Farm Teams for anchors and new anchor team takes over ABC

First, for those of you who haven't noticed, I've put a "dig me" picture off to the right side of my blog for those of you have wondered what happens to you after a year away from the news business.

Now, on to business. Nice spread by the CA on Jerry Tate. Technically his last day at the studio down on the river was December 31^st, but I think he cleaned out his desk, and stopped by the business office to sign the necessary papers on December 23^rd, which was his last day to anchor. Yah, he hosted the 50^th anniversary retrospect, but that was Memorex. After seeing the postings about finding a replacement for Pam McKelvy on the anchor desk, I was thinking about how smart the folks at AN5 were in grooming Joe Birch for the desk. I don’t profess to know the details, but as I understand it, former anchor and news director Mason Granger wanted to come off the 10pm news to tend to his duties during the day. He had reporter JB slide into the night side spot alongside an already popular female anchor to help solidify things. By the time Mason announced he was coming off the anchor desk altogether, AN5 had a solid male anchor with name recognition in place. They never missed a beat and the competition has been salivating since. Word on the street has it that twice now the honchos down on the river have thrown everything but the kitchen sink at JB to get him to come on over. Some people just can’t seem to understand the concept of loyalty and that it’s not always just about money.

But in these days with increasing focus on the bottom line, how do you get and keep “young Turks” with the rising star in your shop. They want to see something tangible in their future. They want to sit at the “adult” table as soon as possible and don’t want to wait too long to get there. They’re hungry now. If you tell them they need more experience and seasoning, they may leave. Some will come back. But if they leave and come back, you run the risk of losing the momentum they may have been building.

On another note, I see Elizabeth Vargas and Bob Woodruff debut as co-anchors tonight on ABC. I guess this is an indication of how much I watch network news at its regular time anymore. I had to look up their bios to find out what all the fuss was about. The only thing I really knew prior to that was what PP from AN5 posted a while back about having worked with Vargas in Reno. It was interesting reading and I think PP mentioned she taught Vargas to edit or something like that. Vargas must have a PR machine already rolling after seeing the postings that followed. Folks claiming to be coworkers from ABC came out of the woodwork to blast PP and I’m not really sure why.

I did tune in one night a couple of weeks ago and caught Bob Woodruff. A nice looking guy but my wife said he was too much of a “pretty boy”. That was the only time I’ve seen what ABC has to offer. I’ve not watched Nightline since Ted the Head left and probably won’t. Just call me a “shifting demographic”.