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"Megyn Kelly Today" is not off to such a wonderful start

Discussion in 'Sports and News' started by LongTimeListener, Sep 28, 2017.

  1. HanSenSE

    HanSenSE Well-Known Member

    NBC used to have news in then. Linda Ellerbee was one of the anchors. Now ABC rocks, er, polkas in that time slot.
     
  2. wicked

    wicked Well-Known Member

    I wouldn’t.

    People who are wired like she is — the Type As who are driven to be one of the best in their industry — they hate being away from the action.
     
    maumann likes this.
  3. exmediahack

    exmediahack Well-Known Member

    For a TV news anchor - or a show host - being irrelevant is worse than being broke. We are all plagued with horrible egos.

    She'll be back somewhere. Not with FOX but with some off-shoot. Perhaps with Glenn Beck.

    Megyn Kelly climbed the ladder... from a fledgling lawyer who showed up on FNC, had no problem with O'Reilly playing kingmaker. Her appearances on the Factor led to her getting her own show, moving Hannity off another hour.

    However, Megyn Kelly would YELL her copy/scripts at the office. Never had a light touch when anchoring. Her approach just didn't work.

    For NBC, it was a costly way to neutralize Kelly as a threat from FNC. Now she's damaged goods and won't ever be what she was in 2015. For that, NBC accomplishes its mission but for a lot of money.
     
    maumann and Alma like this.
  4. maumann

    maumann Well-Known Member

    Next to being a backup NFL quarterback, there doesn't seem to be a more useless high-paid position than network broadcast lawyer. What the hell do they do, other than approve contracts? And how can they not have specific clauses to benefit the network in a situation that would be a fireable offense in 99 percent of other occupations? Even worse, how did CNN not immediately file a First Amendment suit against the White House the moment Acosta's hard card was pulled? That should have been a no-brainer.

    In my own personal experience, Turner's suits ignored -- despite pleading from my immediate boss -- a plagiarism claim against a public relations hack who took all of my quotes from a one-on-one interview and repurposed the story for NASCAR distribution without acknowledging where he got them. Why? Because the lawyers (and upper level management) were more interested in extending the contract with NASCAR and didn't want to make anyone in Daytona Beach angry (then NASCAR soon after exercised their right to break the contract two years early anyway).

    TV is such a strange beast. Execs think nothing of spending giving away millions on bad hires, recklessly overspend on content deals, throw stupid money at projects doomed to fail from the get-go and fund non-broadcast operations with no successful business model -- hello, Bleacher Report -- because they think it's most cost efficient than hiring their own people.

    Because that's how it's always worked. And Big Bang Theory reruns make a lot of damn money.
     
    Last edited: Jan 14, 2019
    HanSenSE likes this.
  5. exmediahack

    exmediahack Well-Known Member

    At my shop, I proposed doing a new 30-minute newscast between 6 pm and prime time. They showed me that BBT reruns were clearing $1.5 million a year and only cost $100k.

    No need for that 6:30 pm newscast.
     
    BitterYoungMatador2 and maumann like this.
  6. DanOregon

    DanOregon Well-Known Member

    Sad to say, Kelly isn't the first female journo to climb the ladder and kind of fizzle out. Connie Chung, Katie Couric, Paula Zahn, Cambell Brown, Deborah Norville...Diane Sawyer seems to be one of the few who ended her career on her own terms since Walters. Leslie Stahl and Andrea Mitchell are doing pretty well as well, but they're more reporter-types.
     
  7. Michael_ Gee

    Michael_ Gee Well-Known Member

    Just as the high-priced anchors as face of the station has faded out in local news for cheaper, younger and forgettable talents, I suspect so it will at the network level. Matt Lauer's disappearance had no effect on the Today Show at all. Why pay $25 mill a year for people who the record shows don't bring you back nearly that much if anything?
     
  8. DanOregon

    DanOregon Well-Known Member

    Today was mostly worried about Lauer joining CBS or ABC. Of the big three news anchors - I think Lester Holt is the best, but it's a crime he's still making less than Brian Williams ($10m to 4.5m). I couldn't tell you which one was Glor and which one was Muir.
     
  9. Hermes

    Hermes Well-Known Member

    Those are the aliens on The Simpsons, right?
     
    Donny in his element likes this.
  10. PCLoadLetter

    PCLoadLetter Well-Known Member

    Muir is the one with the hair.

    Glor is the one who should be doing weekends in Oklahoma City.
     
    exmediahack likes this.
  11. exmediahack

    exmediahack Well-Known Member

    Sawyer was the only one on that list to be top-rated for an evening newscast. Couric made CBS about her. Zahn had the news chops but CBS was a mess when she was there. Brown was cold as Saskatchewan and Norville got bad PR on Today.

    It’s the unspoken social contract of TV news. If you’re a woman, you can zoom up at age 25 and make real money. Just don’t be shocked when you get booted at 35 for a newer model. (Example: a colleague of mine five years ago left for a top 50 market. Now she’s anchoring in Seattle making 250k a year. Not bad for age 30. Especially not bad for someone without a single memorable story in the three years she reported on the newscasts.)

    The high-priced anchors are fading out in some places but not all. If you’re making top dollar but anchoring top-rated newscasts, that’s a judgment call on value. Now if you’re clearing 230k in, say, Kansas City or Indianapolis as an evening anchor of a fourth-place newscast, I would expect to get fired by the following Friday every week. A station can be in fourth-place with an anchor making 100. No need to overpay.

    Know where the money gets made? Medium markets in swing states with cold weather. Not glamorous. No one vacations here. But that’s the sweet spot for some of us “old people” who anchor. Station gets lots of political money. Lots of viewers because people are from here. Reporters and producers don’t make that much. Weekday anchors do — but there’s a fair amount of heavy lifting required as we fix (or we should fix!) a ton of problems every day because the reporters and producers are inexperienced and don’t really care about this particular market. We don’t just show up and read or at least we shouldn’t. We keep the place from getting sued everyday. I counted 27 mistakes/fact errors/diction issues today before the newscast.

    This differs from, say, PCLoadLetter’s market. Their anchors are good but I’d say their reporters and, especially, producers are so much better. They catch their own mistakes and are, generally, curious. The good producers that we have go to those markets for their next job. (Two of ours have moved to PC’s town in the last five years. They were excellent.)

    My co-anchor and I make well above what our competitors make — about 50 percent more. We’ve also been here longer and our newscasts pull in 56 percent of the station’s news revenue. We also pull in 60% of the market’s total ad revenue for the hours we’re on. It’s not because we are great at what we do. Many days I feel like I do an average job even though I bust my butt. It’s because we don’t F it up every day and give people a reason to watch someone else.

    I joke that “our newsroom pays for parents instead of kids”. At middle age, we are the same demographic as our viewers and not the 26-year-old anchors that we compete against. Unlike them, I have kids in school so I understand bond votes, localized crime and I have an actual mortgage and don’t live in a trendy condo downtown. (The young anchors here are very good and they’ll move to larger markets and make more than I do in a few years and that’s fine. Part of the game.)

    And so goes another endless blabbering on local TV news and how the gears grind.
     
    Last edited: Jan 14, 2019
  12. exmediahack

    exmediahack Well-Known Member

    Muir is the insincere guy in the promos of every story he does with 17 reaction shots of him nodding, head at a 20 degree angle.

    Glor is the sincere guy who knows he is a new boss away from anchoring weekends in Oklahoma City. Or evenings in Tulsa.
     
    PCLoadLetter likes this.
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