ND is Bounced in Spartanburg, SC.

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WSPA News Director Karen Kelly has been pink slipped....errrr... "resigned" and escorted from the building.

Kelly joined the WSPA/WYCW, Media General duopoly in Spartanburg, SC. in late 2012, taking over for Dan Cates.

You may remember that Kelly was the News Director that hired a cardboard cutout named "Michelle," who showed up in all the news meetings.

“Karen played an integral part in developing and implementing the “On Your Side” brand and her promotion to News Director will allow her to continue to expand that brand.”  WSPA Vice President and General Manager Bob Romine said in a statement at the time of her hiring.

He added at the time, “With a track record of excellence, Karen is also a proven leader and a tremendous journalist who has advanced her career by energizing the newsroom and focusing on viewer advocacy. We all WIN when the viewer WINS,” said Romine.

It appears that she will be playing a much less " integral part" at the station, since she has been fired. 

Here is the internal email sent to the staff and obtained by FTVLive:

Team;

I wanted you all to know that Karen has resigned from her position as News Director here at WSPA. Karen has been an integral part of our news operation for a number of years and has worked hard to advance our station in this multi-platform world. Please join me in thanking Karen for her hard work and commitment. We wish her the very best in her future endeavors!

Bob Romine
VP/GM
WSPA/WYCW

No word if "Michelle" was also kicked to the curb with Kelly.

ND Out in Cincy

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WKRC News Director Kirk Varner is headed out the door at the Sinclair Owned station. 

Varner was the longest serving News Director in the market at just over 4 years. 

Here is the internal email he sent to the staff and obtained by FTVLive:

From: Kirk Varner 
Sent: Friday, June 19, 2015 9:56 AM To: Cincinnati WKRC News
Subject: A Personal Announcement

I’ve written a good number of emails about personnel changes here at Local 12. It is =me to write one about myself.

The headline is that I’m leaving the position of News Director for Local 12 on July 3rd. It will be some 4 and 1⁄2 years to the day since I started working here and to put it as simply as I can, I don’t believe that in my forty years of being a broadcaster, I’ve ever enjoyed a station, a market and a group of colleagues as much.

But in the growth and development of any organization, there are =mes when it is appropriate to bring in a new coach to help lead the team to the next level. AMer discussing it with Jon Lawhead, we’ve agreed that this is that =me for WKRC-TV.

I’ve had a series of great opportuni=es in my career, and this ranks one ranks amongst the very best. I’m hoping my next chapter allows me to stay in Cincinnati, because Denyse and I like this place and the people here, so much. Plus, I’m looking forward to being a loyal viewer and a cheerleader for your con=nued success as “Cincinnati’s News Leader”.

I’ll try to communicate my appreciation personally to each one of you over the next two weeks, but for now--thank you for your support, your hard work and your friendship.
I appreciate every bit of it.

-Kirk 

Dallas News Director Lands Hartford GM Job

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Longtime KXAS News Director Susan Tully is leaving the Big D and headed to Hartford.

Tully is becoming the GM of WVIT, replacing Ric Harris who moved to WCAU as GM. All three stations mentioned are NBC O&O's.

Here is the internal memo sent out the O&O's from Valeri Stabb, O&O President:

From: "Staab, Valari (NBCUniversal)"
Date: June 19, 2015 at 1:52:10 PM CDT
To: "@NBC Uni TVS Everyone" 
Subject: Update from Valari Staab

Dear Colleagues,

I am pleased to announce that Susan Tully has been named the new President and General Manager of NBC Connecticut / WVIT. Susan starts her new job today and succeeds Ric Harris, who recently became President and General Manager of our two Philadelphia stations, NBC10 and Telemundo62.

Susan has worked for the NBC Owned Stations for nearly her entire career. As most of you know, she has been the Vice President of News at KXAS for the last 14 years, where she leads a newsroom of over 100 journalists in a highly competitive and massive market. During her tenure at KXAS, Susan has built an award-winning investigative unit, an experienced meteorology team in an intense weather region and a community-based reporting strategy to cover more of the market by hiring video journalists who live and work in key local cities. As the station’s news leader, she also played an important role in KXAS’s move to their beautiful new state-of-the-art facility. Additionally, Susan has taken on leadership responsibilities within the larger station group, such as spearheading news strategy and planning efforts on behalf of our stations around large company initiatives, like the Olympic Games and the Super Bowl.

 Susan is a dynamic leader. She has led KXAS through countless news cycles – deadly tornado outbreaks, the Dallas Ebola crisis and the murder and subsequent trial of the American Sniper – with professionalism, tenacity and, above all, a strong commitment to the viewer. I know she will be a great General Manager and I am excited to see what she and her team accomplish at WVIT. Please join me in congratulating Susan on her new role.                                                                                                                                                                        Best Regards,
Valari Staab
President, NBCUniversal Owned Television Stations

Putting the Lens Cap on in Seattle

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Longtime KING Photojournalist Ken Jones has decided to put the lens cap on his camera for the last time.

The longest serving photojournalist on KING's staff with almost four decades of excellence in journalism is retiring.

In a world where MMJ's shoot and edit their own stuff with cheap cameras and almost no imagination, Jones was a throwback to the "good old days" of TV news. 

The station put together this send off video:

BREAKING! OKC Sports Director Killed in Accident

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KFOR (Oklahoma City) Sports Director Bob Barry, Jr. was killed in a car crash Today. 

Barry died earlier this afternoon in a car crash not far from his home.

“Bob loved his family, and he loved Oklahoma. We would just ask that everyone say a prayer for his wife Gina and his family at this difficult time,” said KFOR News Director Carlton Houston.

FTVLive will have more on this story as details come in.

Brian Williams says It's Been "Torture" Since His Suspension

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This morning, Brian Williams spoke publicly for the first time since being suspended from NBC News for lying.

Williams sat down with Matt Lauer and his first response to the very first question was an interesting answer.

Lauer asked, What have these past five months been like for you?"

BriLie responded, "It has been torture."

Torture? Right then we half expected to hear about BriWi's trip to Abu Ghraib.

He had all this time off to carefully craft an honest and sincere message with no exaggeration or bloviating...and the first sentence out of his mouth uses "torture".

Of course, it is an accepted conversational metaphor, but perhaps he should lay off the hyperbole for a while.

Just saying.

Here is the interview that Williams did with Lauer:

Lying Brian: My Ego Made me Do It

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Former NBC Nightly News Anchor Brian Williams has an excuse as to why he lied.

His ego made him do it.

Williams was interviewed by Matt Lauer for the Today Show in what is his start to try and rehabilitate his career. 

"It had to have been ego that made me think I had to be sharper, funnier, quicker than anybody else," Williams said.

For the most part, Lauer went easy on Williams. He did give Williams the chance to take about other lies that Williams to correct the record on other possible embellishments that Williams has been accused of.

Williams declined to comment on those and Lauer did not pushback for an answer. 

Williams did say that his new role (whatever that is?) was not "his first choice." Williams wanted to go back to his old job and admits he pushed for that. 

This is the first step for Williams and his tries the impossible job of restoring his reputation. He has a tough road ahead of him.

 One NBC insider emailed FTVLive and said that, "Brian Williams maybe a better actor than his daughter."

Ouch!

Here is a portion of this morning's interview:

Uploaded by PoliticalTurkey1 on 2015-06-19.

NBC to Start Promoting Lester Holt

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When Lester Holt took over the Anchor chair for Lying Brian Williams, he showed he could do the job.

Williams name was scrubbed from the title of the show, but Holt's name was not added. Holt got absolutely no promotion.

But, that will all be changing. NBC has been quietly working on a promotion package for Holt, now that he is the guy.

Sources tell FTVLive that promotion for Holt will start airing in days. Also, Michael Douglas's voice will be dropped from the opening of NBC Nightly News. For years you could here Douglas voice saying, "NBC Nightly News with Brian Williams."

Lester Holt was the person that almost everyone inside the 30 Rock newsroom thought should get the job. Holt is well liked and plays it low key. 

Now, it's his time and NBC will start giving their new Anchor the promotion he deserves.

Proof that sometimes, nice guys do finish first. 

MSNBC: The Crooks and Liars Cable News Channel

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When NBC announced that it was moving lying Anchorman Brian Williams to MSNBC, it was a slap in the face of any "real" Journalist that works at the network. 

The Baltimore Sun's David Zurawik calls the move a slap to all Journalists. He writes, "When the face of a network news division can lie on several occasions about his record in combat coverage and come back as the face of breaking-news coverage on a sister all-news cable channel, clearly credibility has little or nothing to do with it."

”NBC's decision sends a cynical message to aspiring television reporters: that credibility matters less than a journalist's personal ‘brand,’ that truth is less important than fame, slickness and being a corporate team player,” says Mark Feldstein, a former ABC and CNN investigative reporter who now holds the Eaton Chair in Broadcast Journalism at the University of Maryland, College Park.

But, maybe MSNBC is the perfect place for BriLie. After all, the network employs a number of tax cheats, so maybe adding a liar will make them more, do I say it? Fair and balanced.

Andy Lack was brought back to NBC to revive both NBC News and MSNBC. This move shows that he isn't really worried too much about MSNBC at all. 

Zurawik writes that NBC is now launching a rehabilitation tour for Williams that starts Friday morning on “Today” with him being interviewed by Matt Lauer.

How perfect is that? The hotdog who stabbed Anne Curry in the back interviewing the self-absorbed suit who lied about what he did in Iraq and Egypt and New Orleans and who knows where else.

Don’t make me laugh.

 

Will Brian Williams Have Anything to do at MSNBC?

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Now that the Peacock has banished Brian Williams to their low rated cable network, this question is, will he have anything to do there?

The Washington Post's Eric Wemple writes that the fact that dropping Williams into MSNBCville opens a freshly exposed flank for a news operation that already has too many of them.

With that exercise accomplished, how on earth will this arrangement work? Asked about that matter, a MSNBC spokeswoman responded that Williams will be “specially focused on dayside programming,” which could mean any number of things:

1) MSNBC’s prime-timers refuse to yield airtime to a proven embellisher.

2) MSNBC isn’t so committed to newsy coverage that it wants to boot the commentary of its primetime lineup.

3) Williams is tired of working evenings.

Network executives can glibly talk about sliding a big name into the programming stream to cover breaking news. That’s an easy thing to say. Much tougher is actually doing it. Fox News in 2013 declared that Shepard Smith would be its breaking news czar, equipped with all kinds of big-screen monstrosities and a shiny new studio, the better to break in any time news comes calling. Smith had the advantage of acceding to that arrangement without a whole docket of documented untruths.

Will the longtime anchor big-foot a reputable workhorse like Andrea Mitchell (noon slot) or José Díaz-Balart (9 a.m. slot) just because something significant is happening? The MSNBC spokeswoman didn’t provide details on the mechanics of the arrangement, saying that there are a couple of months to sort out such things.

If BriLie is really bored, I guess he could help Al Sharpton with his taxes.

Just saying.... 

South Carolina Politician: Blame the Church Shooting on Fox News

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A guest on CNN says that you can blame the deadly church shooting on Fox News. 

Huh?

CNN's Jake Tapper was interviewing South Carolina House Minority Leader J. Todd Rutherford  when the politician said,"....It’s really hate speech and coded language and leads people to believe they can walk into a church, because it’s no longer a house of god, it’s a killing ground. It’s a place that they can feel free to desecrate and leave blood everywhere, and that’s what this man did. And he did so on some ill-gotten belief, on some wrong belief that it’s okay to do that. He hears that, because he watches the news and he watches things like Fox News, where they talk about things that they call news, but they’re really not. They use that coded language, they use hate speech, they talk about the president as if he’s not the president. They talk about churchgoers as if they’re not really churchgoers. And that’s what this young man acted on." 

Tapper did not challenge Rutherford on his Fox News comments, which makes you wonder if he said CNN instead of Fox News, would Tapper have jumped in?

But, the one point that shows how ridiculous Rutherford's statement was is that the accused gunman Dylann Roof is 21 years old.

How many 21 year olds do you know that watch Fox News?

Exactly. 

Women Interrupts CNN's Live Shot, Calls Don Lemon "Uncle Tom"

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A woman heckled a CNN crew so badly that they had to throw to break.

CNN was live in Charleston, S.C.  covering the church shooting story. 

During a hit by CNN’s John Berman a woman suddenly appeared and started shouting at the host, repeatedly asking the host if he was “angry?”

Berman turned to Don Lemon and the woman started calling Lemon and "uncle Tom." 

Let's go to the video:

Uploaded by The Daily Caller on 2015-06-18.

Blowing Up the Morning Newscast in Phoenix

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KPNX in Phoenix is using the slow Summer months to retool the station's morning newscast. And by retool, we mean blow up the whole damn show.

 The station has booted Anchors Doug Mehan & Faye Fredricks off the show and brought in Tram Mai (pictured) and Matt Mauro.

The station has seen the morning show struggle in the ratings and are hoping the new faces and provided a ratings spark. 

Stay tuned....