On the morning of Aug. 14, newsroom staffers at WMAR-TV were handed an internal memo with the odd headline: “Charm City can count on us for even more local news.” It was odd, because the memo announced the canceling of the station’s daily noon news program. It was also odd, because it took nearly a week for anyone outside the station to find out about it.
Usually, such memos bounce around media circles with the speed of an electric shock. Maybe nobody bothered to spread this one because it had such a sense of inevitability about it. In Baltimore, for a long time now, WMAR’s local news ratings in virtually every time slot have lagged not only behind WBAL and WJZ, but frequently behind syndicated programming such as cartoons.
For the past several years, viewers who flip the dial and stumble into one of WMAR’s news programs are likely to find themselves wondering, Who are these people? Long gone are the old pros who kept the station together for so many years, such as Susan White Bowden and Jack Bowden and George Collins and Andy Barth.
But the disappearance of so many familiar faces was not helped when, earlier this summer, the station made long-time sportscaster Scott Garceau “an offer he had to refuse,” as some at the station have termed it and he “retired” after 28 years at WMAR. (He’ll reportedly do occasional “specials” for the station.)
Garceau, as solid and conscientious a pro as ever worked in local sports broadcasting, was doing his job just fine. But, like a lot of mainstream media around the country — it’s not just the old-line newspapers, folks — the station has chosen to meet tough economic times not by strengthening its core reporting but by tightening its budget.
Often, that means getting rid of those deemed to be making too much money. It’s the state of modern broadcasting. Unlike the old days, when there were only three competing stations, cable and computer web sites have dramatically thinned out the advertising dollars that support all salaries.
Another of the WMAR veteran reporters, the respected Scott Broom, got the axe last September after nearly 17 years at the station. Broom’s doing fine now. He’s working for WUSA, in Washington, but he lost his job here for reasons having nothing to do with his abilities as a reporter.
“They told me it was strictly a budget priority,” Broom was saying this week. “They said, ‘The numbers aren’t sustainable.’”
That’s TV talk meaning: Look, it’s television, and we’re still making a boatload of money — but not as much as we’d like, and not
enough that we want to blow it on veteran reporters who actually know the community, and know a real story when they see it — but are making “too much” money.
As far as knowing the community — that’s basic when you’re attempting to explain it to thousands of viewers, isn’t it? — WMAR’s news director, who penned last week’s memo, is Peggy Phillip. She came here via Memphis and Syracuse. She replaced a guy who came here from Columbus, Ohio.
In the new setup at WMAR, the station will cancel the noon news at the end of this month but will add an hour to its morning show, “Good Morning, Maryland,” from 9 a.m. to 10 a.m. If it follows the pattern of most morning “news” programs, it will be heavy on lifestyle features and light on actual news.
Last week’s memo, written by Phillip, termed the moves “exciting” and “dynamic.”
In a sense, they are. The station was getting tiny numbers with its noon news, so why not put their efforts into something untried? But TV stations make their big money on early-evening and 11 p.m. news — and WMAR still hasn’t figured out how to draw viewers there.
“It’s ironic,” Broom was saying the other day. “There’s more advertising money being spent on TV, but it’s all diffused now. There are so many stations, and so many other media.”
How does any station make the case to viewers that it’s better to watch their news than some other station’s?
“Realistically,” says Broom, “TV news is about marketing and packaging, and not getting beat on the two or three things that matter each day. So you spend a million dollars on a helicopter. Given what TV news is, you can’t be competitive without it. And you’re relentless about marketing and packaging.”
And you remove the news at noon and add a morning show, and hope that viewers will pay attention.
