The Inbox...

The Inbox is a place for TV news people to rant, suggest or react to stories that they have seen on this site.

Today’s email comes from a former newsie that wants to talk about CBS farming out their weekend news to affiliates. It is in response to this story.

Here’s the email to FTVLive:

Congrats on a great site. While I’ve been out of the news business for decades, it’s a habit that hard to break and ftvlive.com provides that needed, daily fix.

Regarding CBS “farming out” its weekend news to local stations, the only experiment I can remember that was remotely similar was ABC’s Saturday night newscast in the 1970s. That broadcast was led by the main anchors from their O&O’s, including Bill Beutel and Roger Grimsby of WABC; Jerry Dunphy, Christine Lund and John Hambrick from KABC, John Drury, Joel Daly and Fahey Flynn of WLS; Jac Le Goff of WXYZ and Bill Bonds in his various stints at WXYZ, KABC, and WABC.

Of course, the local anchors broadcast from an ABC News studio in New York, with a team of network producers, correspondents and technicians. The Saturday late news was eventually cancelled as more ABC affiliates began airing their own local newscasts.

CBS’s decision to put-source the weekend news is puzzling (as you note), given the availability of other studios in New York. But I also recall CBS sometimes bailed before COVID-19. On the night Muhammad Ali died, the CBS News Special Report was anchored by Paul Magers, and aired from KCBS in LA. Magers did a credible job, but it was amazing that The House that Murrow Built couldn’t find an anchor, editorial team and tech crew to mount a report from the CBS Broadcast Center.

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