The Anchor vs. The TV Critic
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Call this one The Anchor vs. The TV Critic.
Or the Clash of the Egos!
In one corner you have WGRZ (Buffalo) News Anchor Maryalice Demler.
In the other corner you have Buffalo News TV Critic Alan Pergament.
Two people working in a dying TV market that both think they are God's gift to journalism.
Pergament wrote an article about Demler giving her thoughts and doing commentaries on her station's newscast.
It's nothing new, in some markets anchors have been doing commentaries for 40 years.
But, you must remember things don't move very fast in Buffalo.
When Demler started given her opinions on the newscast, Pergament lashed out in a column. His thought is that an anchor should just deliver the news and not give their opinions.
Demler read Pergament's article and used it for....you guessed it..... another commentary. Which of course then Pergament wrote a story about her commentary that slammed his story about her doing commentaries.
You see the vicious cycle we are not caught in?
Demler's commentary that slammed the article about her doing commentaries was a classic.You could watch her ago grow bigger and bigger as she spoke. She told the viewers that they were looking at "a 21st century news anchor".
She not only took shots at Pregament, but she also took shots at the other stations in town.
She acted as if no news anchor had ever done a commentary in the history of TV news. She pointed out that her station was doing TV news like no other station ever has and the other stations in the market are now just copying what her station is doing (never mind the fact that WGRZ's newscast is the same cookie cutter Gannett stuff you see in so many markets).
Demler did not point out that none of the other stations have an anchor wasting viewers time at the end of the newscast with a stupid commentary slamming a story about stupid commentaries.
As for Pregament?
He finished his story about her commentary that was slamming his story about commentaries (this is making me dizzy) by saying Demler needs to shut up and just listen to him.
"Someone at Channel 2 (WGRZ) should have told Demler to tone down the ego, accept some criticism and move on."
Pregament might want to do the same. We're not sure that an anchor ever needs to listen to a TV Critic that tried but never got hired in the business he covers....but then again that is a subject for a different day.
Maybe, we'll do a commentary about it.
Here is Demler's commentary about the who commentary flap:
