Reactions to story from The New York Times

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  NBC Plans 24-Hour News for the New York Region

  http://21stnews.com/wp08/?p=150
  3 days ago in 21stnews · No authority yet

  NBC Plans 24-Hour News for the New York Region May 9, 2008 | by Editor | Read | No Comments NBC Universal announced on Wednesday plans to start a 24-hour local cable news channel similar to New York 1. It will de-emphasize the identity of NBC’s flagship station, WNBC, Channel 4, rechristening it a “content center” and making it one part of a larger media presence. Read the New York Times story 
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  The Top Ten Reasons NY1 Will Crush NBC's Planned 24-Hour New York News Channel

  http://nymag.com/daily/intel/2008/05/the_top_ten_reasons_why...
  3 days ago in Daily Intelligencer - New York Magazine · Authority: 2,124

  We Daily Intel bloggers often work at home … alone, isolated, no flesh-and-blood colleagues to mutter annoyances aloud to or smoke your brains out with in front of the building. We crave human faces and voices. Which is why, from virtually the moment we rise from our humble Murphy bed (seriously!) until the moment we leave the house in the evening to drink off the LED stupor, we are cosseted and amused by the warm, burbling tones of NY1. [Ed. note: Tim Murphy, our beloved contributor watches NY1 exclusively. We other Daily Intellers obviously take time out to watch The View, and Live anytime Anderson is subbing in for Regis.] Hence the sharp, contemptuous "Ha!" we emitted this morning upon learning that NBC plans to launch in November a competitor channel to NY1. Brashly titled "New York's Newschannel," it'll go 24 hours a day and cover not only the five B's but the greater region, including New Jersey and Connecticut (areas that NY1, in its own commercials, rightly congratulates itself for ignoring). We predict it will fail, leaving NY1 the undisputed chronicler of midday drive-by shootings in Morrisania and senior-citizen découpage summits in Sheepshead Bay. At the risk of drawing attention to NY1's secret weapons in this moment of challenge, we will enumerate the ten reasons NBC will topple before the Mighty Queen of the Lower-Left-Corner Time and Weather Logo… 1. It will not have the artistic audacity to find a brilliant gaggle of no-name local musicians and film self-promoting clips of them singing their own, charmingly quirky lyrics to its theme jingle. See for yourself. (Scroll down for the talent!) 2. It will not dare to question and deconstruct the myth of a firewall between reporting and opinion by having an anchorwoman that morphs magically into a theater critic before your very eyes. 3. It certainly will not try to enliven its own evening call-in show by, on some implicit level, emboldening its own on-air talent to call in with anonymous crank calls, their voices poorly concealed even if they assume such classy-sounding identities as "Dalton, from the Upper East Side." 4. It will not be shrewd enough to, even four years after the end of Sex and the City, air 253 times a day, every day, a sassy Carmel Town Car commercial cleverly patterned after the hit series. 5. It won't take the piss out of highfalutin local arts collectives by making them perform in the lobby of its own building or among its own cubicles. 6. It likely will not employ a "news wheel" based on the shrewd psychology that, unless you see the clip about the rabid gerbil that got loose in the Staten Island pre-K 23 times over three hours, it probably is just not going to sink in and you are not going to care enough. 7. It will never give a coveted morning slot to a lovably goofy schlub who, ">upon gaining such a reputation, must undergo a semi-successful attempt to taper both his waistline and his tri-state-bubba appeal. 8. Its news team will also likely remain devoid of adorably corpulent, memoir-publishing, pol-grilling Bronx homeboys, sweetly bland, fashion-proof blondes helming the weekend desk, and headline-summarizing Canadians whose toast-dry tone barely conceals the sneering, Mencken-like bitchiness within. 9. Even with a 24-hour news hole, it will likely not ram home daily reminders that, just outside a Manhattan bursting at the seams with wealth, fame and fabulousness, there remain 8 million odd regular New Yorkers struggling with un-fabulous issues like deadbeat landlords, bus-route shutdowns, and asthma. Not to mention neighbors who always want to be on camera in the wake of a local mishap, no matter how slurred or inchoate their remarks. 10. Getting back to the matter of theme songs: NBC's will never be as catchy, even if the guys from Abba write it. It will never burrow like aural scabies beneath your cortex and chirpingly colonize your waking hours, even the few spent away from NY1. It will never match that soulful sax and those piping piccolos! But you know what, NBC? Go ahead and try. Fat chance this city's humanity-starved, housebound freelancers will hum along, though. —Tim Murphy
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  News is free for NBC

  http://daryllang.com/blog/254
  3 days ago in History Eraser Button // A Media and Culture Blog From Brooklyn, New York · Authority: 10

  The Times reports that NBC is planning to start a 24-hour local news channel in New York. It will air on cable and, I’m guessing, on one of WNBC’s new digital channels. The news content will also be repurposed for other platforms, like those annoying video screens in the back of taxis. Round-the-clock local news seems like a staff-intensive idea that would be certain to lose money, but New York 1 has made it work for years. How? Around town NY1 has a reputation for being a supercool place to work, where employees get paid chicken scratch. Your compensation is that superior feeling you get each time tell people what you do. Don’t misunderstand me – I’m jealous of everyone who works there. With NY1 owning the market on journalistic hipness, how is the super-square WNBC going to compete? The article tells us: “Providing round-the-clock live news will not require NBC to hire more employees for the new channel; it plans to rely instead on expanding the duties of its present staff members…” This is a signal that NBC considers local news so easy to gather and of so little value that it shouldn’t cost anything to provide more of it. I wonder how much they spend on helicopter fuel compared to salaries for journalists.
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  new news for nyc.

  http://captivatingconnections.typepad.com/captivating_connec...
  3 days ago in Captivating Connections. · Authority: 5

  "NBC Universal announced on Wednesday plans to start a 24-hour local cable news channel similar to New York 1. It will de-emphasize the identity of NBC’s flagship station, WNBC, Channel 4, rechristening it a 'content center' and making it one part of a larger media presence." Hm.
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  The Morning Newsfeed: 05.08.08

  http://www.mediabistro.com/news/newsfeed/the_morning_newsfee...
  3 days ago in mediabistro.com: jobs, classes, community and news for media professionals · Authority: 4,004

  Click here to receive mediabistro.com's Daily Newsfeed via email. NBC Plans 24-Hour News for the New York Region (NYT) NBC Universal announced on Wednesday plans to start a 24-hour local cable news channel similar to New York 1. It will de-emphasize the identity of NBC's flagship station, WNBC, Channel 4, rechristening it a "content center" and making it one part of a larger media presence. The new channel will provide the first 24-hour local news coverage of the New York region, including New Jersey and Connecticut. NYP: "We think New York represents such a great news market for us, we want to make a statement about how serious we are about local news," said John Wallace, president of NBC's local media division. Times Ax Falls on 15 (NYP) The New York Times is laying off 15 journalists after the company acknowledged it fell short of its goal of getting 100 people to take voluntary buyout packages. The company would not confirm the precise number of layoffs, but in a memo executive editor Bill Keller said the ax would fall on "relatively small numbers" of staffers. Kaplan to Return to Evening News Next Week (TVNewser) Insiders say Rick Kaplan's days of double duty are coming to a close. Kaplan has been acting EP of The Early Show since early March. He's also kept his day job as EP of the CBS Evening News With Katie Couric, though the EN staff has done most of the heavy lifting. Kaplan's last day at Early will be this Friday. CBS execs are looking at internal candidates to fill The Early Show EP vacancy. continued... New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media
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  News Of The Day

  http://www.nydailynews.com/blogs/dailypolitics/2008/05/news-...
  4 days ago in The Daily Politics - NY Daily News · Authority: 735

  Rep. Vito Fossella made a brief trip home to Staten Island for his son's confirmation amid mounting pressure from Republicans for him to give up his House seat. Fossella's wife is reportedly unlikely to stick with him if it turns out he fathered a child out of wedlock with another woman, but his mentor and longtime Staten Island GOP boss, Guy Molinari, will. Fossella wasn't wearing his wedding band in Washington this week, fueling the rumors about his relationship with the Virginia woman who picked him up after his drunk driving arrest. The NRCC refused to issue a statement in support of Fossella. More than 200 people protesting the Sean Bell verdict were arrested, including Nicole Paultre Bell and the Rev. Al Sharpton, who organized the demonstrations. Gov. David Paterson is scheduled to meet privately with Sharpton and the Bell family today. Democratic officials began to send messages to Hillary Clinton that her bid for the presidential nomination has failed, but she vowed to fight on. Some of Clinton's top fundraisers privately said she was just buying time Wednesday to determine whether there's enough support - and cash beyond the additional $6.4 million she lent her campaign - to fight on. Republicans, expecting Barack Obama to be the Democratic nominee, stepped up their criticism of him. Former Sen. George McGovern, an early Clinton backer, switched his support to Obama and said Clinton would remain "an influential voice in the American future." US Sen. Chuck Schumer, a Clinton superdelegate, said she should make her own decision and he'll "accept the decision she makes." John McCain raised an estimated $7 million in Manhattan last night with help from his former rival, Rudy Giuliani. The FBI inquiry into Senate Majority Leader Joseph Bruno's outside business interests is focused on opinions he received more than a decade ago from the Legislative Ethics Commission. Council Speaker Christine Quinn unveiled new rules for pork barrel spending, and insisted she's telling the truth about her lack of knowledge in the slush fund scandal, despite a new poll that found 52 percent of New Yorkers don't believe her. Council members who panned Quinn's previous RFP proposal for pork praised the new rules, including Councilman Lew Fidler, who said they go farther than any other legislature. The New York Times issued a vote of confidence for Quinn to remain as speaker, but also said her new rules "no not pass muster as real reform." The Post doesn't think much of the new reforms. The Queens DA and city DOI are reportedly investigating whether a social service agency that received discretionary funds through Councilman Hiram Monserrate also helped with his Senate campaign. AG Andrew Cuomo is pursuing his own inquiry into state-level pork. Mayor Bloomberg called parking permits for drivers who don't need them for government business "an outrage," following a DN report on perks for former MTA board members. A dozen top city officials and staffers, including Bloomberg, Quinn, are traveling to Northern Ireland this week for a government-sponsored investment conference. NYPA pledged to do everything in its power to help AG Andrew Cuomo recover e-mails belonging to the authority's suspended IG, Dan Wiese. A freelance reporter for The Post sued the city, claiming his civil rights were violated when he was stopped and frisked by NYPD officers in the Bronx last year. NBC plans to give NY1 some competition. The New York Times confirmed it has fired an unspecified number of newsroom staffers. Rupert Murdoch said he expects to wrap up his purchase of Newsday in as little as a week. Jacob Gershman details some of the stranger bills circulating around Albany this year. The GOP-controlled state Senate passed a gas tax holiday, but it's unlikely to go anywhere.

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