The WESH duo of Jim Payne and Martha Sugalski dispatched WKMG’s main anchors to move into the third round of OrlandoSentinel.com’s Celebrity Smackdown game. Also advancing to face the Channel 2 Cinderellas — the anchors of WFTV’s top-rated Daybreak show, Greg Warmoth and Vanessa Echols. Earlier, Payne and Sugalski upset WFTV evening anchors Bob Opsahl and Martie Salt.
More on the other big O-Town TV matchup after the jump …
WESH’s Jim Payne and Martha Sugalski knocked off top-rated WFTV anchors Bob Opsahl and Martie Salt. Not in the Nielsens, but in the first round of the Orlando Sentinel’s Celebrity Smackdown game.
Payne and Sugalski scored a first-round upset over the Channel 9 duo in voting on OrlandoSentinel.com. Payne and Sugalski advanced to the game’s second round, facing WKMG anchors Mike Garofalo and Jacqueline London. The only other “upset” — if you can call it that — in the online game’s first round was Fox 35 morning meteorologist Jim Van Fleet knocking off night-time weather guy Glenn Richards.
The big match up in the second round: WFTV meteorologist Tom Terry vs. WESH meteorologist Tony Mainolfi.
Vote for your favorite or just check in on the second-round action.
Orlando’s TV news departments have jumped into the pool — hoping to save a splash of cash.
Following a national trend, the newsrooms at WKMG-Local 6, WOFL-Fox 35 and Central Florida News 13 have startinged pooling their video on certain assignments. NewsBlues.com reports that the experiment began Tuesday, and it involves assignment managers at the three stations determining stories they can share video on. Then, the stories will be fed via FTP to the other stations at 11:30 a.m. and 4 p.m. In theory, the deal saves stations money — instead of each sending a crew to cover a news conference, only one crew will go and share the video with the others. (You save money because you need fewer crews; or in the case of Orlando’s stations — you can cover more news because you have already have fewer feet on the street because of staff reductions.)
Interesting that the big dogs in town — top-rated WFTV-Channel 9 and No.2 WESH-2 – are not participating. Also intersting will be seeing how long this experiment will last in our ultra-competitive market.
Just last week, a similar pool agreement among several Atlanta stations started falling apart when CBS affiliate WGCL pulled out of the month-old agreement. WGCL thought the pool agreement was slow to respond to breaking news (and we have none of the around here, right?). Read more about the Atlanta situation here.
WKMG-Local 6 scored a significant scoop when it obtained — and gained an exclusive license — for video showing the immediate aftermath of Disney World’s deadly monorail train crash. The compelling video from early Sunday morning was shot just after one monorail train plowed into another at the resort, killing a 21-year-old park employee.
But obtaining the video may have been the easy part for WKMG. Keeping others from using it was the tougher task. Versions of the video popped up on YouTube, Wikipedia and competitors’ stations and Web sites. That prompted WKMG ND Steve Hyvonen to send the following email to O-Town media outlets, including WFTV, WESH, WOFL, Central Florida News 13, WDBO radio and the Orlando Sentinel:
WKMG’s new schedule goes into effect today. No more news at 4, 5 or 5:30 p.m. — the new hourlong 6 p.m. show starts, followed by the CBS Evening News with Katie Couric at 7 p.m.
Taking over one of Local 6 News’ former time slots — from 5 to 6 p.m. — is talk show host Dr. Phil. WKMG moved the good doctor to be the lead-in for its local news — an idea that was first tried at Post-Newsweek sister station WPLG-ABC 10 in Miami in 2006 with great ratings success. Back then I asked then-GM Henry Maldonado if WKMG had any plans to copy the Dr. Phil programming strategy.
“Dr Phil is doing better than ever here at 7,” Maldonado wrote in an e-mail back then. “We were the first major market station to put Dr Phil in the evening, and now others are following our lead. Our news is doing just fine, we are No. 2 in those time periods, and looking to keep moving up.”
“But,” he added, “it’s good to know that there’s a strategy out there in case this town runs out of news.”
Well, I think we have plenty of news — just not as many people watching it.
Also of note: The news schedule that WKMG is starting today — hour of news from 6-7 followed by CBS Evening News — was employed here in the Sunshine State back in the 1980s when WTVT-Fox 13 was still a CBS affiliate. It ran “Pulse 13 News” as an hourlong block leading into CBS’ news at 7 p.m. As they say, the more things change …
Here’s a clip from WTVT:
Here’s a video WKMG produced for advertisers and others — trying to put a positive spin on Local 6′s decision to abandon news at 4, 5 and 5:30 p.m. starting Monday. Take a look here: (oops — video removed at request of Local 6)
What do you think about the changes at WKMG? Talk about them on our message boards.