Just when you thought the writer’s strike had brought innovation on the small screen to a screeching halt, it appears that Waco will have a new television news operation starting tonight. The local Fox station, Channel 44, will begin a 9 p.m. newscast that hopes to, as the Waco Tabloid-Herald puts it, “successfully mirror what made the Fox News Network a national force.” News director Neal Barton is quoted as saying “I’m a hardcore traditionalist when it comes to television news, but we deal in pop culture these days,” referring to what the Tabloid-Herald describes as the 30-minute Fox newscast’s “fast-paced mix of news, entertainment, weather and sports, all delivered with an eye to inform and entertain.”
This is an innovation, of course, because of the long-held goal of traditional TV newscasts to withhold information and to try to bore viewers into a catatonic state before bedtime.
I don’t know that this will affect me much, as I watch almost no local news nowadays, but I’m planning to check this out just to see how it plays. Good luck to all involved.
If you want to read the Tabloid-Herald article in full, go here.
