Tag Archives: WESH-2

Recent RogerSimmons.com Orlando TV News reports involving WESH-Channel 2, the NBC affiliate for Central Florida. The station calls its newscasts WESH 2 News.

Wicked weather disrupts sports, Casey Anthony coverage

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It’s not just Casey Anthony who can scramble Orlando TV programming. Mother Nature also has some clout.

Late afternoon tornado warnings on Saturday disrupted Orlando’s already mixed-up TV programming. Sports fans hoping to watch the U.S. Open golf tournament on WESH-2 and the Yankees-Cubs baseball game of the week on Fox 35 had to settle for split-screen coverage. [Update: A reader noted that WFTV left NASCAR coverage at the start of its storm coverage.] After briefly returning to regular programming around 7 p.m., Orlando’s stations were back in a flash with more weather warnings. The last batch even managed to knock off WFTV-Channel 9′s weekly Casey recap special. It will be rescheduled.

Despite four separate tornado warnings over two hours, there were no confirmed twisters. A look below at Orlando TV on Saturday afternoon:

WESH-2, which moved the U.S. Open to sister station WKCF-CW 18 during the week, shrinks coverage on Saturday to make way to weather warnings.

WOFL-Fox 35 broke into the baseball game of the week with its weather warnings. Even though it kept the split screen throughout the tornado warnings, it did resume audio from the Yankees-Cubs game from time to time.

WFTV-Channel 9 was able to air a few minutes of its weekly Casey Anthony trial recap before having to ditch it completely for more severe weather coverage.

 

Casey Anthony trial: A tour of media village

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The Casey Anthony trial has brought unprecedented media attention to Orlando — as well a horde of reporters and satellite trucks now camped outside the Orange County Courthouse. Here’s a quick tour of this temporary media village, which some have dubbed “Casey Town.”

This is the main media village area, directly across Orange Avenue from the Orange County Courthouse. This is where the broadcast and cable networks are positioned, as well as Orlando stations WKMG-Local 6 and WOFL-Fox 35.

This is the south "suburb" of Casey Town, located south of the courthouse and home to WFTV-Channel 9, WESH-Channel 2 and WDBO-AM radio.

This is the northern boundary of Casey Town -- one of the Orlando Sentinel's parking lots. Univision secured space here, with a view of the courthouse parking garage as a background.

WESH joins Casey Anthony coverage parade

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After ending up as the only network broadcast station in town not to be offering wall-to-wall coverage of the Casey Anthony trial, WESH 2 will join the crowd on Wednesday.

“We took a deliberate approach and put our resources online and into newscasts,” WESH General Manager Jim Carter told the Orlando Sentinel. “The interest continues to be overwhelming. We feel with our people we can do a terrific job, a better job than others.”

WESH will move its regular programming to digital channel 2.2 when showing Casey Anthony coverage on its main channel.

Why did WESH blink? I had someone who used to be in the TV news biz explain that Casey coverage could be a game-changer in the TV ratings pecking order. Depending on what station viewers gravitate to for coverage, that decision could change their nightly TV news habits. We’ll see.

Casey Anthony trial live video captivating Orlando TV

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Casey Anthony coverage on all 4 major network affiliates in Central Florida.

Casey Anthony’s murder trial is easily the biggest television news event in Orlando’s history.

Each day, it seems, the local television stations keep turning their coverage up a notch. All aired the opening statements, then planned to settle into live streaming coverage that would appear mostly online. But that plan went out the window almost immediately when Casey’s father, George Anthony, was called as the state’s first witness. Just minutes after they had returned to regular programming, they were cutting in with George’s testimony. It was a sign of things to come.

WKMG-Local 6 began broadcasting the trial on its digital subchannel 6.2, but has been dropping its afternoon programming to air the trial on its main 6.1 channel.

WFTV-Channel 9 opted to start carrying coverage on its sister station, WRDQ-TV 27. But once Oprah Winfrey’s show ended, WFTV replaced it at 4 p.m. with live coverage of the trial to lead into its 5 p.m. newscast. Now, WFTV has moved all Casey coverage throughout the day over to Channel 9.1  – bumping ABC soaps for this real-life drama.

Today, WOFL-Fox 35 — which is also airing the trial on its main channel, aired a station promo touting that its “the No. 1 choice for Casey Anthony coverage” — based on Nielsen ratings. (Really, a promo for that? See for yourself below.)

But its not just Orlando stations that are obsessed with the trial. Tru TV and HLN have been adding live coverage, and HLN’s primetime shows with Dr. Drew and Joy Behar are dominated by Casey trial discussion.

If and when Casey Anthony takes the witness stand, I would not be at all surprised to see CNN, Fox News and MSNBC carry that live. The only question is when the jury finally delivers its verdict, will main networks ABC, CBS and NBC carry that live? I wouldn’t bet against it.

The other question I have is how much is this coverage costing Orlando’s stations’ pocketbooks? In addition to fees for parking their mobile “studios” across the street from the Orange County Courthouse and the Monday-Saturday staffing for trial sessions, they are losing commercial revenue during non-stop trial coverage. (I won’t even get into the online costs involved with  bandwidth fees for all the streaming video  folks are watching online.)

Will it all be worth it?

 

 

WESH live truck in accident under Interstate 4

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Firefighters attempt to stabilize the WESH 2 live truck before removing reporter Greg Fox and his photographer (Courtesy WKMG)

WKMG’s new 7 p.m. newscast had its first scoop Wednesday night — video of an accident involving a WESH 2 News live van stuck under Interstate 4.

According to Local 6, the Channel 2 van nearly rolled over when the live mast became stuck under the I-4 overpass on Wymore Road, near WESH’s headquarters.

In video shown on WKMG, firefighters attempted to stabilize the vehicle before safely removing WESH reporter Greg Fox and a photographer, identified as “Frank.” Neither was injured.

According to the Orlando Sentinel, “The driver said he had been on Interstate 4 and passed under another overpass successfully and did not know how the mast got into the ‘up’ position.”

Former Orlando newsers talk about O-Town days

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Orlando Sentinel TV Guy Hal Boedeker catches up with a group of O-Town TV alumni, asking about their days covering the news in Orlando.

The roster includes CBS News’ Byron Pitts (1986-88 at WESH), CNN’s Jessica Yellin (1998-2000 at News 13), ABC News’ Deborah Roberts (1997-90 at WFTV), CBS News’ Wyatt Andrews (1977-79 at WFTV) and Fox News’ Trace Gallagher (1993-96 at WCPX).

A couple of others I thought of who went on to bigger and better things after their Orlando TV news days: Milissa Rehberger and Bill Karins, both formerly of WOFL and now with MSNBC; Shepard Smith, formerly of WCPX and now with Fox News; Lisa Colagrossi, formerly of WKMG now with WABC; Rob Stafford, formerly of WFTV and Dateline NBC, now anchor at WMAQ Chicago; Ryan Baker, formerly of WCPX-WKMG, now sports anchor at WBBM Chicago; Stewart Scott, formerly of WESH now at ESPN; Anne Craig, formerly of WOFL now at WNYW in New York; and James Ford, formerly of WFTV now at WPIX in New York.

If you know of others, add them as a comment on this post.