Thursday, April 30, 2009

WBBM-TV cuts staff; demotes State

The Church of Tisch has done it again.

CBS-owned WBBM-TV underwent numerous staff cuts, including entertainment reporter Bill Zwecker, reporter Joanie Lum, and longtime fill-in sportscaster Howard Sudsberry.

In addition, the station also demoted Anne State - who is now only anchoring the 5 p.m. newscast with Rob Johnson, who is anchoring the 6 p.m. and 10 p.m. newscast solo. State is also being assigned to reporter duties.

Assistant news director Todd Woolman was also let go.

The last time the 10 p.m. newscast was anchored by only one person was the ill-fated experiment in 2000 when the station tried a hard news format fronted by Carol Marin.

WBBM is also discontinuing their weekend morning newscasts.

Thought: As mentioned above, the last time there was a solo anchor at 10 p.m. on WBBM-TV was Carol Marin, whose Ten O'Clock News experiment (while well-intentioned) was a bust. If a single-anchor format didn't work before at 10, why do they think it would work again?

Well, ABC brought back Cupid, didn't they? Enough said.

2 comments:

John said...

How in the world does WBBM-TV Channel 2 EVER expect to get any increased viewer loyalty when they constantly make newsanchor changes! How unfortunate for Anne State to have moved from California to Chicago's 'deadly' CBS-Channel 2!! The talented recent newcomer (State) should seriously start looking elsewhere for her next gig because there's not much of a future at Channel 2. It's really shameful what this once great news station has become over the years--very hard to believe the once fine newcasts co-anchored by Bill Kurtis and Walter Jacobson came from this station.

T Dog said...

And she left a NBC O&O (!) for this... who knew?