Yes, But Who's Doing the Spittin'?

Submitted by LynnS on Mon, 11/14/2005 - 2:48pm.

An Anonymous Insider tells us in email:

There are some happy faces at KGW this month, thanks to the performance of the WB news @ 10.

Last Friday, The WB news did a 3.0 rating/6 share, and KPTV's 10 O'Clock News did a 3.7/7 for the hour. That's spitting distance, and the WB show has only been on the air for 5 weeks!

Even though KPTV's prime-time numbers are basically even year-to-year, they're down at 10 pm.

The numbers at KPTV are low enough that they cancelled their $1,200-a-night watch & win contest early. You know you're in trouble when you can't even pay people to watch your newscast.

Is Patrick about to shake things up? Has the sex offender du jour news run its course in Portland? Will their photographers start using tripods during live shots? What will become of the infamous prop drawer? Tune in and find out!

mee-yow.

KPTVers? Your ball.

Categories: KPTV, KGW, news, television, Portland, Oregon

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( topics: KGW-TV | KPTV-TV | KRCW-TV )

Personally, I can't wait for

Submitted by Anonymous Source on Mon, 11/14/2005 - 10:16pm.

Personally, I can't wait for KGW's 10pm newscast to dominate KPTV's crime-infested newscast. I think KGW has its own issues, for sure, but overall it is a better product and I'd like to see the station rewarded for devoting at least some time to issue stories that are not crime-focused. "Workout Like A Stripper" aside, of course.

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Open Letter

Submitted by Anonymous Source on Tue, 11/15/2005 - 12:19am.

I work for KPTV. Are we suddenly not popular anymore? Is this just a flukey bad book? Do we need to make changes? Those are the questions going through my mind, and I imagine that my managers have those same questions and then some.

Regardless of the reason, I hope that this book makes us question what we do and why. Arrogantly, it seems we stopped doing that a couple years ago. The mantra for at least two years now has been "we're doing the right thing -- we're giving viewers what they want -- and if we stay the course, ratings will continue to grow". That attitude represents a narrow & closed way of viewing an ever-changing and fluid situation. The correct attitude is to ALWAYS question what we do because the tactics that worked two years ago may or may not work today. Because of our recent arrogance, we haven't been taking many risks, our product isn't that fresh anymore, we're not creating the "buzz" we used to, we over-rely on stunts that have become tired & cliched, and we've lost some of our most-creative & talented people.

I continue to have faith in my managers. I like them and I trust them. And I sincerely hope their jobs aren't in jeopardy because of one lousy book (which could end up being just a fluke). But it's time to step it up and come up with some BIG new ideas & tactics (not stunts). It's time to take some risks again. It's time to experiment with methods that are outside of our "way". It's time to start evolving again.

And I would feel the same even if the ratings were good this month.

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This is a subject for another thread

Submitted by Anonymous Source on Tue, 11/15/2005 - 12:39am.

I stopped watching local and national television news about four years ago and I'm better off for it. I probably spend 30-60 minutes a day reading Web news, the O and NYT (and WW on Wednesday.) Why would I want to spend 10 seconds watching local news? I've read a lot about the demise of newspapers but they provide content, context and make me smarter. TV news makes you lazy and distorts reality.

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