Your News Choice

[trev57]

Now that all 4 Milwaukee newscasts are in HD and on a level playing field, how would everyone rank the stations as far as quality and what their choice is every night?

[ArgMeMatey]

I try to watch 58-2 at 9 PM.  They usually don't dwell on anything too long or pretend to cover anything in depth.  In other words, no nonsense and respectful of my time.  

I also watch 4-1 at 10 PM a few times a week.  They tend to cover more stuff near where I live.  But when they start playing the sappy music, or go overboard on weather or some stupid I-team BS, I am gone.  They are the absolute worst for the ad nauseam coverage of the issue of the day.  For example, Packers lose ... ten minutes lead story.  OK, we get it, they lost.  Could have told us that in ten seconds. with all the relevant facts.  Get over it.  Lowest Common Denominator.  

I am not a sports fan so when games are running late on 4, 6, 58, or 12, I will just watch another channel's news or skip it altogether.  There are nights during the peak sports season when only one channel has the news on at 10:00.  

Anybody that uses a slogan along the lines of, "the news you NEED" is not talking to me.  I can probably count on one hand the number of news stories I've seen that I really "needed" to see.   Mostly, I just want to know who's screwed up what ... to reassure myself that I am not the stupidest person on the planet.  That's also why I subscribe to "News of the Weird".  

The best news, of course, is the infotainment I get from Kent Brockman.

[ddeerrff]

1006 - Even though they repeat a lot of stories.  Enjoy looking at their anchors.

1012 - Can't stand the voice of the male anchor (Jason?), and Kathy Mykleby is wearing much too much make up.  

1004 - WTMJ used to be very stiff and proper, suits and ties and every thing in place.  That was uninteresting and hard to watch.  Now they have gone way too far in the other direction - their on air staff is a bunch of clowns.  (IMHO of course)

CBS?  Never watch it.

[LoadStar]

I think 12 still does the best at delivering the news well, even at the same time as their production of their newscast is less than stellar, as I mentioned in another thread. Also mentioned there is that they are in desperate need of some mentoring from other Hearst stations. The basic Hearst graphics package is still quite good, but implemented badly here; the music package is good too.

6 is often too folksy for my taste. They often behave like a much, much smaller market newscast. I like Ted Perry, Brad Hicks is OK, but I really don't care for too many others of their anchors and reporters. Their graphics package is OK, but I hate that they intersperse a lot of "homemade" graphics that often look cheap and don't mesh well with the graphics package, adding to the small-market feel of their newscast.

I think 4 has some of the best production in the market, and their graphics and music package is the best as well. The problem is that their tendency to use more of a tabloid journalistic style turns me off instantly.

58 has made leaps and bounds over the last year. It's staggering how much they've improved. Still, there remains hints of their constrained budget throughout their newscast that still turns me off, as does their on-air talent. Don't care for any of them there.

[Tivoman44]

Hard to say.  I think they are only worth watching at night, 5, 6 or 9pm.  I have flipped channels between all four in the morning.  The morning newscasts are so horrible.  They inform you of weather and traffic, and the way I see it, I can get that from morning radio.  

I personally like Ted Perry.  But nothing against his competition at night.  

I also like that when I do want to watch the News Fox has it starting at 9.....CBS' on 58.2 doesn't count.

[WITI6fan]

I used to watch WITI frequently (as my username implies) but in the past two years or so I've almost stopped watching alltogether. Their overall presentation is in need of a serious overhaul. There's been some slight improvements lately, but they really need to get rid of their stock DigitalJuice background graphics and replace those horrendous things they call "news opens". The promotions department needs to be replaced as well, A lot of the stuff they use are default Final Cut Pro effects.

And that set needs to go. Now.

As for content, they've been mediocre for the past few years. Ever since the sale to Local TV (though I doubt staying a FOX O&O would have been much better.) theres an obvious lack of money and hiring "videojournalists" and what appear to be people fresh out of college. Breaking news is painful to watch ever since they lost their helicopter. That day two summers ago when the panel fell off that parking garage, there were something like 40 minutes of cell phone pictures narrated by people on cell phones and crappy cell phone streams that broke up before they could get a live truck set up. The other stations had their helicopters up and you could actually see things. Similar thing happened with the power plant bluff collapse a few weeks ago. At the very least they need to enter into a sharing agreement with WTMJ or WISN, if either of them would do such a thing.

WTMJ: I'll usually watch WTMJ when I watch news. I think they have the best production values in the market. Content-wise, I think they could probably scale back the weather coverage quite a bit and there'd probably still be too much. Speaking of weather, I might just be picky here, but their weather graphics are awful. Using Accuweather's awful maps just screams "lazy" to me. The graphics on the VIPIR system are all still the default.

Their graphics are getting kind of stale, and are probably due for a refresh, but considering some of Journal's other stations have only recently adopted this package, It'll probably be a few years until that happens. Their set is also getting kind of old, too.

WISN: Content: Great. Presentation: Ugh. The Hothaus Creative graphics (i.e. the open) are great, the Hearst graphics look bad next to them. They also suffer from a bad case of templateitis, where everything looks the same. Production values seem to have fallen pretty low, I'm shocked that they're still frequently airing packages in SD, and that some graphics still appear to be in SD.

Their set is meh. It needed to be totally replaced, they squeezed a few (key word: few) more years of life out of it with the recent refresh (which was poorly done itself).

WDJT: Content: Ugh. Presentation: Great. The new set, while small, is a huge improvement over the newsroom. Graphics are, in my opinion, right underneath WTMJ. Unfortunately, the HD upgrade and automation has severely degraded their already low production values. Their "style" of having the other anchor start talking the moment the other stops is very hard to do with automation and requires the TD to advance the rundown immediately when one stops talking or risk clipping the other.

And "Just 10 Minutes" needs to go. Now.

[ArgMeMatey]

Noting the emphasis on presentation in these comments, it's still tough to trot out the "form follows function" cliché, knowing that these stations have consultants that tell them what will increase the number of viewers in the specific segments that advertisers want to reach.  In other words, people that are influenced to act and buy based on what they see on the news.  

For example, I roll my eyes when, after a remote report, the WTMJ anchor asks a stupid or obvious follow-up question ("Is the man on the street out there up in arms about this, Mick?"), and when after a crime or disaster report ends, the anchor says something like, "Wow, I'm never leaving the house again" or "Better go make sure your kids are in bed."  

OK, they're not that overt.  Often they just look at the camera and say "Scary.  Thank you Mick."  But the general idea is to leave the viewer with a particular impression.  They wouldn't do it if Magid et al weren't telling them it keeps "the people who buy stuff" hooked when the anchors verbally affirm what those "buying" viewers themselves were thinking.  

This story says it pretty well ... but be warned, they use obscenities.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9U4Ha9HQvMo

[duncantuna]

I really don't have a favorite .. but I probably watch CBS58 the most.

Why?  Because so much of the news is simply not interesting (to me.)   There are too many news events that just aren't relevant unless they are very local.  

Example.  Nearly every house fire gets time on TV.   While I feel bad for the people whose house burned down ..  The house lit on fire, brave fire guys put out the fire, and now it's out.   Unless it happened in my area, I just don't need to know that stuff.   To a large extent, same with crime.  Every one of Milwaukee's 80-100 murders gets on TV news, plus the subsequent court action.  

Then there's discussing the weather for 5 minutes, when 1 minute would suffice.  And if you're not a Packer fan, well, the news is over after 17 minutes.  

Remove the stories about crime, fire, repetitive fluff like Dirty Dining and Speedbusters, there's just so little left.  

So .. CBS58 and their "just 10 minutes" .. is the right idea.  Now that they are in HD, I watch them the most.

[Jack 1000]

I don't watch much TV news.

However, from what I have seen, I find channel 12's anchor people to be the most polished and professional.  Although channel 4's weather is overkill, they certainly are well prepared in how they present it!  CBS 58, covers the basic news, but in less depth than the other stations.  Some of their commentators are a little too "trivial" and "simple" in personality for my taste.  Fox 6 does an adequate job.

What to watch, I think depends on not only the type of information that you are seeking, but the format in how it is presented.  Each station does some things better than other stations.

It will be interesting to see how TV news trends will change over time, as it appears anything the reporters say, any story that they cover, can be found on-line and through a variety of other On-Demand sources.  This gives the viewers ultimate control over their news experiences and makes the news stories excursively theirs.

Jack

PS.  I care more about content of news than the quality of the picture.  But for movies and sports, picture quality is very important to me.

[Tivoman44]

Speaking of Weather, Channel 6, I like it how they actually go outside on the weather deck.

[trev57]

TMJ4 is now branding themselves as "On Your Side". It might take some getting used to, but I can see it getting as annoying as them saying "HD" after everything like they used to.

And they have new music, which is just weird after so many years of the previous package.

[mrschimpf]

TMJ4 is now branding themselves as "On Your Side". It might take some getting used to, but I can see it getting as annoying as them saying "HD" after everything like they used to.

And they have new music, which is just weird after so many years of the previous package.

"On Your Side" is by far the most generic news branding out there these days. Almost all of Media General's dull news operations with the same logos and same sets use it as their main branding, along with several other station chains. It started with consumer news segments and should stay there.

As for the music? It doesn't scream urgency at all and sounds like something out of an infomercial. It also sounds like it has the CBS three-note theme in it, something you really don't want from an NBC station.

[WITI6fan]

"On Your Side" is by far the most generic news branding out there these days. Almost all of Media General's dull news operations with the same logos and same sets use it as their main branding, along with several other station chains. It started with consumer news segments and should stay there.

As for the music? It doesn't scream urgency at all and sounds like something out of an infomercial. It also sounds like it has the CBS three-note theme in it, something you really don't want from an NBC station.

The fact that they've slapped "ON YOUR SIDE" onto everything is grounds for an instant "dislike" in my opinion. "Breaking News Now On Your Side"? What? Seriously?

For music, I think they should have gone with Aerial over Locals Only for music. KTNV, Journal's station in Vegas uses that and it works real nice with the graphics. I don't think I can say the same about Locals Only. They've also not dropped their habit of using the same track for everything, so everything about this change has gotten repetitive real fast. It's only been a day and I'm already tired of hearing "On Your Side" every two minutes.

[mrschimpf]

The fact that they've slapped "ON YOUR SIDE" onto everything is grounds for an instant "dislike" in my opinion. "Breaking News Now On Your Side"? What? Seriously?

For music, I think they should have gone with Aerial over Locals Only for music. KTNV, Journal's station in Vegas uses that and it works real nice with the graphics. I don't think I can say the same about Locals Only. They've also not dropped their habit of using the same track for everything, so everything about this change has gotten repetitive real fast. It's only been a day and I'm already tired of hearing "On Your Side" every two minutes.

Now that I hear the LO in varying instrumental forms on YouTube...it's not a bad package at all. But I do agree that Aerial would work in a much better way. it's just that again, Journal is running the same part of the package for everything. At least with 58 they try to vary the cuts they use, but TMJ just pounds that bridge portion until it's an earworm that can't leave your mind.

[trev57]

Am I the only one who thinks WISN needs to do something new (graphics, HD field shots, finally hiring someone to replace Toya Washington, etc) urgently? Their act is getting really tiresome IMHO.