Paper drops another day; Sinclair starts morning news
January 14, 2021Friday printed editions of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette will end with the February 26 edition. That will leave the paper with just two days of print editions per week. Since 2018, the paper has been slowly moving to an all digital format and cut two days of print and delivery in 2018 and two more in 2019.
Sinclair Broadcast Group will begin a new national broadcast on its stations come Monday, January 18. “The National Desk” hosted by Jan Jeffcoat will air from 7:00 – 9:00 a.m. on WPGH-TV (53). Sinclair not only owns WPGH, but also WPNT-TV (22) locally.
The program will air from the company’s Hunt Valley, Maryland headquarters and feature reports from their stations across the country. However, it’s been years since WPGH had its own news room after an attempt to bring a 10:00 p.m. newscast to the region for about 10 years. Many attribute the failure to the insistence that stations carry their “News Central” which came from the same headquarters. Soon after, WPXI-TV has had a news share agreement with WPGH.
But Sinclair also says this won’t be anything like “News Central” as it will draw from their local stations. Sinclair stations with news departments will do local weather drops; markets without a news operation will see more news related items from Hunt Valley. Unlike “News Central”, “The National Desk” is not intended to include a political slant nor will it have “fluff”.
I’m actually surprised WPGH-TV hasn’t restarted a news department, seeing that Sinclair has since purchased WTOV-TV & WJAC-TV and could easily use those resources to start one.
Of course, being that Pittsburgh is one of the more competitive local news markets in the country–think that was ever possible 40 years ago when KDKA-TV dominated–it might be a tough sell.
But seriously… why are you surprised? SBG did a very poor job from the getgo with selecting talent for the news… and that was to be their sole newscast. Let’s think about this… They pull two non-Pittsburgh no-names in from wherever in 1996, some mysterious weather dude. They went for what Pittsburghers love – sports – and snagged Alby from WTAE. It worked for a few years, but the no-name anchors didn’t want to be here and they left one by one eventually leading Jay Harris over from WAMO (before he went to ESPN) and then Sheila Hyland. It was too late by that point… the damage was done.
The only two SBG stations I’ve watched with news are WSYX (and WTTE) and WJLA. Full disclosure: WJLA (as well as WTOV and WJAC) I’ve watched before they were owned by SBG. The anchors at WSYX are fantastic as I had come to know them during frequent trips to Columbus. They have a strong news force and do very well. But let’s be fair, WSYX (nee WTVN-TV) had a newsroom well ahead of SBG ownership. WPGH would have to start from the ground up… again… but “the big 3” have a strong grip and enough newscasts throughout the day that adding another station and full-time competitor is a complete waste. WJAC and WTOV don’t have the resources to cover Pittsburgh per se even if they do spend a significant amount of time covering those stories.
I give this “experiment” out of Hunt Valley less than a year before they fall into the “pundit” stuff they claim is never going to happen before it dies a painful death. I hope I’m wrong, but yeah… stay tuned.
Same with Nexstar’s News Nation. Its pretty much a flop.
Having grown up in Beaver County I watched WTOV pre-Sinclair as well. Its pretty much your typical Sinclair station now. WSYX surprisingly isn’t–they rarely air the “must runs”, which considering they’ve been owned by Sinclair since the mid 1990s is surprising. I do agree they have a good news product, especially compared to other Columbus stations. WCMH-TV is your typical Nexstar station: straight newscast, but cheaply made. WBNS-TV isn’t too bad but Tegna is trying to turn it into more of a “lifestyle” newscast. Think KDKA-TV in the early 2000s after Viacom took over but before they started covering the Steelers 24/7.