OK Andy Lack.... No One is Buying That Line

While FTVLive took a brief two days off, Andy Lack decided to do the long expected blowing up of MSNBC.

The cable news network that basically quit covering news is now headed back into news (are you still with me?).

Lack is blowing up the afternoon slot of 3 to 6PM and will replace it with more news. “The Cycle,” "Now with Alex Wagner” and “The Ed Show” will be replaced by straight news. 

Chuck Todd heads back to MSNBC with a show along with his duties on Meet the Press.

Brian Williams will also be part of the new news MSNBC, which by the way may change it's name from MSNBC. 

Lack met with the staff late last week and discussed some of the new plans and also Brian Williams. The NBC boss tried to emphasizing that that BriLie's new position on MSNBC, as anchor for breaking news and special reports, should not be seen as a demotion.

Of course no one in the meeting bought that, no matter how hard Lack was trying to sell it. 

Really?!

It shows the sad state of Journalism, when landing the PR guy is considered an "exclusive."

The guy's job is COMMUNICATIONS DIRECTOR.

Come on!

The Weather Channel's Value Drops Dramatically

Back when The Weather Channel actually did weather, the network was valued at $335 million. 

As of June 30, Comcast, TWC's owner says that their valued its stake in the Weather Channel at only $86 million

It seems The Weather Channel’s distribution woes are dropping the value quickly. 

The Weather Channel–which was acquired by Comcast’s NBCUniversal, Blackstone group  and Bain Capital LLC in 2008–faces a major threat to its business as pay-TV distributors push back on the fees paid to carry the channel. The network has been under intense pressure since it was dropped in March by Verizon FiOS TV service, which cited consumers’ growing use of online sources and apps to look up weather information.

Over the last four years, the Weather Channel has lost 11.2% of its subscriber base, according to Nielsen data. It now reaches 89.7 million households of the roughly 100 million homes in the U.S. that subscribe to pay TV.

Maybe they are losing viewers because of stuff like this?

H/T WSJ

Looks like it's Spreading

This is how Julie Banderas signed off from the Fox Report on Saturday. 

The Fox Report was never like this

And it looks like it is spreading to local news stations as well. 

Sometimes you just have to blow off steam. Happy Friday!Kendall Kirkham Andrew Douglas Janeen Gordon Jerica Phillips

Posted by WMC Action News 5 on Friday, July 24, 2015

This is What Happens....

This is what happens when you don't let your cousin sleep with you.

A garage was destroyed and nearby houses sustained damage.

BTW - Sorry ladies, but her husband is already taken as well. He looks like quite a catch. 

I've Made an Executive Decision.....

I have decided to take the next two days off, both Today and Tomorrow.

I met with the staff and we decided that I really need a couple of real days off. Sure, I could ask the FTVLive Intern to step in. He does a great job covering for me when I am away from the computer.

But, when the Intern is filling in, there are still back and forth phone calls, text messages, email and editorial decisions that have to be made. So, while it is nice having the Intern step in, it's still truly not time off for me.

I have some planned time off coming in September as I need to head to New York for a few days, but I really think a quick couple of days off in the slow month of July is something I could use as well.

I'll be honest, I hate taken days off. I hate not having the site updated and I hate having someone post a story before I do. But, at the same time, I have been going it it hard this year and could truly use some analog time.

My goal is to stay away from the computer, off my phone and get nowhere near my TV. 

It's a couple of days of decompressing. 

I hope you guys don't mind if I take a very short break, but I think I need it.

I'll see you back here first thing Monday morning.

Try and behave yourselves while I'm gone. OK?

Reno Anchor Fires Back at Idiot that Emailed Her

TV News Anchors get a lot of email about their appearance, unfairly female Anchors get more than their male counter parts by about 999 to 1.

KOLO (Reno) Anchor Sarah Johns has been at the station since 2007. There is no doubt she has gotten her share of these type of emails.

But, she finally got one that she just had to respond to and you can't really blame her.

Look what this idiot wrote:

John's posted the email to Facebook and then responded:

If you ask us, Johns was way too nice in her reply.

Just saying....  

Retired Atlanta Anchor to Return in Ratings Stunt

WXIA Anchor Jill Becker retired from the station in 2011.

But now she is coming back to the Atlanta station. For one week.

The station announced that Becker returning to the anchor desk for Back-to-School Week on Atlanta Alive from August 3-7. Jill retired from 11Alive in 2011.

For more than 30 years, Jill Becker helped Atlantans start their day. Becker says she's excited to rejoin Atlanta Alive to help get us back to school.

"We are thrilled to have Jill Becker join the Atlanta Alive team. We know she's missed and we're excited she agreed to come back to kick off the back-to-school rush. The start of a new school year impacts everyone, and we know Jill is a respected and familiar face to help you navigate all the changes," 11Alive News Director, Jennifer Rigby.

Sounds like a ratings stunt to us.

Something's Wrong Here

Cable news stations have been running the video of Sandra Bland's traffic stop over and over again. 

But there is something fishy going on with the video that was released the Texas Department of Public Safety.

TDPS claims that the video is raw and not edited. But watch the clip below of the tow truck driver getting out of his truck and moving toward the police car. Then all of the sudden the tow truck driver is back by his truck and doing the exact same walk back towards the police car. 

The audio appears to continue with no interruptions, but clearly the video has a major jump cut.

The Texas Department of Public Safety told Texas Tribune that the video was “not edited,” but that some of the video was “affected in the upload and is being addressed.”

How did uploading the video change the video but not the audio?

Hello conspiracy!

Here's the video of what we are talking about:

Sandra Bland traffic stop

Guess Who's the Guilty Party Here?

Obviously, this Anchor might have had a bit of a gas problem after a visit to the local Chipotle. You can sense that he did did not like the Weather Anchor bringing it up to the viewers.

News blooper! Local news anchorman hates weather lady's Chipotle gas joke aimed at his post-traumatic burrito fart issues that he's still dealing with. You're done! Sports is next.

Cops Arrested WFAA Employee at the Station

Police entered the WFAA (Dallas) studios and arrested one of the station's employees  on child sex abuse charges.

The Denton County Sheriff's Department arrested WFAA supervisor of information technology  Mike Chappell while he was at work Tuesday afternoon. 

Chappell was booked on three counts of indecency with a child and one count of aggravated sexual assault of a child from an alleged incident in June 2008. He was also charged with one count of aggravated sexual assault of a child for an alleged offense in June 2011.

Word is that the charges involve a family member.

This isn't the first time Chappell was busted on sex charges. 

Records show Chappell has a prior arrest history including similar charges. 

In June 2012, Chappell was arrested on a charge of injury to a child, elderly or disabled person with bodily injury. Court records show the alleged incident occurred in February 2011. The case was later dismissed. 

He was arrested again in May 2014 on a charge of indecency with a child — sexual contact, stemming from an alleged incident in June 2008. The case is set to be heard in front of a jury at the end of August.

WFAA management has no comment on his latest arrest, or how the hell is was still employed at the station after his prior arrests. 

H/T Dallas Morning News

Well....That Didn't Work

Last placed WJZY's (Charlotte) newscast of the future has become a thing of the past.

In a desperation move, WJZY tried launching corporate initiative to re-engineer the traditional TV newscast.

It failed. 

Even pandering to a low common denominator has not helped the station’s woeful news ratings, a distant last in each time period in which it competes against others.

The Fox O&O drew industry attention when it launched an hour-long 10 p.m. newscast in January 2014 designed, Fox executives said, to appeal to a new generation of viewers hungry for substance, not flash.

Traditional male/female “voice of God” anchor teams went away. There was no anchor desk, but rather a series of big screens used to introduce stories. Crime news was reported only when the public was menaced, like with a prison break. Reporters were based outside Charlotte to increase regional coverage. Reporters were photographers too, recording and editing their own video.

It was billed as the newscast of the future. 

But now, the newscast of the future has no future in Charlotte. 

Plagued by technical problems and relying on journalists with little experience, it had an amateurish quality. Viewers turned away.

At the time of the launch of the non-traditional newscast, WJZY GM Karen Adams (pictured) said that Fox Television Stations CEO Jack Abernethy wanted the network’s newest station to experiment with fresh approaches.

“He said he wanted me to create the newsroom of the future and the culture that would support it,” Adams said in an interview last year.

Adams has been reassigned in the company and a search for a new GM is on. 

How bad was it? WJZY’s 6 p.m. news audience, according to Nielsen, is around 5,700 viewers, only a third of the number of people watching “People’s Court” at that hour on its sister station WMYT.

Ouch!

H/T Charlotte Observer 

Back Again

It appears that Phoenix Anchor Yetta Gibson is on track to work at every station in the market.

Gibson was bounced from KTVK's ‘Good Morning Arizona’ by then News Director Cameryn Beck.

She then landed across the street at Scripps' KNXV, hosting ‘The Now’. She was let go from that job at the Scripps station, where ironically Cameryn Beck is the Senior News Strategist with the company. 

Sources now say, Gibson is headed to KPHO, which shares it's newsroom with KTVK. The same station she was fired from.

Word is that Gibson will be working on the morning show. 

Headed to the Music City

WNEM (Saginaw) Anchor Carrie Sharp is leaving the station for WTVF in Nashville.

Sharp, a Texas native, came to WNEM in 2010 after spending 12 years at WAVE, the NBC affiliate in Louisville, where sharp grew up. Her husband Doug Sharp, an Olympic bobsledder who won bronze in the 2002 Games.

"I've always had Nashville on my radar," Sharp said in an interview with MLive. "The perfect job became available, and I was fortunate enough to be selected for it. My time at WNEM has been super positive and has been a great time for me to grow personally and professionally."

Ian Rubin, news director at WNEM, called Sharp's new job an "impressive" career jump.

"We're going to miss our friend and have appreciated her contributions over the past five years," he said.

Sharp is to remain at the TV5 anchor desk through mid-August. She begins in Nashville on Aug. 31.

Rubin said station management would first search for Sharp's replacement internally before posting a job.

H/T MLive.com

Stepping Down in Baton Rouge

After 11 years at WBRZ, News Director Chuck Bark says he is leaving the station at the end of the year.

 Bark has been the ND at the ABC affiliate since 2004.

Bark says that at age 63 he’s not yet ready to retire, but after three decades in television news he’s ready to do something else with his life.

“I will give myself some time and then decide what I want to do next,” he says. “I don’t think people retire in the traditional sense anymore.”

“He’s certainly been a tremendous asset and will continue to be so,” says WBRZ General Manager Rocky Daboval, who counts Bark as the first hire he made after coming to the station in the early 2000s. “We’ve weathered a lot together. Our relationship is a great one.”

Bark came to WBRZ from Mobile, Alabama, where he was news director at WALA for 14 years. Prior to that, he worked at a station in Memphis, Tennessee. He and his wife plan to remain in the Baton Rouge area.

Bark says he doesn’t envision a return to broadcast news, adding “you never say no to anything because you don’t know what opportunities may pop up.”