| Topic Name: |
Question for Charlotte |
| Message Name: |
14 was like any startup |
| Date Posted: |
06/14/2005 |
| In Reply To: |
Glad to hear Jim Newman is still there. I also like the ND in Raleigh, he's also a great guy.
It's an unfortunate circumstance. But, does anyone find it ironic (or a coincidence) that WCNC's company was the one that caused the trigger to fire on News 14? Was it really a money loser, or was it that the product was eating share?
I really dont know. |
| Message: |
It wasn't making money right away, but it did have an audience.
Word was, research showed 70 percent or so of cable viewers had already sampled News 14 by its third week on the air, and something like 44 percent "liked it better" than the broadcast stations. Take that with a big grain of salt. What people say in research isn't alway what they do.
I also heard that the Saturday before they lowered the boom, one of their Saturday morning quarter hours got something like a 7.4 -- beating all the other stations who were going head to head with it in that quarter hour. Again, use a big glass of water to wash down that grain of salt -- but as the other blonde said, it is a sampling station. 14 was not about sustained viewership, it was about getting people to flip on weather on the ones before they go out, or keeping news on in the background to catch Mrs. Fixit, car guy, and some local news along with the weather updates.
The station as they knew it died the exact same day the Belo shareholders filed suit against the company over the circulation over-estimates at Dallas Morning News. It was purely about the money -- capital outlay against their bottom line. Nearly 500 college-educated professionals and journalists lost their jobs because of it. After all, business is business. Gotta please the shareholders -- TV isn't a charity. News 14 was just too new to be making money for them when they needed it.
And to answer the first poster's question -- maybe other stations don't respect 14, but John Q. and Mary Public don't seem to know the difference about whose reporters have more experience and whose don't. Viewer habits die hard.
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