Welcome to the news and information blog for the Ohio Valley Chapter of the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences. The goal of this blog is to keep you informed about media professionals and companies in our NATAS region. Please send your news to:
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Thursday, May 8, 2008

No Sports? Not Us! A Survey of GM's and News Directors

I guess we'll never know which TV station was considering dropping sports from local newscasts. None of the local TV stations say they know anything about a telephone survey conducted here last month asking viewers how they would feel if a local TV station dropped sports. Some other stations in other cities have done this over the years, including WSYX-TV (Channel 6) in Columbus in 2005. I've spoken to all the stations, and here’s what they said:Ch. 9 GM Bill Fee: "It's not us."Ch. 5 News Director Brennan Donnellan: "No, we are not considering that and we're not doing a survey."Ch. 12 News Director Elbert Tucker: "It's not us."Ch. 19 GM John Long: "There is no interest in dropping sports here. This is not a new idea. This has been going around for a long time." (Some news consultants recommend it "because of the plethora of sports news" on ESPN, other cable channels and the web.I think dropping sports reports in this city – with high interest in pro, college and high school sports – would be a huge mistake... except maybe in the 5-6:30 weekday p.m. block some days. I think the station which dropped sports would lose more viewers than it would gain by the boast of having "more news." Don’t you?

http://frontier.cincinnati.com/blogs/tv/2008/05/no-sports-not-us.asp

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