Will Channel 6 ever get it together? (continued)

IN TELEVISION NEWS, familiarity breeds content.

More than anything, this helps to explain why WJAR-TV (Channel 10) remains the dominant commercial operation when it comes to local TV news in Rhode Island. In 1949, it became the state’s first television station. Viewers turn to it with habitual reverence. And not coincidentally, the stability among the NBC-owned-and-operated station’s array of familiar faces — including anchors Doug White, Patrice Wood, and Frank Coletta, investigative reporter Jim Tarciani, and weather people like John Ghiorse — can only inspire envy among its competitors.

WLNE-TV (Channel 6) and WPRI-TV (Channel 12), by contrast, have suffered from two changes in network affiliation over the last 25 years, most recently in 1995 when WLNE renewed its ties with ABC, and WPRI with CBS. More recently, although 12 (whose owner, LIN Television of Providence, gained ownership several years ago of the local Fox affiliate, WNAC-TV, Channel 64), has made some incremental strides against 10 and enjoys greater stability in its on-air staff, personnel changes have continued to beset 6’s news and advertising operation. (Disclosure: I am an unpaid, frequent guest panelist on WPRI/WNAC’s Newsmakers.)

In 1999, for example, WLNE laid off two well-regarded on-air staffers, Pam Watts and Sean Daly — moves that the Providence Journal indicated were "part of a 10-percent layoff that station manager Kingsley Kelley said was necessary for its financial health." Daly, who had worked at Channel 6 since 1981 — leaving for a year to work in Chicago and then returning to ABC6 when he found the out-of-town experience less than satisfying — says he has mostly good feelings about WLNE, even though his tenure ended in a very difficult way. The reporter, who, like Watts, subsequently took a job at WPRI, says, "It wasn’t about me, it wasn’t about Pam — it was about a station in trouble."

But with a fresh 10 percent cutback at WLNE in the time before the Christmas holiday, the station seems just as troubled to some observers.

Says Daly, "Channel 6, for a variety of complicated reasons, does not seem to be able to get out of its own way. I don’t know why they can’t see what the rest of the country sees. People watch other people on television — they watch people they know, and they watch people they trust. [Hiring] Walter Cryan is a recognition of that, but it may be too little, too late . . . But for Walter Cryan, and to a lesser extent Jim Hummel, Channel 6 is peopled essentially with anonymous faces. It’s a problem."

Adds another reporter at a competing station, "One of the sad things about Channel 6 over the years, the people who are running the place just seem to not know what they’re doing. Going back 15 years, there have been a series of people in key positions who have made bad decisions. They get rid of people who are recognized — Ann Conway, Larry Estepa, Sean Daly, Pam Watts. These are people who are very good, who are very recognizable." Reacting to the latest cut of eight people, including two on-air staffers and others in production, engineering, traffic and creative services, the source adds, "That’s an incredible cutback at a place that has already been cutting back. I really question their survivability."

With their larger staffs, 10 and 12 have more reporters, specialists in health and consumer issues, as well as serious investigative reporters in WJAR’s Jim Taricani and WPRI’s Jack White. Similarly, the two leading stations rarely miss promotional opportunities in which their anchors and reporters host public events, benefits, and the like. WJAR also benefits, of course, as an owned-and-operated element of NBC, which is owned by General Electric. Still, despite the differences between the three stations, there’s generally a sameness in the typical content of their newscasts — the same recipe of spot news stories of fleeting significance — house fires, car accidents, violent crimes, impending snowstorms, and the like.

Even market leader WJAR is culpable of some of the most superficial elements of television news. When House Speaker William P. Murphy — arguably the most powerful elected official in Rhode Island — was reelected on January 4, Channel 10 carried a brief voiced-over story on its 11 p.m. news, indicating with the depth of a headline that the speaker had regained his office. Any number of important secondary elements — how Governor Donald L. Carcieri had supported Murphy’s opponent, for example, and will likely face political payback — went unexplored. Similarly, when the revered senator John Chafee died on an October night in 1999, there was a sense that the timing handicapped local broadcasters, and that Chris Black, a veteran former political reporter for the Boston Globe, offered the most incisive coverage, on CNN.

In my mind, local television news is at its best when there’s a strong and sustained local story — like the Plunder Dome trial of former Providence Mayor Vincent A. "Buddy" Cianci Jr. — that jibes with the perceived appetites of local viewers. In that case, all three stations, including WLNE’s Jim Hummel, offered detailed and well-informed coverage.

It’s hardly comforting, though, to remember that television is the greatest source of most people’s information.

"People who want news can get non-stop news," from various sources, including cable television and the Internet, notes H. Philip West Jr., the executive director of Common Cause of Rhode Island, who has advocated for more political coverage by the three local TV stations. "The problem is when you get a national feed [on television], and you get very little local stuff that has any depth." The situation leaves West wishing that there was a larger audience for real coverage, "but it’s almost as if people have become videoized — the expectation of fast action, emotionally charged stuff, so the serious thoughtful interest of the American public seems to be fading, and that’s scary."

EDWIN HART can talk a good game about any element of television news, but his focus is both more circumscribed and more immediate: making WLNE relevant.

Within Channel 6, the mood appears to be mixed — perhaps not a surprise given how surviving staffers have seen other cuts and grown accustomed to cosmic questions about the news operation’s existence. "It always diminishes your news product when you have fewer bodies," says one insider, adding, "I think it’s worse for morale than it is for the general public." That said, the source notes, "We always get it done," adding that out-of-town arbiters, unfamiliar with the local ratings dominance of WJAR-TV, have praised WLNE’s news report. Adds the source, "Our problem has never been our product."

Hart, who was initially hired last summer on an interim basis, arguably knows television as well as anyone in Rhode Island, and he has the potential to make some positive changes. A past vice president for Knight Ridder’s broadcasting division, Hart’s accomplishments at WPRI included hiring Pulitzer-winner Jack White. An anchor at San Francisco’s KRON-TV by the time he was 25, Hart became an entrepreneur after working at WPRI, successfully introducing the use of microwave news trucks in England. Taking his post at 6, he says, "was a challenge of a lifetime."

His counterpart in the general manager’s office, Roland Adeszko, has a strong sales background, something that the previous GM lacked. Adeszko says the target of tying Channel 12 is "a lot more accessible than people think," although in terms of challenging the instinctive tendency of Rhode Islanders to watch Channel 10, he adds, "I think they could do a test pattern and do a 30 share."

Hart has made several changes since joining WLNE, scrapping its 5 a.m. newscast ("It isn’t anything they do on the air, it’s Frank Coletta, and Ghiorse, to some degree," he says, talking about the futility of competing on the early morning report.). He hired Cryan, who has pledged to stay for several years, perhaps longer (although Hart recalls being told by the venerable broadcaster, in reference to their age, "He and I are on God’s timetable."). He also bolstered the special coverage unit with an executive producer, two photographers, a handful of part-time producers, and a rotating reporter. Asked about the station’s efforts at enterprise reporting, Hart points to the series on gun violence and an in-depth package on heart health.

One suspects that if he had a lot of money to work with, Hart could do a really good job. Overall, he says, the goal is "good, solid information, presented in a professional way," with as much enterprising stuff as possible. "Our competition is our self. We have to be better storytellers." In many respects, though, Hart recognizes that overcoming ingrained viewing habits is the greatest challenge facing ABC6’s newscast.

Local observers could only point to one instance — a St. Louis network affiliate owned by Sinclair Broadcasting — in which a top-50 news station suspended its news operation. Asked about where WLNE will wind up between the worst-case (dropping its news operation) and best-case scenario (avoiding further cuts), Adeszko emphasizes a sunnier outlook.

To say that WLNE faces an uphill challenge would be putting it politely. At worst, perhaps it will continue to limp along. Still, one can only hope that Channel 6 makes a better go of it. For all the shortcomings in the genre of local television news, the last thing that Rhode Island needs is one more diminished news entity.

Ian Donnis can be reached at idonnis[a]phx.com.