MEDIA MAVEN - Publishing media news and opinion (with some sarcasm and humor) in the Pacific Northwest, covering Seattle, Spokane, Portland and even a litte beyond. Maybe even some sports. Retired longtime broadcast journalist and manager in multiple top markets, ex-writing prof at UW and PLU in WA state, author of Season of the 76ers (2002) and a new horror novel, Blood Stained Papers. Kent State and American U Masters alum, Pittsburgh native. Copyright 2025 All Rights Reserved
I agree. Robertson seems to display the personality of a wet sock. But I like Adam on weather. KING has the strongest overall met team in my opinion. Sports too I guess (not much in the way of competition) but I haven’t seen this sports lady before
ReplyDeleteAdam Claibon has one of the worst, most nasal voices I have ever heard on TV above market 100.
DeleteTrasferred from Tegna's KUSA in Denver..MMJ and backup anchor.
ReplyDeleteIs it possible that today’s media management doesn’t have the same memory for what local news was. They don’t understand true journalism
ReplyDeleteRich
The audience is so thin today it doesn’t matter who or what you put on the air. Money spent on quality makes little sense when the audience is shrinking regardless. Savings now drive financial performance — the only management goal.
ReplyDeleteWeekend news has really become an afterthought to stations many of which who don't always staff field reporters, particularly in the mornings. We've seen KOMO tape weather the previous night for the next morning's news. KIRO's news anchor read sports on weekend nights with a potpourri of freelance evening weather people. Mostly, it's a credibility and remaining reputation killer.
ReplyDeleteI agree that weekend news has become somewhat of an afterthought for our local stations. I wonder if we may, somewhere down the line, see one or more of the stations scale back or eliminate weekend newscasts altogether. I'd hate to see it happen, especially as weekdays continue to become thoroughly oversaturated with newscasts, but TV station budgets aren't what they used to be, and more cutbacks are likely.
DeleteKIRO has no weekend morning news and it has been that way for a while. FOX dumps its weekend mornings to KJZO.
ReplyDeleteVery good points, especially when it comes to KIRO. I never thought I'd see the day where big 3 affiliate station (I narrow it down that far because Fox 13 didn't launch weekend morning news until 2016, so its easier to envision Fox affiliates not having weekend morning news in top 20 markets because that was the case for so much longer than it was for affiliates of the big 3 networks) in a news producing station in a top 20 market like Seattle would fail to have any weekend morning presence, but KIRO has made it happen.
DeleteThis actually leads me to a question. Who was the first station in Seattle to launch weekend morning news back in the 80s/90s? I know KIRO was at least doing Saturday morning news by 1992, and KING was also in the space by 1995.
DeleteKIRO and KING both started the same weekend in July 1991. Essex Porter anchored for KIRO. Saturday mornings at KING began with Dennis Bounds and Sundays started with Joyce Taylor. (They were both doing six-day weeks and the article I found said that they planned on hiring someone permanent in pretty short order.) Both 7 and 5 had live hours alternating with taped.
DeleteKOMO didn't start until much later... I want to say around '96 or so. Even their weekday morning news was only a half-hour until long after 5 and 7 were doing multiple hours.
The same weekend? WOW! That must have been a bit of a shock for viewers at the time going from having no local weekend morning newscasts at all to suddenly having two options.
DeleteInteresting that KOMO didn't get serious about morning news until later into the 90s. I would have expected them to be a bit behind KING and KIRO, but not that far.
Thanks for sharing all this info! Seattle TV news history is a fascinating subject.
That's way before my time here. Maybe someone can weigh in.
ReplyDeleteI know that KING was the first station in the city that launched the first early morning newscast (1980?). Given that KING was a local TV pioneer in many ways (after all, it was the first station in town), it wouldn't surprise me if they were the first to have a weekend morning newscast as well.
ReplyDeleteThat would make sense.
DeleteI liked KING’s morning newscasts when they started, but as they got longer and longer—and kept repeating the same stories over and over, I started switching back-and-forth between all the channels. Today I watch them via streaming which makes channel-flipping easy. I’m wondering what will happen when more stations do like KCPQ and actually repeat segments that were previously aired. Who’s going to get first position so they don’t all air their live segments at the same time? And will everyone mark the repeats “previously recorded.” Not everyone is truthful about that right now.
ReplyDeleteKIRO’s 90s era Saturday morning show was four hours — with the 1 and 3 hours live and the 2 and 4s repeats. Not labeled as such.
ReplyDeleteWOW! I didn't know that KIRO was only airing half of those hours live and half as repeats. Guess we now know where Fox 13 got the idea from.
DeleteIt didn’t work that often. The anchor would botch so many reads that many times the “live” hour had to be repeated anyway.
DeleteWho was anchoring that show?
DeleteSebastian Robertson as mentioned.
ReplyDeleteI meant who was anchoring the KIRO 90s era Saturday morning show.
DeletePenny LeGate anchored the KIRO weekend morning news for awhile in the late 90’s I believe.
DeleteThat name rings a bell. Thanks for the info!
DeleteSorry, missed the connection on that one. No idea...I was in DC at at time.
ReplyDeleteThat's okay.
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