It's a shame Jimmie Siedlecki is Omaha-bound just as the KODE news team has started to hit its stride.
On its 5 and 6 p.m. newscasts today, KODE led with Alan Cavanna's story on hazardous waste shipments rolling through the Joplin area. Cavanna covered the story thoroughly without making it sound as if doom awaits everyone in this area. Lately, Cavanna has had a string of big stories and seems to rapidly be becoming KODE's go-to guy. KODE followed its news segments with weatherman Ray Foreman's weekly cookout, an entertaining and pleasant segment that does not detract from the remainder of the newscast.
While all of that was going on during the 5 p.m. newscast, KOAM met the KODE challenge with an update on the two-year-old who was apparently murdered in Lamar, including some investigative work that turned up some past legal problems in that household. It was a stellar piece by newcomer Jennifer Denman. (It pays to hire someone with a print journalism background.)
Meanwhile on KSN's "Live with Gary and Tiffany," which functions next to the 5 p.m. news on sister station KODE like 'The Teletubbies" functions next to Masterpiece Theater on PBS, I still haven't quite figured out what they were doing, but I am sure there is no shortage of people who will be happy to tell me.
When the news portion of KSN's program finally began, the lead story was the festival going on in Joplin this weekend. I have no problem with that. News does not have to be bad to be worthy of leading a newscast...it's just a shame KSN waits that long to get to the news function of its program.
Following the lead story, KSN ran the footage from Cavanna's KODE story, with Ms. Alaniz doing the voiceover.
Now, that being said, no matter what it says in the comments that have been placed on this blog, I am certain that "Live with Gary and Tiffany" has loyal supporters, and not just employees of KSN. The two have a long history in this area and have earned the goodwill of the viewers. Also, it has to be taken into consideration that KSN's 5 p.m. news was number three out of the three news programs in the last Nielsen, so some changes may have been in order.
But if this is what the majority of the news department at KSN wanted, then I don't know news people as well as I thought I did.
KSN has some promising young reporters, like Lucas McDonald and Toni Valliere, and a solid veteran in Brad Douglas, but it appears that the station is headed back to the days when it used Jim Jackson's smooth, on-air professionalism to cover up a lot of holes.
9 comments:
Randy,
If you were third in the ratings in a 5pm newscast, had to share video/ stories with another station,what would you do? How would you change and top KOAM? It's easy to knock Gary & Tiff, but they are trying to change a format that wasn't working for the station in the ratings.
I am impressed with Alan Cavanna too. I really enjoy his personality and professionalism. Lucas McDonald also does an excellent job. Both are assets to their respective stations. I wonder why it's called the Gary and Tiffany show......instead of the Tiffany and Gary show?
I don't know if it is just me, but does it still seem like Antonio Denardo is not comfortable doing the news? She does not appear to have the same comfortableness and smoothness doing interviews or interacting with Alan. It appears that he has to save her awkwardness all of the time. She just seems too nervous and uncomfortable to me. But what do I know!
Ya' know, I'd be more impressed with the television news if it wasn't for the most part taken out of the JOplin Globe. People can be as critical as they want of the Globe, it remains a fact that 80 percent of what you see on the evening newscasts was already reported in that morning's Globe.
That's an excellent point, but that's pretty much par for the course for television news. Most of what you see on the network newscasts ran in the morning's New York Times.
Randy,
Just FYI, I'm sure you didn't catch KSN'S Friday 10 o'clock news..but the Teletubbies broke the story about an arrest in the toddler death in Lamar. They shared the story with Masterpiece Theater. Channel 7 was in the dark as was The Joplin Globe on Saturday morning.
Antonia doesn't have a clue. I wouldn't put her in a breaking news situation if the station depended on it. No news background, no experience, and doesn't seem eager to learn either. She almost never reports and when she does her reports are beyond unethical for a nunmber of reasons. She can read, yes. But, that about sums it up. She should not be called a reporter, it's an insult to their true reporters like Grethcen, etc. who have been doing it for years.
Randy -
Siedlecki is gone but who knows, he may be back..It seems a lot of TV Personalities in this market leave only to eventually come back. Siedlecki has done it & so did Vonder Haar, Alaniz and probably many others. Nothing against those 3, I think they were all very good at what they did.
Hahahah!!! Yeah! Tiffany came back because noone else wants her!
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