TV Q&A: Will WTAE hire a new weekend morning anchor?
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Trib Total Media TV writer Rob Owen answers reader questions every Wednesday at TribLive.com in a column that also appears in the Sunday Tribune-Review.
Q: Is WTAE-TV still looking for a weekend morning news anchor?
— William, via email
Rob: Following the July departure of weekend morning anchor Tom Garris, Channel 4 is indeed doing the usual search for a replacement.
“Yes, still searching for a weekend morning anchor,” said WTAE news director Baylor Long. “Hopefully we’ll have something to announce soon. In the meantime, we have a great group of journalists filling in on Saturday and Sunday mornings.”
Q: Looks like WTAE anchor Shannon Perrine has let her hair go natural. Good for her! For all too long, male anchors were allowed to turn gray, but the females had to color their hair or lose their jobs. Hope this is a growing trend in TV news.
— Mike, Beaver
Rob: Yes, I noticed that, too, and I also applaud the choice. I reached out to Perrine to ask about her thinking when she made that decision but she declined to comment.
Q: I noticed that KDKA-TV is recording its new sports YouTube show, “Every Blade of Grass with Cool & Cass,” in the newsroom. It made me think of their newsroom set. Whatever happened to it? Why did they stop using it? They spent all that money on their newsroom renovation and they don’t show it off.
-Barb Jerry via email
Rob: So KDKA is showing off its newsroom in “Every Blade of Grass,” using what appears to be the same newsroom anchor desk introduced after the renovation (and glimpsed at 3:38 in the station’s newsroom renovation special).
The desk is turned to show off the newsroom. What KDKA is no longer using is the newsroom set with the desk turned the other way (anchors at the desk facing into the newsroom) with a fairly plain backdrop and monitor. I couldn’t get an answer about why that configuration is no longer in use.
Q: Please tell me why television stations are not fact-checking all these incessant political ads. I just saw an ad that says Vice President Harris will ban fracking if elected president. Presidents can’t ban fracking in our state, just on federal land and there’s not much here. Harris has said she won’t anyway, yet how many of these ads will continue? Why aren’t TV stations worried about the public responsibility of having a license to control the airwaves? Why have they completely abdicated their responsibility not to disseminate falsehoods?
— Theresa, Ligonier
Rob: I wrote a little about TV stations and political ads a few weeks ago, including that the law requires stations to carry federal candidates’ ads. And stations must carry the ads even if they lie.
Stations have more leeway to reject political ads from third parties and they certainly should if a third-party ad contains a known falsehood. It’s unclear from what Theresa wrote which kind of ad — candidate or third-party/PAC — she’s referencing.
Q: I just tried to play my DVR recording of the Sept. 25 “PBS NewsHour” and found instead a one-hour episode of “Antiques Roadshow.” I thought these technical mix-ups were all behind us.
— Mark. via email
Rob: Per a WQED-TV spokeswoman, “A critical network switch in our Fifth Avenue building failed just before ‘The NewsHour.’ Our broadcast systems did what they’re designed to do in the event of an internet outage and switched to the national PBS feed, which aired ‘Antiques Roadshow’ at 6 p.m. We continue to invest in new tools and processes to improve our reliability and note that ‘NewsHour’ hasn’t been preempted in nearly nine months.”