Iconic anchormen may be a thing of the past. Even in regional television where the long familiar faces and voices of anchormen and women have graced our screens with the comforts of recognition, these senior news givers are being shuffled off like last week’s headlines. They are too expensive for today’s market, and the star mentality has been replaced with a team effort mentality, proclaims an article in the New York Times.
Perhaps there are even hidden factors here. One is the concept that youth is everything and therefore we must exchange the image of gravitas and sobriety for one of exuberance and physical attraction. Another is the fact that people no longer trust the news media. Viewers no longer regard most newscasters as reliable providers of the news of the day. They are seen more of hawkers of sensationalism, entertainers more than news people.
As for their knowledge or points of reference, with increasingly few exceptions, most of the newscasters come up pretty empty in the insight department. There are few Edward R. Murrow’s or Walter Cronkite’s in this person’s world. On a regional level they are familiar and often warm, but just as often corny and, frankly, pretty stupid. All that convivial exchange among the different folks at the desk can sometimes make one nauseous.
Local news was never a glamorous prospect. You watched it to get the local news. You watched it for things you could relate to because the happened across the town or even across the street. While there are still relevant stories cast on local news, much of it is insipid. Or we suffer from ennui. How many drive-by shootings can we watch or kidnappings can we care about before one story bleeds into the next?
It is not necessarily the fault of the anchor people but those who craft it behind the scenes. True municipal issues that really affect our lives are diminished for the more sensational stores. In case you think this harsh, there are reasons that local news is watched by less than half the television viewers. And those reasons don’t have to do only with the Internet or cable news. It has to do with local news, the choices made on the stories, and those who project it.
So the revenue is down on local news. What local advertisers remain in a chain store world, will often put their money elsewhere. Like cable TV. The national brands that would advertise locally are facing their own cutbacks in advertising and marketing. Local TV is among the first of the media outlets to feel it. So nobody can afford the salaries that these more senior anchor people have commanded over the years. Nobody wants to sit and get old with them. Well, few do. And each year, fewer still.
While in some ways the loss of iconic newscasters is not a tragedy, there are other ways in which it doesn’t bode well for the news industry in general. As style over substance continues to pervade the news industry we may be facing yet another degrading spectacle of disposable, dumbed down newscaster who other than reading or standing in front of a camera have little offer. It is difficult to imagine our local newscasters or national newscasters for that matter having an even more diminished grasp of history and the world around them. It is tough to imagine a news casting lot where they can appear more wooden and less informed. But this is the news media. Anything’s possible.
In time we may find ourselves confronted with replicas of replicas, news people posing as news people, in search of fame and fortune. It could start to look like college television. High school television. Oh my. We could find our local stations recruiting people on the cheap, who can’t read, can’t even speak properly. We could face a new newscaster every week, something like the tryouts for “American Idol.” I can just see the background checks for the candidates for anchor person. Can you actually read?
We could find ourselves pining for the good old days when our garden variety local cornballs issued the news between commercials.
