still a winner. Greta is bumped down from prime time to fringe, yet she's still a winner. 

In fact, Greta took to her blog to say she's ecstatic to be moving to 7PM. In her blog post on Greta's headline was "

We earned this one! All of us – and that means you, loyal 10pm viewer, too!"

How a "loyal 10PM Viewer" help move her to 7PM is beyond us.

Fox News is still the number one cable news channel. But they were suffering viewership loss, particularly in the demos.  

Hannity has been losing viewers for quite awhile.  

Roger Ailes is a very smart man and he knew that if he didn't shake things up, FNC could continue to shed viewers. 

But, Ailes shows that all his years in politics were not wasted. The guy demoted people and yet they all feel like they are winners. 

Damn! He is good.  

Might be Time for a Ceasefire at Crossfire

CNN's high hopes for Crossfire part 2 might be quickly fading.  The show is falling fast in the ratings.

The Hollywood Reporter writes that Crossfire debuted to modest growth for the network on Sept. 9, averaging 581,000 viewers and 171,000 in cable news’ advertiser-friendly adults 25-54 demographic, but even the big news surrounding President Obama

’s address on Syria didn’t stop viewership from dropping 47 percent by Friday.

Each of the subsequent four telecasts dropped double digits in both total viewers and the demo, before settling at 309,000 viewers and 103,000 adults 25-54 – the latter a loss of 40 percent. For the week, Crossfire averaged 438,000 viewers and 147,000 adults 25-54. Those numbers are down roughly 10 percent from the time slot’s year-to-date average – and, among viewers, down 14 percent from the week before.

Competitors Special Report With Bret Baier (Fox News Channel) and Politics Nation(MSNBC), by contrast, were both up week-to-week. Leader Special Report bested its year-to-date average with 2.136 million viewers and 368,000 adults 25-54.

Weatherman Takes Job to New Heights

WPLG Meteorologist Roland Steadham took his job to new heights.

Steadham an avid skydiver, tells FTVLive that he looks for ways to use videos of his jumps on the air.

Steadham says that last Friday and Saturday the Miami area had absolutely no showers (which is very rare in the Summer). Many weather experts believe that Saharan Dust that was over the area, suppresses storms from forming.

Steadham did a skydive from 13,500' to see if he could spot where the dust layer was. Sure enough, he found the dust from the surface to 6,000' above the ground. 

Here's the video of his leap.  

Rapping the Sportscast

WHAS Louisville sports anchor Adam Lefkoe doesn't cover sports as much as he likes to make the sportscast his own little game.

Last week, Lefkoe did his Seinfeld themed sportscast and this past week he quoted classic rap lyrics for five straight minutes.

From MC Hammer and Skee-Lo to Jay Z and Dr. Dre, Lefkoe made references to 46 rap lyrics in his sportscast. 

It's a nice gimmick, but it takes away from the accomplishment on the field and makes the sportscast all about the guy delivering it.  

Then again, Today's TV News has become "all about me" and much less about the story. 

Here's the video of Lefkoe's Rap Sports: 

Well....She Looks Good

Fox Philly Reporter Kacie McDonnell is a favorite of many viewers in Philly, especially the guys.

McDonnell has built up quite a fan base over the years.

But she might want to learn that the Super Bowl Trophy is not "a cup" and the Philadelphia Eagles are not going to "take the cup" this year.

The "Cup" is the Stanley Cup and it is in hockey...not football.  

But, we're guessing many of the guys watching really don't care what she says. 

Sleep Deprived Courtney Friel was Entertaining

KTLA Anchor Courtney Friel got a side gig hosting the live stream of the Britney Spears coming to Planet Hollywood announcement.   Friel was thrown into the Nevada desert to babble for an hour announcing Britney Spears' upcoming Vegas residency.

It was obvious that she was working on not much sleep. Often Friel had no idea what was going on — she wondered aloud half a dozen times if she would ever get to talk to Britney. She did not. 

During the technically plagued livestream, Friel regularly had no idea what to talk about, so she discussed the imminent sunrise a few times, pointed out the "gadgets" being used to film her, showed off cue cards. 

It's always tough to ad lib for that long, but even harder when absolutely nothing is happening.   

Let's hope Courtney at least got a good night's sleep last night.  

Here's a video sample: 

Even a better clip is posted

over at Gawker.