Posted by Annoyed on July 10, 2009 at 22:15:10:
In Reply to: WFLD-Ch. 32 to eliminate 10 p.m. newscast posted by Mike on July 10, 2009 at 15:43:27:
: Chicago's WFLD-Ch. 32 in September plans to give up its 10 p.m. weeknight news program, "The Ten," less than 30 months after the Fox-owned station launched the 35-minute broadcast to run headlong at fellow network-owned rivals with its own late local headlines.
I never liked "The Ten" as a newscast, but I really don't wish to see David Novarro leave. I like him as a newscaster, and find him to be much better than the station's current 9 p.m. male newscaster Jeff Goldblum, and even better than Good Day Chicago's Mike Barz (who should stick to sports or other small segments). From Phil Rosenthal at the Trib:
WFLD to eliminate 10 p.m. newscast; 'The Office' reruns debut in September
Chicago’s WFLD-Ch. 32 in September plans to giving up its 10 p.m. weeknight news program, “The Ten,” less than 30 months after the Fox-owned station launched the 35-minute broadcast to run headlong at fellow network-owned rivals with its own late local headlines.
Reruns of NBC’s “The Office” will replace “The Ten,” following Channel 32’s one-hour 9 p.m. Monday-through-Friday newscast, effective Sept. 21. “The Office” also will take over the 6:30 p.m. weeknight slot held for years by “Seinfeld” repeats, which move to sister station WPWR-Ch. 50.
“The Ten” co-anchor David Novarro’s contract expires in September, and the newscaster brought in from New York’s WABC in 2000 as a WFLD morning anchor to replace Bob Sirott is expected to leave the station. Lauren Cohn, Novarro's on-air 10 p.m. partner, will be reassigned as a reporter for the station’s 9 p.m. newscast.
Channel 32 employees were to be told of the changes at a meeting this afternoon.
Apart from Novarro’s exit, Pat Mullen, vice president and general manager of WFLD and WPWR, said the elimination of “The Ten” would have no impact on the size of the station’s news staffing and sidestepped a question about whether Channel 32 might add an earlier newscast even as it eliminates its late-night one.
“We’re always going to look for expansion opportunities with our local news,” Mullen said in an interview. “Local news is critical and it’s an important part of our long-term plan. That’s why we’ve expanded t add the 9-to-10 a.m., which has done very, very well – better than we expected. But we have no announcement at this point.”
Thanks to the addition of a fifth weekday hour of morning news at 9 a.m., WFLD will still air a market-leading 37 ½ hours of live local news weekly after the 10 p.m. broadcast Monday through Friday goes away.
“We’re replacing the ‘The Ten’ with ‘The Office’ because we think there’s just a great upside opportunity for us,” Mullen said. “We’ve got an opportunity here that we simply can’t pass.
“This is going to be about the hottest new syndicated product to hit the market in quite some time and strong enough that we’re putting it at both 6:30 and 10 o’clock, which is historically where we put the ‘Seinfeld’ program when it was at its peak,” he said. “That gives you some idea of how important we think that show is and what we think it can do.”
“The Ten” sought to carve out a niche for itself by being a bit faster and flashier than CBS-owned WBBM-Ch. 2, NBC-owned WMAQ-Ch. 5 and long-time market leader ABC-owned WLS-Ch. 7. The approach had its critics and never really cut into its competitors’ news audiences, but Mullen felt it created its own audience.
“I’m proud of what we put on. It’s a good product and it achieved the kind of ratings results that we anticipated that it would,” Mullen said. “We knew were going into a very tough time period for news. We knew we had to put something on that was a different and fresh approach to the news.
“Now we’re looking at an opportunity we just didn’t have,” he said. “We didn’t have fresh syndicated programming, and what we had that was of quality had been in the time period for many, many years. … There’s no question that the economic opportunity with ‘The Office’ is greater.”