Notes from the Newsroom: 7/9/09

By Frank Macek

Just sitting here in the WKYC newsroom getting ready for a 7 p.m. telecast and wondering what to write about.

This summer has been so boring in terms of big news coming from the WKYC Digital Broadcast Center. It's almost a major let down after the transition to all digital television on June 12th and our new tower construction.

The business offices of SportsTime Ohio moved into the building in June, so we are all one big, happy family. If only the Indians could turn things around. Prior to the move, only the productions were done here with the business office off site.

June 26th we finally turned off our analog transmitter for the final time. WKYC was a "night light" station for the local market which aired non-stop programming in English and Spanish for those viewers who still had not made the conversion.

The July sweeps period started last Thursday, July 2nd, and runs through Wednesday, July 29th.

The drama of the Michael Jackson story is finally beginning to wane after wall to wall coverage it seemed. We heard from a lot of viewers who were sick and tired of all the coverage. Cable newschannels were the worst. Most of the Cleveland stations seemed pretty balanced, in my opinion.

Still no announcements about any changes to the morning show after Abby Ham's departure back to Knoxville in early June. The economic climate continues to make it difficult for local stations to staff like they used to. Hopefully this will change by next year as we feel we have already reached a bottom in terms of advertising issues, but in the meantime - Mark Nolan is the solo news anchor of Channel 3 News Today with Hollie Strano on weather, Maureen Kyle out and about and Pat Butler with those great traffic updates.

So we just wanted our viewers to know, we are still alive and well. Hopefuly we'll have something fresh, really fresh soon.

In the meantime, I hope you'll continue to enjoy many of the features in our archives and news coming about Jay Leno's debut at 10 p.m. on September 14th. It's a show that will make or break NBC and their local affiliates.

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