About a week after the November sweeps ended and three weeks before Christmas, Channel 7 management gave six employees their walking papers Friday as tears flowed.
I have the names but won’t run them because they aren’t on-air personnel that viewers will recognize.
Gone are three photographers, an assignment editor, a newly-hired producer and a staffer for the station’s website.
As if the timing isn’t bad enough, sources say that two of the six have significant health issues.
That’s one reason the tears flowed.
One staffer also was let go last year before Christmas, only to rehired eventually and now let go before this Christmas.
Staffers are also crying because the layoffs – that’s what they are being called – are another example of the destruction of Eyewitness News.
Once the dominant news department in town, Channel 7 is now the third-rated news station in town and its low ratings slipped significantly in the November sweeps.
However, Channel 7 doesn’t subscribe to the Nielsen ratings service and seems unconcerned about low ratings because advertisers still are lining up to make deals, according to sources.
The latest cuts have news staffers questioning how they are going to be able to deliver news of any quality with a staff that is increasingly being reduced. Read that sentence over again.
The staffers’ only hope is the station’s owner is gutting the news department in anticipation of selling the station. Then maybe a new owner will eventually care about putting on a quality newscast again.
pergament@msn.com
Alan Pergament was the television critic for The Buffalo News for 28 years. He currently is an adjunct professor at Buffalo State College and Medaille College, teaching courses in communications. He also writes a monthly column on the media for Buffalo Spree magazine.
Capitalists have but ONE obligation: preserve and enhance shareholder value. To do otherwise would be to cheat their investors.
Keep on lovin’ capitalism, folks–it’ll do you right.
ROI IS important. However, you need the people in order to produce the product. If the product gets worse, the ratings go down. If the ratings go down, the advertisers either go away, or they pay less per spot. Either way, revenue goes down. Preventing this is protecting the investors.
Dropping the revenue does a disservice to the investors.
Imagine a Wal*Mart. If they fire half the staff, they will really cut expenses, but if they cannot check people out, and cannot keep the shelves stocked, revenue will fall off far more than the savings on the payroll.
Hmm… why do I have a feeling that this “news” is coming from the anti-WKBW unions who still won’t come to an agreement for a contract? Something tells me we’re not getting a straight story.
I don’t even recognize WKBW anymore..No personality or presence…They have lost their way…News used to mean something…Irv Weinstein and Dave Azar at least were personalities…Where is the excitment, where is the Real? It is sad that the station has lost direction and letting people go three weeks before Christmas is cold and cruel..Heart in the television business means something…Today as we mourn the passing of Mark Dailey from CITY TV in Toronto, we look around and realize that quality has a new definition. Not what you put on the air, but how many advertisers you can put on the newscast…If Channel 7 didn’t have their dominant spot on the basic tier they would have less viewers for News than they do now..Can’t blame the Buffalo Bills for all the messes in Buffalo…
People are getting their news online, not on broadcast television. You will soon see stations go back to one news anchor. Sure layoffs are hard, but all stations have been hit.
Similar fates for the staff at Granite’s KOFY in San Francisco:
http://richliebermanreport.blogspot.com/2010/12/no-holiday-cheer-at-tv20-dog-station.html
I grew up in the Syracuse area, got my undergraduate degree at UB, and am a longtime employee at a midwestern ABC TV affiliate. We who are in the business know Granite Broadcasting, and we also know that there are management structures among broadcasting groups that keep up with the times, and those that don’t.
Granite falls into the latter category. The company simply doesn’t comprehend the current and rapidly-changing face of local TV in America. Instead of adapting, Granite’s upper-level management has apparently decided to maintain the status quo of 30 years ago, with disastrous results.
My station has gone through layoffs, as have most. However, the layoffs were the bare minimum, we maintain a fully-staffed newsroom, an active production department, an excellent sales staff and market leadership despite an adverse economy. The difference: we adapted early on to the changes in the industry, and now provide our product — an intensely localized product — to the many new ways consumers can get news about the community in which they live.
An earlier poster made the simplistic comment that it was all about maintaining profitability to stockholders. I maintain that a crucial element of maintaining that profitability is retaining sound management that can adapt to the times. Granite Broadcasting has failed to do so, to the alarming decline of their broadcast properties.
For a regional example of Granite’s less-than-stellar management philosophy, one has only to look at the sad, recent history of former market-leading WTVH-TV in Syracuse. This station’s decline coincides with its sale to Granite several years ago.
Same thing happened at Granite’s Fresno station:
http://www.fresnobee.com/2010/12/08/2190706/ksee-newscast-gears-up-for-change.html
Article may not say it, but a total of 7 positions were eliminated: Program director, 5 production assistants/mc operators, weather anchor.