Watch WPIX/Channel 11 news at 10.
I listen to the news on the radio more often than I watch it on tv. If I'm flipping channels and it happens to be on, or if I want more details on something I might watch it, but I don't sit down religiously and tune in. So I was rather surprised a few weeks back when I came across Channel 11's news at 10, and the format had been completely changed.
To be honest, I thought the station was bordering on bankruptcy. There is no news desk for the anchors. In fact, there is only one anchor, and she bops around the room at random. It looks like the studio is a spare room they rented in a basement. You can see the cubicles of other people working there, doing...well, I'm not quite sure what they're doing on the computer. There's no sports highlight reel. Kaity Tong has been banished to standing by some river, giving news stories from there. Poor Mr. G has a weather map that is one step up from a Kindergarten classroom's, where you get to stick clouds or the sun or a lightning bolt on the day of the week, and dress up the teddy bear in weather appropriate clothing. In short, my high school's news club looked like they had a higher budget than WPIX.
So the other day, out of curiosity, I did a little research online. It turns out all of this happened last fall, in an attempt to reach out to younger audiences. Unfortunately, somewhere along the line someone confused "streamlined" with "looking like we got robbed and all our equipment is gone."
I get that they want to bring in new viewers, and if you can get 20somethings hooked now, you've got them for the next 70 years, for argument's sake. And I get that people like things instantly on their phones and computers and all that. But is it really too much to ask for a newscast to look like a newscast?
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