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 2025-26 All Rights Reserved
KIRO's versatile Eric Thomas usually anchors the weekend evening news, but on Saturday, when the Seahawks opened training camp, Thomas was dispatched to the VMAC and Jaon Sloss took over the news desk. That kept the sports department department-less station in the ballgame, so to speak. He has a strong TV sports background previously working in Toronto.
KIRO made the right call here to have Thomas cover the opening day of Seahawks training camp. It will be interesting to see if KIRO has Thomas cover more days of training camp.
ReplyDeleteBriefly caught KIRO last night and Sloss was on anchor duty last night as well, which suggests perhaps the station might be looking to slot Thomas on Seahawks beat moving forward w/Sloss handling the anchor chair. If that is the case that is probably the best use of their limited resources especially if they aren't going to rebuild their sports department
DeleteI checked in on Sunday as well and saw Sloss anchoring. I didn't wait to see if Thomas was back at camp. I agree that your suggestion would be smart for KIRO at this stage. Maybe the new ND wants to get the station back in the sports ballgame. On the other hand, they have suffered a major loss of cred in the market, potentially hard to recover. Thomas has to be at camp every day to prove they care again. And he has to do some special stuff.
DeleteIndeed and in the interim this would be the best way to go. Of course everyone's preference here is for them to hire people but that takes $$ and the Apollo beancounters may not want to go there no matter what the new ND wants to do.
DeleteHaving Thomas on the Seahawks beat full-time this season would be a great first step towards rebuilding KIRO's sports coverage. If it goes well, it may potentially help persuade Apollo to invest more resources into sports at KIRO. At the very least, it will give KIRO some credibility when it comes to covering the all-important Seahawks.
DeleteSo I interviewed at KIRO awhile back and can you tell you first-hand that the newsroom looked like it was an F5 tornado had blown in. I had heard before going in that the station is so short-staffed that the people who are still there are doing their job plus the jobs of three or four other people. The assignment editor that day was editing some video footage on one computer while they were also listening to the scanners and monitoring feeds on X and Facebook for anything of interest. The EP that interviewed me had been busy dealing with scheduling and staff assignments. In fact, their phone rang during our "interview" if I could call it. One of the photogs was returning from a story and was stuck in heavy traffic on I-5. Either way, I was asked to wait outside while they dealt with this situation which I was told shouldn't take more than five minutes. Turns out it took 20 minutes, and I was getting both sleepy and tired and when they returned to get me, I politely thanked them for allowing me to come in, but I was no longer interested and left. On a final note, I will say that there was not a single person from my point-of-view who seemed like they were really happy to be there.
ReplyDeleteSorry to hear of your experience. That newsroom is a rabbit warren and that's a compliment. As one local TV person told me: "No one goes to KIRO unless they have to."
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