Well, the “Budweiser & Bufferin” salesmen have won another round and the community is the worse for it.
Yesterday, the suits at WBZ/CBS/Viacom/Budweiser/ Bufferin/Toyota/Ford/Proctor&Gamble/Etc.Inc.
announced that they were letting legendary Boston television sports anchor and everyman sports enthusiast, Bob Lobel go – actually buying out his contract along with their entertaiment anchor, Joyce Kulhawik and newsman Scott Whale.
The Budweiser & Bufferin salesmen who move up to become media executives think individual personalities no longer brand a local TV station and that we will watch any animatronic humanoid they place in front of a camera. The Tabloid News Station WHDH-TV 7 is the best current example of that philosophy. Can you name one anchor on that station? Word is that Ed Ansin who owns that station has regular anchor tryouts at local high schools every year and the most inarticulate and personality deprived individuals are added to his anchor farm team.
The former advertising time salesmen who are knocked up to media management positions never seem to learn the lesson that the Boston market [with the exception of Channel 7 which proves H.L.Menchen’s acerbic comment to the effect that ‘ you will never go broke underestimating the intelligence of the average American’] appreciates and will eventually demand on-air talent who have some institutional memory of the events of this region and state. Bob Lobel defines and epitomizes that standard. And what is his reward – he gets fired !
When Bob Lobel, Joyce Kulhawik and Scott Whale leave WBZ-TV I leave WBZ-TV as a viewer and Jon Keller will find no spin on his “spin-o-meter” in that statement. As Channel 5 will see, “Everyone does like Mike…Mike Lynch – on-air sports director at Channel 5.
I wonder who would ever consider a career in broadcast journalism at this point? As soon as you become seasoned, older and expensive, you’re out precisely because you’re older and expensive, and they can always find an airhead to read lines off of a teleprompter. There’s no long-term job security.
… Pats post game TV will never be the same for me, unless Lobel winds up somewhere else that I can see him. NFL network execs should look into grabbing him.
Who the hell even watches local news broadcasts anymore? They’re full of stories like “What You Don’t Know About How Your Socks May Be Killing You”, and when there is real local news they talk endlessly “from the scene” (long after everyone has left) about nothing at all past the one or two facts they actually have.
<
p>Maybe they’re losing you because some anchors are going, but they lost me, and a lot of other viewers, long ago because they air meaningless garbage for 75% of their broadcast. And the weather and sports (the remaining 25%) I get from a newspaper or online.
is how they spend much of the time telling you want’s coming up “after the break” etc, and then when they get to the story it’s little more than what was in the previews. Then they end with the comment to go to their web site to find out more. I get more informative local news asking my neighborhood busybody than turning on the tv.
As the “Dean of Talk Radio”, the late Jerry Williams would advise budding communication students from Emerson and the like when he would ask them this question: “What business are you going into?” And the students would usually respond, “Oh, Mr. Williams we are going to become journalist. We are going to become communicators.” – To which Jerry would respond in his own bombastic way “No! You are going into the advertising business.” Jerry Williams was right then and still right today.
<
p>PS. WARNING
This is a plug: And no, the check is not in the mail…
If you want a fascinating read about the development of talk radio and how Jerry Williams created what we now call talk radio, read Burning Up The Air – Jerry Williams, Talk Radio and the Life In Between, Steve Elman and Alan Tolz biography of Jerry Williams.
He didn’t live too far away and I’d see him, periodically. He was a real nice guy. A brilliant and talented man.
<
p>Lobel was good years ago, but then he got odd. It seems as if he had a personailty change. I can remember listening to him of late and he was talking rag time. I stopped watching. Joyce Kulhawik is a nice person and I wish her well. I’m pretty sure she doesn’t need the job and I can assure you if she wants to work, a PR or advert company would pay big bucks to bring her onboard.
When the night team was Liz Walker, Jack Williams, Bob Lobel, Bruce Schwoegler and Joyce Kulhawik, I watched the news just to see them. This is corny, but it did feel like getting the latest at the neighborhood greasy spoon. Since that broke up, it’s been harder and harder to bother watching the night team.
<
p>The only thing the television newscast has going for it is that sense of trust and familiarity (Tom Brokaw, for example. The only newscaster I have any trust in anymore is Anderson Cooper, and that’s iffy.). Leave it to these geniuses to give away their best advantage. You aren’t going to make good television by pretending to be good Internet.
Scott Whale was always a jerk who wasn’t too smart. But I liked Bob Lobel and Joyce a lot. Joyce was the first choice over Roeper to replace Siskel I bet she really wishes she got that.
not “Whale”. The guy’s just been laid off. At least get his name right.