Do WESH, Payne have WFTV to thank for Obama interview?

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Catching up with the latest Orlando TV news …

WESH 2’s Jim Payne was among several local anchors invited to the White House last week to interview President Obama — who was pushing his jobs plan. But why WESH instead of market-leader WFTV-Channel 9? I’m guessing the Obama team still hasn’t forgotten Barbara West’s satellite interview with Joe Biden during the 2008 campaign. …

Speaking of WESH, Steve Rifkin was named creative services director for Hearst Television’s Orlando properties, which include WESH, WKCF, MeTV, ThisTV, Estrella TV, WESH.com and CW18tv.com. Read more here. …

WFTV.com has undergone a makeover, and it is featuring more national and world news on its home page. The site has been asking its registered users to re-register. WFTV.com and WESH.com usually are pretty close in the ComScore rankings of local websites — leading the Orlando TV stations but still pretty far behind local leader OrlandoSentinel.com in market share. …

Saturday marked the 40th anniversary of the opening of Walt Disney World. And unless I missed it, I didn’t see any Orlando stations showing their footage from opening day in 1971. I hope they kept that film — since it was a pretty historic day for all of us. But I suspect like many old news films, it’s probably disappeared. Too bad.

About Roger Simmons 549 Articles
Roger Simmons has been blogging about Orlando television since 2001. You can email him at roger@rogersimmons.com