It used to be very professional with household names. Now it seems very amateur with kids out of college taking their first jobs. Reporters being “live and local” fumbling all over their words and acting a fool. It reminds me of the local news when I visit Bend or Eugene. About the only thing that’s remained the same is some of the long time meteorologists. Was there huge budget cuts or something? For a decent sized city our local news has become a joke.
Capitalism. They were all bought up by the same company (or few companies). And that company needs to increase profits every quarter.
I'm sure it depends on the station and the timeslot. We generally watch channel 12, and their primary anchors Kimberly Maus and Shauna Parsons have each been at KPTV for over 20 years. However, they use the first 90 minutes of their broadcast (4:30 - 6:00) as basically a training ground, letting junior anchors (like Bonnie Silkman or Joe Vithayathil) get some experience at the desk, and often letting some of the better reporters have a crack at it, so you definitely get a different level of professionalism early on. On-location reporters are always going to be a mixed bag, as the most competent generally seek and obtain promotions, but Debra Gil has been there forever, and some younger ones like Mia Villanueva and Amal Elhelw are very good at the job (Connor McCarthy I could take or leave). They also tend to keep older ones around much longer than they should (Marilyn Deutsch being the prime example up until her retirement a couple years ago). I have no idea what the other stations are like, but there's definitely a level of quality and continuity on channel 12 that keeps them as our morning news source.
Bonnie Silkman is a fave of mine!! I hardly pay attention to what she’s saying though. Marilyn Deustche is absolutely hilarious. I almost feel like her colleagues are making fun of her half the time. There’s a younger kid out in the field on KPTV that is a huge dork. He acts like he just slammed an energy drink and throws snowballs and slides around on ice during the snow. Very cringe as the kids like to say. I was more speaking on channels 2, 6 and 8. They’ve become absolutely awful!
Brother you need to travel more. Every city’s local news is identical unless you are in LA or NYC. All of it looks like public access.
