Sports On the Air
Sports on the Air: Sportscasts fading on local news
Last weekend, Channel 4 news reporter Jericka Duncan and Channel 7 news anchor Ginger Geoffery anchored the late sports reports on their stations.
Unintentionally or not, the use of news personnel to do sports on rival stations on a weekend night said something about the state of TV sportscasting.
This isn’t a criticism of Duncan (whose father was a veteran sports anchor) or of Geoffery (who started in this market as a sports reporter on the defunct Empire Sports Network).
But seeing news reporters anchoring sportscasts on the same night made one fear that local sports coverage is being devalued here as it has been in some places nationally.
Channel 7 has already de-emphasized sports. It has only two full-time on-air staffers in Sports Director Jeff Russo and weekend anchor Shawn Stepner. It occasionally uses a freelancer on weekends or has Geoffery fill in.
Channel 4’s staffing issue is temporary. Duncan filled in on Channel 4 because weekend anchor Robin Adams is on maternity leave, Sports Director John Murphy was on vacation and backup Paul Peck had worked seven straight days.
The only local sports station with a full complement of sports staffers is Channel 2, which has Sports Director Ed Kilgore, Adam Benigni, Stu Boyar and Ben Hayes.
The national de-emphasis of local sportscasts in these troubled economic times is partially the result of how easily viewers can go to ESPN, the Internet or team Web sites to see highlights. The audience for local sportscasts also is diminished because they often air when viewers are watching games on one of the ESPNs or regional networks.
While a few stations nationally have dropped sports, that’s unlikely to happen here because Buffalo has two pro teams—the Bills and the Sabres —with strong viewer interest and the local stations are smartly focusing on local teams.
However, the teams now have their own Web sites, where they put up game highlights and interviews well before the late sportscasts air.
Local sportscasters would be wise to add nightly opinions about the local teams to differentiate themselves and attract viewers. However, the sportscasters here don’t really have strong opinions and generally they save those and other comments for their station’s Web sites.
That mistake was magnified last week when Channel 2 covered the death of its former sportscaster, Gary Papa. After the report, viewers were told to go to WGRZ’s Web site to hear Kilgore’s comments on Papa.
Sorry, but Kilgore’s praise of his talented former colleague belonged on the sportscast, not on a Web site watched by a fraction of the Channel 2 audience.
• MSG, the home of the Buffalo Sabres, is offering extensive coverage of the NHL draft with a one-hour “Hockey Night Live:NHL Draft Special” premiering at 9 tonight. The show will analyze the draft picks of the Sabres, the New York Rangers, New Jersey Devils and New York Islanders. The show will be hosted by Al Trautwig and feature Ken Daneyko, Butch Goring and Dave Maloney, and reporter Stan Fischler will contribute.
• Attention, fans of the Canadian Football League. Time Warner will carry CFL games on Channel 13 starting at 9 p. m. July 2 when Winnipeg is at Edmonton. That is the first of seven games on the TWC schedule so far. The games will no longer be available on CBC, since the CFL’s rights have switched to TSN, Canada’s version of ESPN.
• The ratings for the final games of the NHL and NBA finals are in and hockey won locally by a 3-1 margin. Pittsburgh’s Game Seven win in the Stanley Cup finals over Detroit had a 13.5 rating on Channel 2. The Los Angeles Lakers’ clinching Game Five win over the Orlando Magic had a 4.5 rating on Channel 7.
• I almost drove my car into a ditch when I heard a WGR staffer say that Farmingdale, Long Island (near where the U.S. Open at Bethpage State Park was played) is a wealthy area. I grew up in Levittown and never thought of Farmingdale that way. So I consulted Donn Esmonde, who grew up in nearby East Meadow. He gave a Springsteen- like confirmation. He said Great Neck and Manhasset were wealthy areas but Farmingdale “was tramps like us.”
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