Today’s budget meeting, 5/19/2006
May 19, 2006 in The Wire
Just three links this morning, two from the Journal Star:
Peoria School District 150 has written more than three-quarters of a million dollars in checks to acquire property to build the new Glen Oak Grade School. Too bad the board never officially voted in open session to spend that money. Boy, are these guys going to look stupid when the City of Peoria refuses to let them actually build at the site.
The Peoria Diocese is actually asking people for their input on a new Notre Dame High School, and they are doing it before they write checks for the land and determine a site. This officially makes Peoria School District 150 more autocratic and insular than the Catholic Church.
WMBD 1470: WEEK is going to produce a 9 p.m. news show for Channel 59. It’s probably going to be just an earlier version of the show they already does at 10 p.m. on Channel 25. MY two cents: Folks, this is an opportunity to try something new. Unlike the program WMBD produces for Bloomington’s WYZZ (Channel 43), My57 and WEEK both serve Peoria. There’s no need to identical newscasts. Try something new with content. Make one of the other straight news without all the happy talk and chat and light features. Make it a news show for news junkies, even if the anchor is just reading the wire services at times.
Feed
May 19th, 2006 at 10:12 am
Bill, you’re right. It is evident this is going to continue to spiral downward for the 150 board. Its nobody’s fault but their own.
How many good ol’ phrases seem to apply…
-”they dug their own grave, now they can lye in it”
-”they are swimming in their own s$%t”
-feel free to add your own…
May 19th, 2006 at 1:50 pm
Does anyone care if news is read to you live anymore? I mean, it’s not like much other than the weather is done live anyway. ‘Anchors’ increasingly introduce prerecorded reporting. On occasion, the reporter who did the voice over will stand in front of a building in the rain to show that they are still on the clock, but most of the video you see was shot hours ago. It’s not like they couldn’t break into the prerecorded news to cover a breaking event the two times that’s ever happened in Peoria each year. On the same note, does Peoria really need 4 news shows with the exact same format?
May 19th, 2006 at 1:58 pm
I agree with the low value you put on the live introductions of pre-recorded news stories. It’s a triumph of marketing and style over substance. That’s why I think this is WEEK’s opportunity to break out of the box and try something news. Why not do what cable news does and have the anchors interview the reporters about developments on their beats? Why not have more live interviews of newsmakers, inhstead of the soundbites?
May 19th, 2006 at 4:03 pm
The problem with news in a market such as ours, is that there is a perennial need to cut costs. That combined with personalities trying to work their way to a larger market undercuts the organization’s ability to gather news. Think about it, someone new to the area is not likely to have very many contacts. Contacts are how you find out about the real news that is not reported elsewhere. By the time these relationships build the person is moving up and out.
The way WEEK/WMBD can provide relatively low cost mangement/content for My59/WYZZ is to not increase there costs at all. The marginal cost for the WYZZ news can’t be significant, as I would bet that WMBD simply has the personalities not do updates or other work from 8:55-9:30. I used to watch the news at 5,6, and 10 in middle school and my first 2 years in high school (not that long ago- I am 21). At that point the formats differed between the 3 newscasts on the same station. Then, I saw staff reductions, and the broadcasts became more similar. The final straw, I think they added 30min of weather to a 22 min newscast. I can go online or to the weather channel if I want a mediocre guess of the next day’s weather. The quality of TV news has been greatly reduced over the past 10 years.
Our options: increase our market size OR encourage consolidation of the news. While this may seem counter-intuitive I think it is our only option to have real news coverage. Imagine how much better the news coverage could be if we combined the staff of two newsrooms. This will never happen, becuase once condensed they will simply cut staff.
I have always found the idea of a 24 hr news network for the area alluring. Perhaps, we need to encourage WTVP to put up real competition to the other stations.
As for My59 - WEEK probably knows something. The people that watch it tend to be older, and as their audience ages a more bedtime friendly option of the same news may be their best bet for ratings. Perhaps it will not even been an early version of the 10PM news, but a late version of 5PM or 6PM (nothing is updated for 10PM anyway).
I do not know if anyone from the local TV stations will read this - I am disappointed in you. All the articles I read first in the Journal Star and hear as I walk by a TV two days later. The advantage TV has over print is the ability to get news out faster. You do your job horribly too often. I have personally given news tips to the stations. WEEK is the only one who airs them. They of course take a 24 hours to get it on the air. For example, when Allegiant was announcing which airports would get service to Orlando - the Orlando Sentinel had an article revealing the airports. I found the article about 2:30PM, called it in before 3PM with the reference. It took WEEK till the noon news the next day to post that according to the Orlando Sentinel …
I realize this has turned into a rant, and to some extent I apologize - but 90% of our local TV media is simply not worth watching.
May 19th, 2006 at 9:15 pm
RE: Dist 150 buys property
Nope, I can’t figure out why the school district is a big mess, neither.
I betcha a high priced BIG city consultant could tell you though.
May 19th, 2006 at 9:17 pm
As someone who used to be in the news game in this market and still has friends in it, let me respond to the previous post.
You are 100%, absolutely correct! It’s nice to know the consultants are wrong and the viewers DO notice that reporters in this market put in their two years and move on.
This is how the morning meetings in all three newsrooms go…..
-”I saw a study about xxxxxx”
-”Did any read the Journal Star yet?”
-”I saw a story on Al’s Morning Meeting we can localize”
-”XXX (meaning whichever network they work for) did a story on xxxx, how can we localize it?”
-”xxxx is airing tonight, are there any local tie-ins?”
Peoria will never get “real” TV news again unless someone locally wants to buy a station. Barrington (which owns HOI) started from scratch and within 2 years now has 10+ stations. Granite (WEEK) is in the red overall and Nexstar (WMBD) has more stations than they can deal with…..all of that means no one is willing to sink any money into the local stations. It’s what can we do overnight to make money?
The options:
- younger reporters with no experience because you pay them less than $20,000/year…they’re just happy to work in TV….they don’t care they’ll need a second job to pay the bills.
- cut/consolidate staff. 20 years, you saw a reporter, photographer, sound man, and possibly a producer on shoots…now, many stations (although none locally) send one person to do all those jobs.
WEEK’s 10:00 show is just to compete with WYZZ’s show. By putting WEEK talent on the air, they already have an advantage. WEEK is #1 for a reason. They are the only channel that has anchors and reporters who have been there for more than one contract. That says a lot about a station.
Bill mentioned beats. That’s a joke. TV reporters do not have beats. Whoever is working gets whatever story fits into their day. One night xx could cover school board then the next day when Hinton holds a press conference yyy will cover it not knowing anything about what happened at the meeting the night before. Why does that happen? Because xxx works 1:30-10:30 and yyy works 9:00-6:00 and the press conference is at 11:00 am.
TV news does break stories every now and then but not as much as the paper does. The advantage to TV is the pictures. You can read about a fire in the paper or you can see the flames shooting out of the roof. Local news (all local news in ANY small market) is a joke. Even at the O&O level, there is still a lot of stories ripped out of the newspaper. Chicago stations steal from the Trib and Sun-Times everyday like Peoria stations do…just like St. Louis stations rip from the Post-Dispatch. The staffing isn’t there….it’s not about good journalism anymore..it’s about making money.
Bill, your idea would never, never work. If anything, the 9:00 show would have less hard news and more features. There is just about 0 audience for a hard news only show. No consultant would recommend it and no news director would put his job on the line for it…..you’d get Panda-Watch ‘06 before you’d get a half hour of news.
As for weather, every consultant will tell you most people watch TV news for weather and that’s it…..that’s why you see 30 minutes of weather in a 22 minute show.
If you guys want to thank anyone, Magid Consulting is responsible for the state of local news…they’re based somewhere in Iowa if you’d like to send a gift basket….they’re the ones that got me out of local news for good.
May 20th, 2006 at 2:50 am
What I find extremely heart-warming is not only did the Dist. 150 Board go ahead and buy the properties before the public vote to do so, but they also paid roughly two times more than what the properties are worth.
Sah-lute to YOU, dumb-asses. What a bunch of absolute idiots… is it a prerequisite to be a self-consumed, completely clueless dumb-ass before you can take out a 150 School Board petition?
May 20th, 2006 at 7:29 am
Geez, I stopped watching local TV sometime ago. The news is one big commercial. They start a story, then say see the rest a 6pm or 10 pm. Or they send out an anchor to do a special story which amounts to nothing because they only have 5 minutes which they break into 2 parts. (see the rest at 10) or they say ,”This is what you’ll see tomorrow in our news partner, the Pantagraph” The weather is done by s spiffy graphics program setup most likely 10 minutes before the newscast by reading the NWS. I could do better with an 8 ball. Sports? Some guy with hair that looks like it came from the band Devoe. It’s always a man and a woman news team handing off lines like they care. The woman will, with a staright face, say 10 died today in Iraq, then turn and say, How’s the weather tomorow Bob?? So phony. Do away with local news at 5 and 6, show morning and 10 pm only and run a crawl for weather and sports.
May 20th, 2006 at 8:16 am
If the school board cannot get out of buying the property they have already committed to, then hello to the new school/park/zoo site and goodbye to the wishes of the East Bluff residents and other taxpayers. There is no way Ken Hinton can save face if they are stuck with spending the $750000.00 already committed. This school board does not have the spine tostop the powerbrokers behind this; three of them have already spoken out about their vote. This is probably the most blatant act a public body has ever undertaken in Peoria, but, what’s new? Wonder why Ransburg wanted on the school board? Let’s see how the City Council will treat them when they begin asking for concessions from the city, wonder if the six weak sisters will go along with the money-very seriously doubt it. Let’s put this baby to sleep and build that school where itshould be, and then lselllthe land on Prospect to the Park District for their Zoo.
May 20th, 2006 at 9:49 am
Where should it be? What concessions would the school board want from the city?? Christ, they are wanting to build new schools. If the bluffs don’t want them, then the southside would love them. Too much whinning going on here.
May 20th, 2006 at 3:06 pm
Glen Oak School was placed where it is currently located for a reason. it is in the heart of the neighborhood it serves and is a part of that neighborhood. Hinton and company have bugs up their collective butts that the new school needs to be in the park and, like all all whiner-babies, will take their ball and go home if they can\\\’t have their way. Peoria Public Schools exist to serve the Peoria Public. The affected Peoria Public wants their neighborhoood school on the site of the present neighborhood school. If it can be done that way, it should be. Nuff said!
May 21st, 2006 at 1:04 am
I said it before, and others have, as well. The solution was easy from the start, and remains easy to this day. Send all of the kids that go to Glen Oak School to surrounding schools for the year and a half that you’ll need to put up a new school. On the day after school ends, simply begin knocking down the old school. Clear it off, and throw up the new one. When it’s done, bring all of the kids back. Repeat this process with every other school that they want to replace. For those schools that are architecturally interesting and might have other commercial or such issues, don’t knock ‘em down. THEN, find surrounding land to buy up and build on. Believe me, there’s plenty of that in Southtown and the Bluff areas. AND, in those cases, TRY to use some common sense, and don’t pay $140,000 for a house that might pull in, say, $55,000 on the open market.
A tip of the Stupidity Helmet to the 150 School Board for proving, once again, that the Board is filled with the biggest dumb arses the planet might have ever known. One house they bought for about $125,000 allowed the people living there to buy a house across the river. The fact that the house they’re leaving was worth less than half that on the open market just rubs salt into the wound. If Sean Matheson could grow a beard, I’d advise him to go incognito, so that folks couldn’t locate him and razz him. Oh well… there’s always the Costume Trunk.
October 12th, 2007 at 3:45 am
Glad to see someone is staying on top of things.