What I guess I’d like to see from you in addition to simply pooh-pooh’ing my ideas are some ideas of your own. E.g. If you were in charge of KTVZ today, what would you do? Your only competitor, KOHD, who by some accounts was doing an as good or better job than you, has just cried, “Uncle”, as a result of viewers turning to other news outlets (namely, the Internet). That would seem to bode ill. So how do you prevent the same from happening to you? What changes would you make stay relevant? How do you make sure you retain your audience and advertisers? In some ways, this is the perfect opportunity to make some big changes. You have a captive audience now (right?)

… or are you saying there’s nothing wrong with the status quo? That KOHD was an aberration, and that doing a “decent job” of providing a traditional local news program is all that’s required?

P.S. Please note that I don’t think of Mr. Lerten as a “pretty face” I’ve exchanged a few comments with him here and on other websites, and been impressed by him. I’m not familiar with Lee or Ted, so can’t offer up opinions there, but sounds like you think they’d fall into a similar mold, so I won’t disagree.

Both KTVZ and KOHD do a decent job in localizing national news and covering local news. I dont know how you define deliver local news, but just in the last two days I can recall seeing several very local and relevant stories (Westlund, Couger Attack, and Local soldier in Redmond school). KTVZ repeats the local price at the pump every week so we know where gas prices are heading.

The studio is not a forum or pulpit. Its a stage and should be treated as such. It lights and cameras and reporters doing there best to tell engaging relevent stories to the persons tuning in to the shows.

Fire the pretty people. Well if you consider Lee Anderson, Barney Lerten, or the new guy Ted pretty…To each his own. Its a HD media. Most of the people you see WANT to be seen and want to look good doing it. They are young and not well paid and are in an environment that is small town and is small market tv. The end product that is produced is as good as or better then most other small market shows.

Engage the smart, acquard and silly people? The news cast is just that NEWS (facts). Discussion are for sunday morning programs, newspapers, and online formats. NEWS does need to tell all sides of the story if possible. But c’mon, do we really need to have a discussion on the merits of releasing the redmond 5, or how about a discussion on why cougar attacks are on the rise. That would make for interesting news wouldnt it?

Got a story idea? just about every newscast on KTVZ I see a screen that gives an email address and phone number to submit to. Want to produce your own? If its news worthy…go for it. Please produce a high quality well written entertaining article, add your supers and see how long it takes you. Once you have done it, submit it to ANY tv station and ask them to preview for air as an opinion and let us know what you get as a response!

FIRE Everyone? Now you are getting WAYYYYYYY out there. Go on down and take a look around at the station. I think you will be VERY surprised to find out how much staff it takes to run a broadcast facility. Please keep in mind that your sophisticated technology centric view on this only appies to 5-20% of the 150K of the central Oregon population.

I recommend you get in on one of the feedback meetings that I am sure they do. Give the media management your feedback and see what the response it. I bet you find that the product that is produced is a direct result of feedback that they have recieved from research from neilson, polling, and other surveys.

So I guess the bottom line is if this is what you think people want……create it and see if you get a following.

# The Purple Cow, by Seth Gordon
# The Long Tail, by Chris Anderson
# Getting to Plan B, by Randy Komisar